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Book 795: Keeping Casey (Keeping Him #1) – Amy Aislin

I said yes to this one when Gay Romance Reviews offered it because I love a MM Sports Romance and hockey in particular thanks to Ngozi Ukazu.* And it didn’t hurt that the last book I read by Aislin was a hockey romance and it was a decent read.

Keeping Casey introduces us to Ethan, a demisexual gay man who has a medical condition that will one day prematurely end his hockey career who is in love with his best friend, Casey, an archaeology nerd who has been avoiding the grief of his father’s death for years and happens to also be in love with Ethan. They just don’t talk about it until after Casey volunteers as Ethan’s fake boyfriend because of a homophobic teammate. Love a fake boyfriend story!

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Book 794: Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run #2) – Roan Parrish

As soon as I found out there was going to be another book in the series that brought me Better Than People, I jumped on board with a request to the publisher.*

Taking place not long after BTP, Best Laid Plans features Charlie, the older brother of Jack from the first novel who has spent his life sacrificing for Jack since their parents died, and Rye, a down on his luck loner who has come to Wyoming after inheriting a dilapidated house because he has nowhere else to go.

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Book 786: No Blanks, No Pauses – Shelly McNamara

When the publisher reached out to me about this I immediately knew I was going to say yes (even if it took me a few days to get around to telling them).* I’m always interested in LGBT individuals’ personal journeys to where they are today and when the subject line was “Chief Equality & Inclusion Officer at Procter & Gamble Publishes Inspiring Memoir on Living an Authentic Life”, of course I was in!

I knew nothing about Shelly McNamara and the only thing I knew about P&G, aside from all the random products of theirs I use, is that they have a big neon sign in Boston on a building (I think it’s a museum?), so I went in blind which isn’t anything new for me.

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Book 779: Live Life Colorfully – Jason Naylor

Book cover of "Live Life Colorfully" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen the publicist reached out to me about this one, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to accept it.* It’s been a few years since I reviewed an interactive book like this and even though they’re perennials on my top 10 viewed lists (oh heeeey, Lee Crutchley and Sharon Jones . . . ), I always feel like they’re cheating a little bit, but then again I spent most of last year flying through “trashy romance novels” so . . . yeah.

However, after checking out Naylor’s Instagram and seeing how many of the bright pieces of art made me smile and honestly adoring his love for colorful socks, I said yes.

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Book 778: The Mosquito – Timothy C. Winegard

Well if I wasn’t already so jaded from having lived through the last nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d be terrified mosquitos were coming to exterminate all of us!

I accepted this galley back in April when the pandemic was just really kicking off.* And then I promptly forgot about it for a few months, followed by avoiding it for even longer because it just didn’t feel right to read it with the way the world was going. I finally decided I needed to clear my galley backlog and this was the oldest so here we are. This particular quote caught me with all the rumors flying about where COVID-19 came from:

Zoonosis rates have tripled in the last ten years, and account for 75% of all human diseases. The goal of health researchers is to identify potential ‘spillover’ germs before they make a zoonotic jump to humans. (Ch. 18)

After reading this book, I feel like wherever coronavirus came from it was like “hey Mosquito, hold my beer,” and then it seriously underwhelmed when you look at the stats in this book!

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