ARC, Books

Book 756: Strawberry Kisses – Charlie Novak

Give me a fake boyfriend romance any day of the week, gay, straight, bisexual, anything really, and I’m in. I don’t know why I like them so much, I just do. So, when I saw this come through from Gay Romance Reviews and I needed a filler between two nonfiction books, I requested a copy.*

I won’t lie and tell you it got off to a great start, there was a typo on page one [“Deseeding twenty passion fruit and another ten pomegranates was a pain the ass and had taken a ton of time.” (Chapter One)] and I wasn’t sure about Novak’s voice, but it definitely got better so I’m glad I kept reading.

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Book 754: The Friend Scheme – Cale Dietrich

I’ve honestly stopped keeping track of where I see books. I just add them to a list or request them at the library and then when they come in I read them and spend 10-15 minutes trying to find out where I found them. In essence, I have no clue where I saw this, but thank you to whoever put it on my radar.

If I’m honest, the cover art drew me to the book, I like the graphic identity and the clean lines and with both their eyes closed it just made it that much more pleasing to the eye. You can sort of read the stress in Matt’s posture (right) and Jason kind of looks above it all.

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Book 731 & 732: Date Me, Bryson Keller – Kevin van Whye

It’s so nice I read it twice—no, seriously. I finished it and then the next morning decided I wanted to read it again. That’s twice this year (excluding illustrated/graphic novels)! The other double read this year was Two for Trust and the real connection of the two is that they could both be easily turned into one of those wonderfully cheesy made-for-TV movies that whenever you see it you just leave it on and inevitably get drawn into it.

You could definitely see where van Whye got his inspiration for this #ownvoices story. He acknowledged he was inspired by She’s All That (IMDb link) from the 90s, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. And this definitely deserves to be up there with these great coming of age stories.

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Book 727: We Contain Multitudes – Sarah Henstra

I think I saw this on some bookstagram post and liked the cover and blurb enough to request it from the library. I had no expectations going into it, but I can tell you I was NOT expecting to have the air pulled out of my lungs constantly through the last half of the book.

Seriously though, the only thing I can compare it to is when you’re sobbing so hard and you can’t catch your breath and you just keep gasping trying to breathe but you’re only getting enough oxygen to keep sobbing. Jo and Kurl’s story was brutally beautiful.

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Book 713: Force Play – Elle Brownlee

Still chasing the high from Two for Trust, I’ve kept an eye out for additional books by Elle Brownlee. Plus, who doesn’t love as MM sports romance?

This is the story of Hawk, a pro ball player who wakes up after a big bender and ending up in a gay bar with photos on all the media, and Caleb, a former pro ball player who has his own trauma, but does his best to be the support Hawk needs as he navigates living openly.

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