ARC, Books

Book 916: Stronger Than Hope (Chesapeake Days #1) – Katherine McIntyre

I grabbed this one from Gay Romance Reviews because at first I thought it was set in Chesapeake, Virginia, where my sister lives (I really SHOULD start reading the blurbs), but quickly found out it was Maryland.* The other reason was that I apparently was going through a single caregiver phase. This was the third or fourth over a very short period and they just melt my heart every time.

The fact that I am an incredibly stubborn and very fast reader is the primary reason I got through the first few chapters and found that the book, series, and author have a lot of potential, which seems weird as McIntyre has nearly 50 books on Goodreads and you’d think they would’ve polished some of these things already.

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Books

Book 915: A Novel Death – Judi Culbertson

This was one big “MEH . . .” Some of it was the writing, a lot of it was the characters, and the nail in the coffin was the overall storyline.

I got a copy of this back in March 2013 and it has sat on my Kindle ever since, not for any particular reason, I just never got to it. I’m a little surprised I didn’t read it sooner since it’s a mystery/thriller about a book with bookstores and libraries involved and those, in general, are like catnip for me.

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Updates

February Recap 2022

So, February is ALWAYS a short month, but this year it felt like at most 10 days. A good chunk of this was because of a week-long cruise that’s been on hold in some version of another since 2020.

After weighing all of the pros and cons we finally decided to stick with it and I’m glad we did, we both came back 100x more relaxed (except the crazy FLL airport) and warmer than the cold weather and snow in Boston would EVER let us get this time of year.

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Books

Book 914: My Best Friend’s Brother – K.C. Wells

This book served as a palate cleanser/reward between nonfiction and TBR books while on vacation a few weeks ago. I’ve previously read a couple of Wells books and know they’re pretty low conflict/angst with decent characters, storylines, and sex scenes. So I added it to my queue.

And when I got to it, it was exactly as promised. A decent story, low angst, hot sex scenes, and well-written characters. There were a few times where I rolled my eyes from the oversimplification of things, but that comes with the MM Romance territory.

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Books

Book 913: Word Nerd – John D. Williams, Jr.

I have no idea where I stumbled across this book. At first, I thought it was The Allusionist or 99% Invisible podcasts, but can’t find any mention of it on their sites and there’s nothing on NPR, aside from a review which I usually avoid, points to where it came from. I also didn’t purchase it from Amazon or any other online book retailer, so I must’ve randomly picked it up in a physical store and not tracked the purchase.

I’m glad I picked it up though! Not because I play SCRABBLE, because I’m not great at it, but because it just had a great title and subtitle and I figured it’d be an interesting read and it truly was.

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