Books

Book 774: Winter Wonders (Holiday Romance #1) – Leighton Greene

If you ever wonder what happens when you chose a series by the first book’s cover and title and commit to reading all of them without reading anything about them you end up reading a trilogy of MM Holiday Romance novels set in the Kink/BDSM community of Los Angeles. I read this as my 15th and (surprisingly) final book of my 12 Books of MM Romance binge. For some reason I assumed the whole trilogy was Christmas/Hanukkah based, but I definitely got that one wrong with Taming Tristan representing Valentine’s Day and Star Spanked representing Independence Day, so here we are.

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Books

Book 764: All I Want – Stella Starling

This is book five of what will almost certainly be at least 12 Holiday MM Romances this year. What can I say? They’re better than watching the hetero Hallmark/Lifetime movies. Don’t get me wrong, I like those too, but I just want these this year.

This is the story of Elliott, an adorable charitable naive department store clerk, and Ash, the troublemaker son of the department store owner, and by far this is the one that is best set to be adapted into an actual Hallmark/Lifetime movie that I’ve read.

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ARC, Books

Book 761: Mediocre – Ijeoma Oluo

As soon as I heard that Oluo was releasing another book I immediately sought out a copy. I couldn’t wait until it was released so sought out a galley ASAP.* I will buy a copy as well, because she’s wonderful. My response is definitely messy, but it’s because she makes me think so much about so many things and I just sort of try to regurgitate all of my thoughts at the same time instead of cohesively sharing them.

First, a diatribe about the early reviews I saw on Goodreads: If you ever needed a reason to read books like this (you don’t), you should take a look at the reviews for this one on Goodreads. Not only have a lot of the 1- and 2-star reviews totally misunderstood the entire book, they have attempted to explain their ratings with the thinnest of reasons that frankly annoyed the shit out of me. Not only are there the men (god fearing Christians if they’re to be believed) who completely missed that Oluo isn’t saying all white men are mediocre, just that the racist-ass systems built by white men reward the most mediocre of them, they straight up appear not to have even read the book, let alone tried to understand it.

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Books

Book 736: Romantic Renovations – Blake Allwood

I stumbled across Blake Allwood on the MM Romance Reader blog with their review of Love by Chance and thought I’d give him a chance (ha!). Allwood isn’t a five-star read for me yet, but there is a lot of potential. I will say though, if he doesn’t hire better developmental and copy editors and proofreaders he’ll never get there for me.

Rather than diving directly into the Chances series that MM Romance Reader reviewed I thought I’d start with a stand-alone. It didn’t hurt that this one was set on a home renovation show.

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Books

Book 733: So You Want to Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo

Like everyone else, but mostly the white people, in America should be doing, I’ve taken some time over the past few months to further educate myself on systemic racism and oppression in the United States. From discussions at work to dozens of articles and books, it has been 100% worth it to self-reflect and be reminded of things I knew and be introduced to things I didn’t.

I was first introduced to Oluo when I read, “The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black”, a powerful and frank wide ranging interview and reflection on race, privilege, and white supremacy in America. If you haven’t read it yet, go read it.

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