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Book 981: Never Been Kissed (Boy Meets Boy #1) – Timothy Janovsky

In all honesty, I had no intention of reading this. I didn’t even know it existed, but when I stumbled across You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Janovsky, and realized it was a series (that’s not connected as far as I’m aware) and the library had this one I grabbed it too.

And OMG am I glad I did.

I was a little annoyed at first as this is a bit of a copycat of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, but queerer and with a lot more humor (or at least my taste in humor). Wren sends emails to his four almost first kisses after a night out and the chaos ensues. After I got over that I was beyond invested because Janovsky was hilarious.

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Book 971: The Christmas Leap (Festive Fakes #2) – Keira Andrews

We all knew this was coming . . . the MM Holiday Romance extravaganza. Honestly, I thought it’d be later but realizing just how little reading time I have these days and how quickly I got through these when they started to arrive on Gay Romance Reviews of course I started looking.*

I grabbed this one because it’s set in the same universe as Andrews’ The Christmas Deal that I read last year and thoroughly enjoyed. We get a brief check-in with Seth and Logan who offer some savvy advice to Will as he’s figuring stuff out because he works with them and they encourage the fake boyfriend caper.

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Book 950: Kaleidoscope – Cecily Wong

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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Updates

June Recap 2022

What a month! It started with us getting Covid from our trip to Texas (not bad cases, just knocked us out for a few days), was immediately followed by my graduate school program starting in the middle of makeup events at work from the last two years, with a birthday trip for Tim (thankfully drivable this year to Upstate NY), and the busiest time of the year at work in general for me (end of the fiscal year).

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Book 944: The Kingdom of Sand – Andrew Holleran

I wanted to like this book so much like really wanted to, because Holleran is one of those early LGBT authors whose work has stood the test of time for decades. And that’s why I requested a copy from NetGalley.*

What I didn’t expect was how similar to Mrs. Dalloway and A Single Man this would be. I think that bodes well for the longevity of the novel, but unfortunately, for me, it wasn’t the time or place to read it to truly appreciate or enjoy it. While there were some incredibly beautiful passages throughout, I struggled to get into the book and (for the most part) identify with the nameless narrator.

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