Books

Book 758: Better Not Pout – Annabeth Albert

I grabbed this a few months ago when it went on sale and saved it for the holidays. I had every intention of waiting until December, but Thanksgiving happened and Lifetime/Hallmark movies started showing and I wanted more LGBT+ characters (I know there are a few this year but I haven’t had the chance to see them) and I remembered I had this one already so here we are.

The story starts off slower than many of Albert’s other works, but the characters are just as well written and the plot works for what it is. Nick, a beefy retiring military man, is cornered into volunteering with a local charity and meets Teddy, an over the top do-gooder, and fireworks don’t fly right away, but they slowly build until the grand finale.

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Book 756: Strawberry Kisses – Charlie Novak

Give me a fake boyfriend romance any day of the week, gay, straight, bisexual, anything really, and I’m in. I don’t know why I like them so much, I just do. So, when I saw this come through from Gay Romance Reviews and I needed a filler between two nonfiction books, I requested a copy.*

I won’t lie and tell you it got off to a great start, there was a typo on page one [“Deseeding twenty passion fruit and another ten pomegranates was a pain the ass and had taken a ton of time.” (Chapter One)] and I wasn’t sure about Novak’s voice, but it definitely got better so I’m glad I kept reading.

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Books

Book 754: The Friend Scheme – Cale Dietrich

I’ve honestly stopped keeping track of where I see books. I just add them to a list or request them at the library and then when they come in I read them and spend 10-15 minutes trying to find out where I found them. In essence, I have no clue where I saw this, but thank you to whoever put it on my radar.

If I’m honest, the cover art drew me to the book, I like the graphic identity and the clean lines and with both their eyes closed it just made it that much more pleasing to the eye. You can sort of read the stress in Matt’s posture (right) and Jason kind of looks above it all.

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Book 753: Voices of LGBTQ+ – Lynda Wolters

Uhhh…. A for effort?

I said yes to this one when the publisher reached out with a review copy way back in July (it’s been a long year obviously), because it sounded interesting and was nonfiction.*

I was obviously going to come into it with some bias, as a gay man I’m clearly going to have opinions, but I’m also going to come into it with a lot more education and history knowledge, holding an advanced degree in gender, sexuality, and queer theory. And frankly my thoughts are divided on this book. Did Wolters do a good job of starting a conversation and representing the individuals she interviewed? More or less. If I were judging the book solely on this she would’ve gotten four stars.

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Books

Book 752: Rough Terrain (Out of Uniform #7) – Annabeth Albert

I knew I was going to love Annabeth Albert’s Out of Uniform series when I read Save the Date her military crossover with Wendy Qualls Heart of the South series and boy was I right!

I’m not going to spend this entire post waxing poetic about the series, but suffice to say the entire series was wonderfully written with great characters and engaging storylines. And this was a wonderful finale to the primary stories.

I’m sad that I’m finished, but only a little bit sad as I know I have SIX short stories that feature these characters to read at some distant point in the future.

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