Tag: Gay Romance

Books

Book 738: Another Chance with Love (Chances #2) – Blake Allwood

Geoff W

I kept going with Allwood’s books because I wasn’t totally put off by the less-than-stellar copy editing and I had nothing more pressing to read. Plus start a series = finish a series 😀

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this one more than I enjoyed the first book in Allwood’s Chances series, Love by Chance. This is surprising because he veered very close to over-complicating things with the mystery/thriller addition again, but somehow managed to bring it back with some great minor characters who had their own plot lines but really supported the overall plot.

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Books

Book 737: Love by Chance (Chances #1) – Blake Allwood

Geoff W

Since I have ZERO sense of self-control these days as soon as I finished Romantic Renovations I immediately jumped into Allwood’s Chances series, because why not?!

I did a little more digging and Allwood was planning to release a book a month starting in February 2020 with this being the fourth release and the next two in the series released fifth (Another Chance with Love) and sixth (Taking a Chance for Love) in June and July. As far as I can tell he has yet to release the July book so may be falling behind on his schedule or, fingers crossed, he’s going back and getting them better copy edited and proofread (more to come).

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Books

Book 736: Romantic Renovations – Blake Allwood

Geoff W

I stumbled across Blake Allwood on the MM Romance Reader blog with their review of Love by Chance and thought I’d give him a chance (ha!). Allwood isn’t a five-star read for me yet, but there is a lot of potential. I will say though, if he doesn’t hire better developmental and copy editors and proofreaders he’ll never get there for me.

Rather than diving directly into the Chances series that MM Romance Reader reviewed I thought I’d start with a stand-alone. It didn’t hurt that this one was set on a home renovation show.

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ARC, Books

Book 734: It’s a Steal – Arden O’Keefe

Geoff W

This is not a good book. It is not well written (story or characters) and it is definitely not well edited (any type, but especially copy or developmental). The shocking part, to me at least, is that I have to assume the author has paid an editor (listed in the front matter) AND a promotional group (Gay Romance Reviews) to produce this “final copy” version and I’m still writing this scathing commentary on it.*

If I were the author and read what I’m about to write, I’d demand my money back from the editor and politely ask the promotion company to pause all promotions while I paid someone else to re-edit it. But take my response for what it’s worth, the other Goodreads reviews have all rated it 3-5 stars and complemented the “cute story”.

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Books

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

Geoff W

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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