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Book 959: The Dove in the Belly – Jim Grimsley

When I finished re-reading Dream Boy back in May, I did a quick search to see what Jim Grimsley was up to these days and stumbled across this upcoming release. I reached out to the publisher for a copy and crossed my fingers it wasn’t going to be as traumatic or emotionally draining as the others I’ve read.*

The Dove in the Belly is the story of Ronny and Ben. It takes place on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in the 1970s and that’s the main reason I wanted to read this, Grimsley went to UNC and having it set on the UNC campus intrigued me as I also went to UNC and remember some of the history around the early LGBT organizations and experiences on campus.

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Book 956: The Book of Elis – Lou Skelton

Who doesn’t love a childhood friendship that turns into a second-chance romance after one has moved countries away and they reconnect later in life? I know I do, so that’s why when this one landed in my inbox I requested a copy.*

The Book of Elis is the story of Ieuan and Elis who were inseparable as kids, but Elis and his family move from a small village in Wales to bustling Brisbane, Australia. When Elis and Ieuan are in university their families decide to take a joint vacation to Tenerife in Spain and the story goes from there.

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Book 954: Heat Wave (The Extraordinaries #3) – T.J. Klune

After the cliffhanger of Flash Fire, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I was approved for a copy a few months ago and of course, sat on it for too long and missed the archive date.* Thankfully, I had downloaded a copy so was able to finish it up on the plane flying out to Chicago earlier this week.

The beginning was a little bit rough as there seemed to be a key piece of information missing from the story, but I figured out pretty quickly what was going on. It was all connected to the cliffhanger of Flash Fire so spoiler warning for after the jump.

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Book 953: Stronger Than Passion (Chesapeake Days #2) – Katherine McIntyre

Coming off Stronger Than Hope, I wasn’t 100% sure I was going to read the next one in the series. There were just enough little annoyances in it that I wasn’t convinced. However, when this landed in my inbox I thought why not give McIntyre another chance, see if the same issues showed up again.*

I called Nico being one of the protagonists of this book but had no clue who the second would be. We find ourselves with a classic enemies-to-lovers trope. Nico Shah, the owner and proprietor of the local town bar who is a one-night-stand only kind of guy, is forced to work with Hudson West, the pretty boy with a presumed-trust fund who runs the high-end classy restaurant of the town. They don’t get on because of numerous misunderstandings, but they slowly fall for each other as they work together.

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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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