Books

Book 877: Twice in a Lifetime (Sheltered Connections #1) – R.M. Neill

Book cover of "Twice in a Lifetime" with Amazon Affiliate linkAnother ARC, another gamble. After reading the blurb on this one with two characters with emotional baggage and growing together out of their traumatic pasts, I requested a copy.*

What I didn’t realize was that the entire book was going to take place in roughly a week, which is one of my biggest pet peeves. Forewarning, my response is going to sound a lot more negative than it is, but it’s because Neill has a lot of potential I think she just missed the mark by just a smidge on SO. MANY. THINGS. in this book. One reviewer on Goodreads went so far as to say, “DNF. The only interesting thigs in this book were the conversations Micha had with the dogs he groomed.” While I agree with this, I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it was  a definite miss for me.

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Books

Book 876: Mr. Frosty Pants (Home for the Holidays #1) – Leta Blake

Book cover of "Mr. Frosty Pants" with Amazon Affiliate linkI hadn’t planned to start my MM Holiday Romance binge this early, but when I started getting requests for reviews, including the third book in this series, it was inevitable that I’d start sooner than expected.

The challenge I face when I get sucked in by a blurb is whether or not to go back and read the books earlier in the series. Even if they’re “stand alone” I truly love it when they’re inter connected even if it’s just quick glimpses of future characters. That common thread is just the best to me. Thankfully, when I saw Mr. Jingle Bells I liked the idea of this one (the first) and am sort of meh about the second in the series Mr. Naughty List so thought why not.

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Books

Book 871: Just Ash – Sol Santana

Book cover of "Just Ash" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen I stumbled across this on NetGalley I knew I wanted to read it.* That book cover has Boston (including where I actually live) on it, it’s an own voices LGBTQIA story, and it happens to be released in October and set in Salem, I mean COME ON how could I NOT request it. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my hopes for it. Maybe they were too high to start because the book started out strong but puttered out by the end.

Just Ash is the story of Ash who has spent their entire life as a boy who happened to have both male and female parts, but in the opening scene gets his period and a series of horrible events follow as he is forced to pretend to be a girl by his parents for some time until he finally sets his foot down.

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Books

Book 861: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson

Book cover of "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" with Amazon Affiliate linkI picked this book up way back in November 2014 because I’d been hearing great things about it and remembered enjoying Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in undergrad (and still languishing on my TBR shelf).

I only read this at this moment in time because a few months ago I created a spreadsheet of all the books on my TBR shelf that were under 250 pages that randomly spits out a book title so when I had a bit of a gap or wanted to actually make progress on my shelves I had an easy tool to select a book.

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ARC, Books

Book 837: Fifty Words for Rain – Asha Lemmie

Book cover of "Fifty Words for Rain" with Amazon Affiliate linkI feel hollow after finishing this book—I’m not sure emotionally drained is the right word because I feel like I have so many emotions going on that they’ve just forced each other out and there’s just nothing.  And when you take in that this is a debut novel, damn.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it’s been on my radar since the publisher reached out last year when it was first published but I didn’t get to it until the paperback was recently released.* I really should’ve prioritized it from back then because I feel like Dutton never steers me wrong looking at the books I’ve read from them.

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