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Book 956: The Book of Elis – Lou Skelton

Who doesn’t love a childhood friendship that turns into a second-chance romance after one has moved countries away and they reconnect later in life? I know I do, so that’s why when this one landed in my inbox I requested a copy.*

The Book of Elis is the story of Ieuan and Elis who were inseparable as kids, but Elis and his family move from a small village in Wales to bustling Brisbane, Australia. When Elis and Ieuan are in university their families decide to take a joint vacation to Tenerife in Spain and the story goes from there.

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Book 934: Breakaway (Off the Pitch #1) – Charlie Novak

I threw this on my Kindle from Kindle Unlimited at some point in the last two years because I’ve enjoyed most of Novak’s works and love a good MM Sports Romance. It was the oldest KU book on my list so I figured why not cross it off.

Breakway is the story of childhood friends Christian and David, who drifted apart when Christian went off to play for the pros in Germany, but the never gave up the torch for each other.

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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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Book 906: Black Cake – Charmaine Wilkerson

When someone from the publisher reached out to me about Black Cake, it wasn’t an immediate yes or an immediate no.* I honestly had no idea what I was going to do, I thought it was a beautiful cover (even if I didn’t notice the woman on it for ages) and the multi-generational story drew me in.

What ultimately decided for me was that it was a debut novel, love those most of the time, and my reading list is seriously lacking authors of color and I’ve been saying for years I’m going to expand my reading list. And holy shit y’all I’m so glad I did, this book took me for so many rides.

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Book 905: Heartstopper, Vol. 4 (Heartstopper #4) – Alice Oseman

I’m not sure I was ready for this one. I’d guessed it would overlap with what happened in Solitaire, but wasn’t 100% sure it would. I wasn’t sure how Oseman would handle it graphically, I think there were a couple of images in Solitaire, and she sort of glossed the particular scene probably because of this.

I really appreciated having Nick’s outside perspective on the situation as we know he’s been worried about Charlie for two books now and when it came to the point right when Charlie was going to tell Nick he loved him, Nick asks about the eating disorder and it throws both of them into confusion which was just so real.

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