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Book 831: Center Court (Order of Play #1) – Brooke Edwards

This book is a love letter to tennis and it was a gushing, effusive, adoring love letter.

When the review request appeared in my inbox I wasn’t sure about reading it, but it’d been a while since I’d read a MM Sports Romance and we were gearing up for vacation so I thought why not?*

Center Court is a split narrative work between Soren, the up-and-coming young tennis star who is poised to become a legend, and Elias, a fellow tennis player who has stayed on his heels and in the pack of the middle generation for years. There are many other minor characters (including the not-really-evil-but-I’m-still-calling-him-it Mattise) that kind of blend together because between Elias, Soren, and tennis there’s not a lot of room for anything else in this book.

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Book 821: Love Me Tenor (Perfect Harmony #2) – Annabeth Albert

Picking up not long after where Treble Maker leaves off we find Trevor (Lucas’ friend and acapella group mate) struggling after coming out to his family and being disowned. A production assistant from the previous show has invited him to be on a new reality TV singing competition made of boy bands and he jumps at the opportunity because it’ll give him housing for a few more months while he tries to figure out his life.

What he didn’t expect was to meet and then fall in love with Jalen, the assistants adopted brother who can sing, but doesn’t have the training of the rest of the group. Jalen has his own anger issues and spends the first half of the book antagonizing Trevor.

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Book 818: Keeping Kellan (Keeping Him #2) – Amy Aislin

After thoroughly enjoying Keeping Casey, I knew when the next one was released I would jump at it. So, when it came up on Gay Romance Reviews I did.*

This is the story of Kellan, the quiet brooding friend and teammate of Ethan from Keeping Casey, and his childhood crush Brant, a landscape architect in his Canadian childhood hometown. They’ve both been crushing on each other for quite a while, Kellan since he was a pre-teen, and the timing has finally worked out when Brant moves back home to get away from his post-college life.

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Book 768: Merry Cherry Christmas – Keira Andrews

As I cross the 3/4 mark with book nine of my 12 MM Holiday Books of 2020, I’m finding it harder to judge the books. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re starting to run together, they totally are, or if it’s because they’re dividing pretty quickly into those that I really enjoy and those that are just sort of meh (this is the first).

In Merry Cherry Christmas we have Jeremy (aka Cherry – his little brother couldn’t say his name growing up and it stuck) another virgin desperately trying to no longer be a virgin, and his knight in shining armor Max, the super fit and attractive captain of the university football team. But really, Andrews wrote it best: “a nervous nerd and protective, jealous jock.” Not going to lie, this one gave a lot of the same things that A Guy for Christmas did, but Andrews did it better, for me at least.

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Book 723: Once You Go This Far – Kristen Lepionka

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this. When the publisher reached out to me about an ARC I liked the synopsis and loved the fact Lepionka co-hosts a podcast called “Unlikeable Female Characters”, so said sure why not.*

I don’t know if it’s worth noting (but clearly, I’m noting it), the first thing I noticed on Goodreads is I am one of very few men who have read this book prior to release. I don’t know if that means we’re not the target audience or if it was just a coincidence, but I thought it was interesting.

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