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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 952: My Love Mix-Up! (Vol. 1) – Wataru Hinekure & Aruko

I ended up with this one from the library after seeing My Love Mix-Up! (Vol. 4) on NetGalley. It wasn’t an immediate OMG I must read these, but more of an awww that looks cute, I haven’t read a good manga in a while I wonder what it’s about. And then when I found out it was a comedy of errors, so I checked to see if my local library had it, they did and I requested it.

Thankfully, it became available in between two books and I could do a slight schedule modification to squeeze it in and not miss any galley deadlines. We’ll see if the next volume does (my library does have through volume 4!).

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Book 948: Patricia Wants to Cuddle – Samantha Allen

What a wonderfully weird novel. When this landed in my inbox from the publisher I first thought WTF is that because the cover art screams pulp fiction and as much as I find those hilarious I’m not usually drawn to them. However, I’d decided I wanted to expand my LGBT novel repertoire, and knowing this featured lesbian/bisexual female protagonists I said sure why not.*

Billed as a satire of The BachelorPatricia Wants to Cuddle takes place in the final two weeks of The Catch‘s season with four female finalists and the catch going to the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington state. While it is that, it’s also a final girl thriller novel with murder and mystery and urban legends aplenty to keep the reader engaged.

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Book 946: Just by Looking at Him – Ryan O’Connell

If I’m 100% honest I first was drawn to this book because of the cover art, a cropped version of Henry Scott Tuke’s The Critics (Wikiart link). Tuke does water like no one else and they pumped up the blues and greens on the cover.

Then when you add the title of the painting to what the main character does for a living: mind blown. So THEN I realized this was the same Ryan O’Connell who created, wrote, and starred in Special on Netflix, and of course, I requested a copy.*

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