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Book 936: Café con Lychee – Emery Lee

What another wonderful juxtaposition from Dream Boy with so much light and happiness and just pure wholesome queer joy, I’ve really been putting myself through an emotional rollercoaster these last couple of weeks. Seriously, emotional whiplash is not fun and thankfully I can work from home where tearing up on my lunch break is totally acceptable.

I requested a copy of Café con Lychee because 1) I love lychee, like seriously on everything and lychee candy is the best—I say “LIE-chee” not “LEE-chee”; 2) to BIPOC protagonists which YA Lit is a lot better about than MM Romance; and 3) New England.*

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Book 935: Dream Boy – Jim Grimsley

Bare with me for a moment as I go on a tangent. Recently, I’ve been obsessed with re-watching the Netflix adaptation of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series and I  couldn’t realize why other than it’s a fantastic series and adaptation, but then I read this book and it all clicked into place: queer joy.

Growing up in the 1990s/early-2000s I’d say 85%+ of all depictions of LGBT characters were tragic or left to interpretation and this is a prime example of that. Having the opportunity to watch Charlie and Nick in Heartstopper as they discover happiness and joy, even with setbacks, mental health issues, and added TV drama, is just such a wonderful feeling of relief and joy that I float along every time I watch it or listen to the soundtrack or think about it. And this is in stark contrast to Roy and Nathan, the protagonists of Grimsley’s second foray into the novel.

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Book 929: Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li

I’m punching myself for not reading this book earlier AND for goofing off (aka knitting and Minecrafting) while reading it instead of blazing through it as it deserved. I’ve been sitting on this since November of LAST YEAR when someone in marketing at the publisher reached out with it.* I forced myself to wait until late March/early April to read it because I had a feeling I would really enjoy it and that barely covers my enthusiasm for it.

The premise was fascinating to me even if I was a bit wary of the Boston setting (I have bad experience with books being set where I live/have lived), but international art theft by college students, critiques on colonialism, BIPOC author, and characters, discussion of diaspora, ummm obviously I was going to say yes to it. I found out while reading the acknowledgments, that this has already been optioned by Netflix and I cannot tell you how much I’m ready for that!

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Book 925: Hot Wings (The Hot Cannolis #2) – Eli Easton & Tara Lain

After thoroughly enjoying Hot Seat I knew I would say yes to this one the second it landed in my inbox, and I did.*

And coming out of Hot Seat I knew one of the protagonists would be the hotshot pilot, Dell, mentioned toward the end of that book, but I didn’t know who the Canali would be. My money was on Tito, but that was way off the mark (he’s totally getting his book I still think that and after reading this so is Uncle Ricky – totally see a May/December romance coming our way).

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Book 923: Lucky Match (Hearts for Hire #1) – Raquel Riley

Nope. Unfortunately, that’s the bulk of my response if you want to skip the overall review. When this landed in my inbox I said yes and had such high expectations because the cover looks well done and the premise was a great idea.* Unfortunately, the execution was lackluster at best.

Lucky Match is the tale of Lucky McGuire, a cocky student who started a dating service near his college campus, and Hayes Brantley, his recently divorced professor who’s decided to lean into his bisexuality and date a man.

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