When 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.
After 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 😀
I’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.
I 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.’
Late last year, someone from Harmony Books reached out about Dessert can Save the World by Christina Tosi having seen I read David Chang’s memoirÂ