When someone in the marketing department at the publisher reached out about this because I’d positively reviewed David Chang’s Eat a Peach, I had to take a few minutes to really think if I wanted to go back into this world.*
In Chang’s book, his mental health struggles are peripheral, but in Dunn’s Burn Rate, he centers them. I spent quite a bit of time reading about bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and other mental health issues before my mom died a few years ago to try and understand what she was going through and what my sister and I were experiencing. And that REALLY hit home when the first quote Dunn uses in his book is a quote from Kay Redfield Jamison who wrote THE book (An Unquiet Mind) about brains and bipolar/manic depression/brains in general.
I’m not 100% sure why I said yes to this when it came through Gay Romance Reviews.* I think it was because of the enemies to lovers storyline/trope, but who knows really? It also could’ve been because of the cover model, he looks vaguely familiar, or it could’ve been the academic setting. Really there’s no telling with me.
Some days those emails from Amazon with the deal of the day books really get it right 😀 In general I avoid buying MM romance novels because I read them so fast I don’t feel like I get my money’s worth when really, I absolutely do. I just know that if I bought everyone I wanted I’d be broke all the time. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to support my local library by checking them out. This time though I was too impatient!
What was missing from Heidi Cullinan’s Love Lessons series? A fake boyfriend romance, so of course that’s what she provided and I soaked up in the third installment Lonely Hearts.