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Book 923: Lucky Match (Hearts for Hire #1) – Raquel Riley

Nope. Unfortunately, that’s the bulk of my response if you want to skip the overall review. When this landed in my inbox I said yes and had such high expectations because the cover looks well done and the premise was a great idea.* Unfortunately, the execution was lackluster at best.

Lucky Match is the tale of Lucky McGuire, a cocky student who started a dating service near his college campus, and Hayes Brantley, his recently divorced professor who’s decided to lean into his bisexuality and date a man.

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Book 907: Hot Seat (The Hot Cannolis #1) – Eli Easton and Tara Lain

Give me an opposites-attract, man-in-uniform, light on the sex book any day and I am here for it! I knew the first two when I grabbed a copy of this from Gay Romance Reviews, but I didn’t know the third and that made it that much better!* And that was before I opened it to find a discussion about Wuthering Heights on the first page!!!

I’ve previously read Easton, but not Lain so I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one as I started, but quickly got into the story and the writing and didn’t look back finishing it in basically two sittings, and of course, spent a portion of it tearing up in public because one series of scenes towards the end just hit me hard.

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Book 884: The Holiday Hoax – Skylar M. Cates

This was a perfectly lovely, low-angst Chrismukkah fake boyfriend MM Holiday Romance.

I grabbed this because of the above. Who doesn’t love a fake boyfriend story or a holiday romance? I mean come on, it’s the perfect time of the year and weather to snuggle up by a fire and read a one-sitting romance with minimal angst and an adorable happy for now ending.

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Book 867: Finley Embraces Heart and Home (Love, Austen #4) – Anyta Sunday

This book felt different from the other three books in Anyta Sunday’s Love, Austen series. I was always going to read it and said yes as soon as the review opportunity came in, but it just felt different.*

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with the fact that we spend so much more time with Finley and Ethan growing up than we spent with anyone else in the series. All the other books (Emerett Has Never Been in LoveCameron Wants to Be a Hero, and Bennet, Pride before the Fall) were your more typical whirlwind type romances: sparks fly, a couple of weeks or months past, boom happily ever after.

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Book 838: Keeping Hope – Alexandria Redding

We all know I loved Ngozi’s Check, Please! series and am a sucker for MM Sports Romances. So, this one had a lot to live up to and even though I had some concerns about the cover art (seems slapped together and so meh) I gave Redding the benefit of the doubt and decided to give it a go when it appeared in my inbox.*

Overall, the book was just meh (sort of like the cover). There was a lot of potential and Redding clearly has a lot of ideas, but she could use an editor (or a stronger one). So much of the book was bogged down in social issues, which I am here for every day of the week—bullying, racial inequity/police profiling, homelessness, and mental health awareness absolutely need more representation—but not at the expense of the story. In reading this one so soon after Legendborn and seeing how well Deonn wrote about injustice and had the characters learn/grow from it, I was let down.

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