Books

Book 937: Burn Rate – Andy Dunn

Book cover of "Burn Rate" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen someone in the marketing department at the publisher reached out about this because I’d positively reviewed David Chang’s Eat a Peach, I had to take a few minutes to really think if I wanted to go back into this world.*

In Chang’s book, his mental health struggles are peripheral, but in Dunn’s Burn Rate, he centers them. I spent quite a bit of time reading about bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and other mental health issues before my mom died a few years ago to try and understand what she was going through and what my sister and I were experiencing. And that REALLY hit home when the first quote Dunn uses in his book is a quote from Kay Redfield Jamison who wrote THE book (An Unquiet Mind) about brains and bipolar/manic depression/brains in general.

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Books

Book 936: Café con Lychee – Emery Lee

Book cover of "Café con Lychee" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhat another wonderful juxtaposition from Dream Boy with so much light and happiness and just pure wholesome queer joy, I’ve really been putting myself through an emotional rollercoaster these last couple of weeks. Seriously, emotional whiplash is not fun and thankfully I can work from home where tearing up on my lunch break is totally acceptable.

I requested a copy of Café con Lychee because 1) I love lychee, like seriously on everything and lychee candy is the best—I say “LIE-chee” not “LEE-chee”; 2) to BIPOC protagonists which YA Lit is a lot better about than MM Romance; and 3) New England.*

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Books

Book 931: Book Boyfriend – Kris Ripper

Book cover of "Book Boyfriend" with Amazon Affiliate linkAfter this landed in my inbox as part of a larger round-up of upcoming releases by Carina/Harlequin releases I jumped to request it.* Who doesn’t want to read a book about books and falling in love around the publication of a book?! It’s basically catnip for book bloggers 😀

Unfortunately, the premise was better in my head than the execution in reality. That’s not saying Ripper didn’t have two wonderful characters and a decent story, it just was a struggle to get into and stay engaged with until the very end.

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Books

Book 929: Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li

Book cover of "Portrait of a Thief" with Amazon Affiliate linkI’m punching myself for not reading this book earlier AND for goofing off (aka knitting and Minecrafting) while reading it instead of blazing through it as it deserved. I’ve been sitting on this since November of LAST YEAR when someone in marketing at the publisher reached out with it.* I forced myself to wait until late March/early April to read it because I had a feeling I would really enjoy it and that barely covers my enthusiasm for it.

The premise was fascinating to me even if I was a bit wary of the Boston setting (I have bad experience with books being set where I live/have lived), but international art theft by college students, critiques on colonialism, BIPOC author, and characters, discussion of diaspora, ummm obviously I was going to say yes to it. I found out while reading the acknowledgments, that this has already been optioned by Netflix and I cannot tell you how much I’m ready for that!

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Books

Book 928: Going Public (Jade Capital #2) – Hudson Lin

Book cover of "Going Public" with Amazon Affiliate linkI requested an ARC of this one from the publisher after I saw it in their upcoming titles email that I get monthly.* The fact that there was not just one non-white man on the cover of this MM Romance novel, but TWO of them was a definite ‘okay let’s give this Hudson Lin person a try.’

Totally on me, but I also thought it was written by a man (damn you pseudonyms!), but that didn’t change my opinion or reading of the novel, I was just excited that there were BIPOC protagonists AND they were on the cover. Add in that I don’t think I’ve read many with Asian protagonists and it caught my attention.

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