ARC, Books

Book 950: Kaleidoscope – Cecily Wong

When someone from the publisher reached out about Kaleidoscope, this line caught me: “This book is heart-wrenching and hopeful and the characters truly shine on the page. It’s one of those books where I wish I could read it again for the first time all over again. And I’m so happy that you get to.”

And I downloaded a copy almost immediately, but of course sat on it for a few months, allowing me to forget about the blurb and the subject and go into this completely blind.*  This approach, if you’ve followed me for a while, sometimes works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it sort of worked mostly because the intro was a little abrupt and different from the rest of the story, but that’s on me, not the author.

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Book 947: Hot Pursuit (The Hot Cannolis #3) – Eli Easton

It was a little surprising to see that this one was only written by Eli Easton but I found out that what I  believe will be the final book in the series, Hot Lips, will be authored by Tara Lain. That being said, it didn’t stop me from requesting this one when it landed in my inbox!* I knew Rick’s story would be good and it was definitely good.

Hot Pursuit is the story of Rick and John. Rick is Mike (from Hot Seat) and Donny’s (from Hot Wings) uncle and is a homicide detective and recently came out to some of his family in support of Donny. He’s assigned a new partner, John, who has a chip on his shoulder for some reason and caught Rick’s attention even before he was assigned as his partner.

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Book 944: The Kingdom of Sand – Andrew Holleran

I wanted to like this book so much like really wanted to, because Holleran is one of those early LGBT authors whose work has stood the test of time for decades. And that’s why I requested a copy from NetGalley.*

What I didn’t expect was how similar to Mrs. Dalloway and A Single Man this would be. I think that bodes well for the longevity of the novel, but unfortunately, for me, it wasn’t the time or place to read it to truly appreciate or enjoy it. While there were some incredibly beautiful passages throughout, I struggled to get into the book and (for the most part) identify with the nameless narrator.

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Books

Book 941: Dylan’s Dilemma (Maine Men #4) – K.C. Wells

On my trek to get to Aaron’s Awakening, I continued to make my way through Wells’ series. I did get sick while visiting Texas so quite a few of these are going to be back posted as I catch up on things. I was a little disappointed in the series with the last installation and all I can say about this one is the same.

For me, the problem with this one and the last one is the character development. There were such strong characters in the first two books who grew and changed within their stories, but in Seb’s Summer and this one the characters were okay, but they just fell flat for me.

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Updates

May Recap 2022

May did NOT fly by even though we spent a long weekend in North Conway, NH for our 8th anniversary and flew to Texas at the end of the month for graduation parties. Add in that work picked up with the end of the fiscal year coming up fast and school starts the first week of June, I’m trying to figure out how it felt like a regular full-length long-ass month.

I got a lot of knitting done, more on that later, and read SO many books. I’m ready for summer, but not really ready for the heat so we’ll see how long that lasts.

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