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Book 976: Baking Me Crazy (Apple Meadows #2) – Catherine Cloverdale

OOOF. You know when they tell you not to judge/choose a book by its cover? That 100% applies to this one. When this landed in my inbox, I thought, ” Oh, that’s a decently professional cover, the model is attractive, and the font isn’t too amateur,” so I requested a copy.* AND then a few weeks later when I sat down to read it, I realized it was the second book in a series, the first was Apple-y Ever After, by an author that I barely made it through the first because there were so many issues.

So, I thought okay, maybe she hired a copy editor and a proofreader to fix a lot of the minor (but persistent) issues I found throughout, or at the very least read the book out loud so the dialogue was less stilted and the passages flowed naturally.

NOPE.

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Book 975: A Gift-Wrapped Holiday (Lighthouse Bay #4) – Amy Aislin

I requested a copy of this from Gay Romance Reviews because it’s Maine and I remembered enjoying the couple of books I read by Amy Aislin.*

This is the story of Luca who fled the west coast after his family shot down his idea to make their wrapping paper company more eco-friendly and environmentally conscious to open his own holiday wrapping store, and Mal, a single dad and graphic designer who recently moved back to his home town to be closer to family.

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Book 973: Stronger Than Longing (Chesapeake Days #3) – Katherine McIntyre

After enjoying the first two novels (Stronger Than Hope and Stronger Than Passion) I figured I’d give the newest in the series a go when it landed in my inbox from Gay Romance Reviews.*

This is the story of bad boy Silas who is back in town because of an uh-oh baby from a one-night stand who falls in love with Taran, the quiet little brother of Nico from Passion. It starts with a one-night stand after Nico gets dumped and Silas is burning off some energy and goes from there.

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Book 972: His Last Christmas in London (Christmas Collection #1) – Con Riley

Con Riley is one of those authors who has a really great sense of place. When I read their “His” series, I legit wanted to buy a bed and breakfast or a pub and hotel and move to the southern coast of England. So, when I saw this MM Holiday Romance pop up from Gay Romance Reviews I jumped at it.*

This is the story of Ian, a struggling photographer whose gotten out of an abusive professional/personal relationship and has realized he can’t make it in London no matter how much he’s tried and his roommates have helped out. He agrees to one last job at 3x his rate with his old boss/lover and meets Guy, a restaurant critic with a huge overshadowing persona. And even though it’s not love at first sight, it’s definitely confusion and lust.

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Book 971: The Christmas Leap (Festive Fakes #2) – Keira Andrews

We all knew this was coming . . . the MM Holiday Romance extravaganza. Honestly, I thought it’d be later but realizing just how little reading time I have these days and how quickly I got through these when they started to arrive on Gay Romance Reviews of course I started looking.*

I grabbed this one because it’s set in the same universe as Andrews’ The Christmas Deal that I read last year and thoroughly enjoyed. We get a brief check-in with Seth and Logan who offer some savvy advice to Will as he’s figuring stuff out because he works with them and they encourage the fake boyfriend caper.

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