Books

Book 853: Game Changer (Game Changers #1) – Rachel Reid

Now THIS is a hockey novel. Everything the last one I read (Keeping Hope) did wrong, this one did right (especially the epilogues!). And to make it even better, this was kind of like the adult version of Ukazu’s Check, Please! series, with quite a few parallels that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Just like It Takes Two to Tumble, I found this one because Annabeth Albert (always, yes) highly recommended the newest release from Reid’s Game Changers series, Role Model, so of COURSE I was going to read it, because if Albert loves it, it is 100% worth checking out.

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Book 838: Keeping Hope – Alexandria Redding

We all know I loved Ngozi’s Check, Please! series and am a sucker for MM Sports Romances. So, this one had a lot to live up to and even though I had some concerns about the cover art (seems slapped together and so meh) I gave Redding the benefit of the doubt and decided to give it a go when it appeared in my inbox.*

Overall, the book was just meh (sort of like the cover). There was a lot of potential and Redding clearly has a lot of ideas, but she could use an editor (or a stronger one). So much of the book was bogged down in social issues, which I am here for every day of the week—bullying, racial inequity/police profiling, homelessness, and mental health awareness absolutely need more representation—but not at the expense of the story. In reading this one so soon after Legendborn and seeing how well Deonn wrote about injustice and had the characters learn/grow from it, I was let down.

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Book 831: Center Court (Order of Play #1) – Brooke Edwards

This book is a love letter to tennis and it was a gushing, effusive, adoring love letter.

When the review request appeared in my inbox I wasn’t sure about reading it, but it’d been a while since I’d read a MM Sports Romance and we were gearing up for vacation so I thought why not?*

Center Court is a split narrative work between Soren, the up-and-coming young tennis star who is poised to become a legend, and Elias, a fellow tennis player who has stayed on his heels and in the pack of the middle generation for years. There are many other minor characters (including the not-really-evil-but-I’m-still-calling-him-it Mattise) that kind of blend together because between Elias, Soren, and tennis there’s not a lot of room for anything else in this book.

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Book 818: Keeping Kellan (Keeping Him #2) – Amy Aislin

After thoroughly enjoying Keeping Casey, I knew when the next one was released I would jump at it. So, when it came up on Gay Romance Reviews I did.*

This is the story of Kellan, the quiet brooding friend and teammate of Ethan from Keeping Casey, and his childhood crush Brant, a landscape architect in his Canadian childhood hometown. They’ve both been crushing on each other for quite a while, Kellan since he was a pre-teen, and the timing has finally worked out when Brant moves back home to get away from his post-college life.

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Books

Book 817: Better to Believe (Harrison Campus #4) – Andy Gallo

Who doesn’t love a younger brother and best friend fall in love off-limits MM Romance? I didn’t purposefully time it this way, but this one and the next one (Keeping Kellan) both ended up being this trope.

Coury, roommate of Luke (from Better Be True) is on the verge of becoming a professional baseball player, starts spending time with his best friend’s little brother, Liam, fresh out of the dorm because of homophobic abuse and never had a real boyfriend. The close proximity adds fire to the flame Liam has been carrying for Coury since they were young, and helps Coury see Liam not as the little brother that tags a long, but as an attractive sexual being in his own right.

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