Books

Book 975: A Gift-Wrapped Holiday (Lighthouse Bay #4) – Amy Aislin

Book cover of "A Gift-Wrapped Holiday" with Amazon Affiliate linkI requested a copy of this from Gay Romance Reviews because it’s Maine and I remembered enjoying the couple of books I read by Amy Aislin.*

This is the story of Luca who fled the west coast after his family shot down his idea to make their wrapping paper company more eco-friendly and environmentally conscious to open his own holiday wrapping store, and Mal, a single dad and graphic designer who recently moved back to his home town to be closer to family.

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Books

Book 956: The Book of Elis – Lou Skelton

Book cover of "The Book of Elis" with Amazon Affiliate linkWho doesn’t love a childhood friendship that turns into a second-chance romance after one has moved countries away and they reconnect later in life? I know I do, so that’s why when this one landed in my inbox I requested a copy.*

The Book of Elis is the story of Ieuan and Elis who were inseparable as kids, but Elis and his family move from a small village in Wales to bustling Brisbane, Australia. When Elis and Ieuan are in university their families decide to take a joint vacation to Tenerife in Spain and the story goes from there.

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Books

Book 950: Kaleidoscope – Cecily Wong

Book cover of When someone from the publisher reached out about Kaleidoscope, this line caught me: “This book is heart-wrenching and hopeful and the characters truly shine on the page. It’s one of those books where I wish I could read it again for the first time all over again. And I’m so happy that you get to.”

And I downloaded a copy almost immediately, but of course sat on it for a few months, allowing me to forget about the blurb and the subject and go into this completely blind.*  This approach, if you’ve followed me for a while, sometimes works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it sort of worked mostly because the intro was a little abrupt and different from the rest of the story, but that’s on me, not the author.

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Books

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

Book cover of "Just by Looking at Him" with Amazon Affiliate linkIf 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). 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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Books

Book 901: More Happy Than Not – Adam Silvera

Book cover of "More Happy Than Not" with Amazon Affiliate linkSo I have talked about gut punches when reading books before, but Silvera took it to a different level with this one—and this was his freakin’ debut novel!

I’ve known about Silvera for some time and even read his co-authored What If It’s Us? with Becky Albertalli, but this is the first time I’ve sought out his work. I came across it on a list of must-reads and so grabbed it when I saw it was available at my library.

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