Books

Book 750: Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius the Great #1) – Adib Khorram

As I mentioned in my monthly recap I discovered this when Sarah from Sarah Reads Too Much sat on an awards committee of some sort and they really liked this one (can’t remember if it won or not). I added it to my list then, but when I saw her talk about the sequel I knew I needed to bring it forward on my list.

I thoroughly enjoyed my very slow read of this. I probably wouldn’t have read it this slow, but life got in the way. I read a chapter or two at a time over two-ish weeks and it allowed me to luxuriate in Khorram’s rich descriptions and characters.

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Books

Book 739: Solitaire – Alice Oseman

I honestly have no clue how to respond to this one. I enjoyed it for the few glimpses I got of Charlie and Nick and am now both looking forward to and dreading the next two volumes of Heartstopper because of knowing some of their future. But, it was a weird book in that it is very much a tribute to angsty teenage-ness.

I like to think that I was an angsty teenager, but really, I was a toe-the-line don’t draw attention to yourself closeted teenager who was boring as hell. I’m sure I had a touch of anxiety, I always have, but I never let it take over my life so I couldn’t really relate to Tori losing all control over everything to her depression or Charlie to whatever he faces (it wasn’t explicit).

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Books

Book 712: Action (Murmur Inc. #2) – Quinn Anderson

This woman knows how to write a MM romance, or at least the sex scenes. I wasn’t so sure after reading Hotline which suffered from over description and somewhat stilted (non-sex) dialogue, but between that first book and this one Anderson vastly improved in my opinion.

Action takes us back to Murmur, Inc., but instead of the phone sex operators, we’re now on the porn side of the business. The bad ass sassy Collette is still in charge and still demanding the most/best from her employees. We have Pete, an adorkable power bottom in the porn star closet who meets Kyle, a daring rising porn star, and when they meet on set fireworks ensue.

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Books

Book 705: The Weight of It All – N.R.Walker

For our anniversary Tim got me a new Kindle Oasis (so freakin’ fancy) and a Kindle Unlimited membership. I’d avoided the unlimited membership because of the rumors that it’s flooded with self-published works and knock off copies of popular works, but I am definitely going to take advantage of it and see if I can find out if it’s worth the rather steep price when I can get 95% of what I want from my local library.

My first stop, was of course MM romances because why not? I liked the premise of this one, a larger guy dumped because he gained weight and become complacent in his relationship slowly finding himself and falling for his hell-a hot trainer who has his own backstory. What I didn’t realize was that I had previously read a book by N.R. Walker, Upside Down, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

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Books

Book 581: The Jane Austen Book Club – Karen Joy Fowler

The last time I read this a good friend loaned it to me and we were still living in the dorms in undergrad! (So a really long time ago.) I don’t even know where this copy came from that I picked up, but it was a pleasure to revisit. I can’t believe it’s been FOUR YEARS basically since my friends and I did our own Jane Austen Book Club.

Re-reading this was like visiting an old friend. They made a pretty true-to-the-book film adaptation in 2007 (IMDb link) that makes it feel like it hasn’t been almost a decade-and-a-half since I last read this.

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