Tag: LGBT

ARC, Books, Quotes

Book 302: Stone Mattress – Margaret Atwood

Geoff W

Atwood is an incredible writer and story teller and there’s really not much more that needs to be said, so when I saw her newest collection of short stories I knew I had to request it! I received a copy from the publisher, in return for my honest opinion:

Spectactular.

That would be a little cruel, to leave it just at that even though it would still describe it perfectly. Below, you’ll find a one-to-two sentence review of each of the nine tales and a single quote from each.

On a different note, if you haven’t heard Margaret Atwood is the first author of the future library! This is a project where authors are asked to write a work and it won’t be read for 100 years. This makes me both incredibly happy, as she writes such fantastic speculative/near future fiction, but also sad that I won’t be able to read it! It’s a fascinating project and I could go into it in detail, but really you should just read about The Future Library at The Guardian.

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ARC, Books

Book 296: Confessions from a Coffee Shop – T. B. Markinson

Geoff W

And she’s back! Now don’t get me wrong, Markinson (TBM)’s last novel, Marionette, wasn’t bad and was excellently written, it just wasn’t for me. However, Confessions from a Coffee Shop harkens back to A Woman Lost in humor and fun! I flew through this and couldn’t help but smile the entire time I read this novel. I received a copy from the author and received no compensation for my response. If this review sounds at ALL interesting you should request a preview copy from her here.

I said above that TBM is back and the reason I say that is because she’s return to what she knows and what I can assume is a comfort zone for her. I don’t fault her one bit for stretching her writing muscles in her second novel, but I’m so glad she returned to her strengths!

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ARC, Books

Book 281: Poster Boy (Theta Alpha Gamma #5) – Anne Tenino

Geoff W

I think this is by far my favorite of the Theta Alpha Gamma series by Anne Tenino and it’s definitely one of the best written of the series. I of course requested a copy from the publisher, Riptide Publishing as soon as I found out there was a new release in the series. It didn’t hurt that the cover had the cutest of all the guys in the series so far. Prepare yourself, a Goodreads observation/rant is about to follow, if you want to just read about the book and not my thoughts on female M/M romance writers and readers skip the next two paragraphs.

When I put in my star rating on Goodreads, I noticed that the overwhelming majority of the first page were female readers. I decided to look at the first 100, but there were only 60 written reviews, which I ignored for their general idiocy, and of those 52 of them were female. This really isn’t that shocking, as I’ve mentioned it before and I remember reading about it while studying for my Gender Studies degree, but I’m starting to find it really interesting which ones I like and which ones the female readers like. It’s almost always opposite and I’m not sure what that says about me, the females or about the writer.

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ARC, Books

Book 279: It’s Complicated (Tucker Springs #7) – L. A. Witt

Geoff W

I love it when authors start to stretch their writing muscles and it works out well for them. I’ve read quite a four books by Witt at this point, all within this series, and each one feels better written and more fleshed out which is GREAT! And as with After the Fall Witt keeps this series going wonderfully. I once again received a copy of this book from Riptide Publishing (Thanks!) and received no compensation in response for my honest opinion, so read on!

I’ll get the minor negative out-of-the-way first and then go on to gushing about the greatness of the book. The only problem I had with It’s Complicated was that I struggled because Witt’s writing convinced me multiple times that this was a sequel to another story, that I should’ve known Brad and Jeff’s story.

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