Books

Book 690: Off Base (Out of Uniform #1) – Annabeth Albert

Give me a minute to catch my breath . . . haahaa. No, seriously though. I didn’t read this through in one sitting, but I may as well have.

I’ve read two books with characters that would probably be in the Out of Uniform series by Annabeth Albert, Save the Date (with Wendy Qualls) and Connection Error. Both were great reads, but this one cranks it up. I’m not sure if it’s the sheer confidence of Pike, a just starting out college professor, or the hesitation and confusion of closeted virginal Navy Seal Zack.

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Book 689: The Play of His Life – Amy Aislin

I honestly didn’t plan for April to be full of MM Romance novels, but that’s how the world works. Plus in this new world of coronavirus stay-at-homeness they’re the only thing I want to read. So in the words of Jonathan Van Ness, buckle up queen (YouTube video; watch the first 10-15 seconds) there are more to come after this, thanks to the library coming through on a few that have been on hold.

I read this as part of the Gay Romance Reviews publicity push for The Play of His Life‘s re-release later this month. I was intrigued when it landed in my inbox because I love second chance romances (oh hey Persuasion), and let’s face it MM romance sports stories are usually pretty hot and heavy. I did have some hesitations about accepting it because it is self-published, but it did come from a publicist rather than direct from the author so someone had to vet it at some point, so I figured why not?

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Book 686: Enter the Aardvark – Jessica Anthony

This was a weird ass novel. I should’ve known it by the title when I requested it from NetGalley, but it was even weirder than I expected.* I’m sure I requested it because the blurb mentioned the modern protagonist was in deep denial about his sexuality, but that’s all I remember the rest was a weird wonderful surprise as I read it.

This is another dual narrative novel, authors really love those lately, with one portion taking place in modern America and the other taking place in the late 19th century England, and what ties the two together is a preserved Aardvark that arrives/is created at the most inconvenient time.

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Books

Book 685: A Gay Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – Bert Shrader

This has been sitting on my shelf for almost three years ever since I read the Rolling Stones’ article “How One Publisher is Rescuing 1970s Gay Porn Paperbacks”. I finally got around to this as I was looking at the shorter books already on my shelves. And after the emotional drain that was Ethan Frome I thought I should try and get a little further away and a smutty gay porn novel from the 1960s checked all the boxes plus some.

Let’s just say, not a lot has changed in erotica novels. I mean sure the large portion of MM romance/erotica novels are now written by women, but the few that I know for a fact were written by men are pretty damn similar to this one. The big things that have changed is that in general the toxic masculinity and hetero-toxicity in general seem to have been tone down in the more recent books and there are some overt racist scenes and comments sprinkled throughout the novel that were horrible.

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Book 681: Lab Partners – Mora Montgomery

What this books needs more than anything, is a good editor: there were continuity errors, there were issues with over description and there were issues with dialogue. And the saddest part is the story and characters were solid enough, but the editing really let it down. [Some of it may have been fixed in the final version of the book, but if it were me I would not have released this to reviewers with these types of errors.]

I requested a copy of this book from NetGalley based on the blurb and the cover.* I mean cute cover, adorable blurb about high school first romance, who wouldn’t want to read it right?

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