ARC, Books

Book 819: Kill Switch – Adam Jentleson

I heard about this book on NPR’s Fresh Air, and didn’t know quite a few of the facts they shared so immediately reached out to the publisher.*

Jentleson was very open that he had a bias, being a former aide to Democratic majority leader Harry Reid, but I felt he presented all the facts and stories without too much bias. Honestly, I was impressed with how balanced Jentleson was able to talk about everything and ultimately explain Democrats were forced to play the game the southern white supremacist senators have created just to get things done. And it’s irrefutable the line he’s drawn from the slave holders to the January 6th insurrection.

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Books

Book 815: Better Have Heart (Harrison Campus #2) – Andy Gallo and Anyta Sunday

After blazing through the first book in the Harrison Campus series, Better Be Sure, I knew I was going to read the four book series back-to-back to get a head for a longer galley.

Better Have Heart features Darren, the wealthy frat brother of Jack who grew a spine and went against the douche canoe (more on that later) who was antagonizing Jack, and Isaiah, a scholarship music student who’s decided to buck the system and ask why a prestigious scholarship is closed to his application this year (he’s also tangentially Jack’s yoga instructor, which was a weird intro).

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Books

Book 790: The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

OMG ya’ll, clearly, I should be judging the next Booker Prize. First Wolf Hall and now this, I get why they choose these beautiful books as winners. I’m only partially serious. I still think so many of the books are boring old stuffy books that are specifically chosen because of the inability of large swaths of the population to comprehend or appreciate them. So, boo on that.

All kidding aside, this was an incredibly beautifully written DEBUT novel. I was floored when I found that out. The way she wrote and the way time flowed eerily (and seamlessly) backward and forward in this novel it truly felt like a master class in novels. No wonder she won the prize—I’m definitely going to have to read her only other fictional work, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, at some point because everything else she’s written is nonfiction (what?!).

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ARC, Books, Professional Development

Book 786: No Blanks, No Pauses – Shelly McNamara

When the publisher reached out to me about this I immediately knew I was going to say yes (even if it took me a few days to get around to telling them).* I’m always interested in LGBT individuals’ personal journeys to where they are today and when the subject line was “Chief Equality & Inclusion Officer at Procter & Gamble Publishes Inspiring Memoir on Living an Authentic Life”, of course I was in!

I knew nothing about Shelly McNamara and the only thing I knew about P&G, aside from all the random products of theirs I use, is that they have a big neon sign in Boston on a building (I think it’s a museum?), so I went in blind which isn’t anything new for me.

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Books

Book 785: Lonely Hearts (Love Lessons #3) – Heidi Cullinan

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.

Picking up immediately after Fever Pitch, Cullinan dives right into the story of Elijah, the jaded and toying with the lines of addiction and safe sex roommate of Aaron from the last book, and Baz, life of the party big man on campus, but hiding a soft inside with a heartbreaking backstory.

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