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Book 834: Blackout – Marco Carocari

In general, I don’t read a lot of mysteries or thrillers, even though I really should (see next paragraph). However, when the publicist reached out about this one with a gay protagonist I thought sure why not give it ago.*

Although there were definitely some issues with this book, pretty sure the authors native language isn’t English, for the most part I enjoyed it. And if my reaction to the two big reveals in the novel are anything to go by I really should read mysteries/thrillers more often. The first WTF moment happened and I had to take a few minutes to collect myself. I mean it was obvious it was coming looking back, but I got caught up in the story and didn’t pay attention to the clues or hints. And then the second one, I was just pissed about.

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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 766: A Guy for Christmas – K.C. Wells

A Guy for Christmas is #7 in my MM Holiday Romance binge and I grabbed it because I read a couple by Wells earlier in the year that I enjoyed (My Fair Brady and The Senator’s Secret) and a couple I was sort of meh on (Under the Covers and Out of the Shadows).

This cover reminds me so much of the Tucker Springs books I read back when I first started the blog. Seriously, go check out a few of the covers. I mean I know the covers don’t really vary that widely across MM romance novels, but it’s kind of eerie how similar this is to those. I think it’s the color of the fade outs.

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Book 763: Mistletoe in the Marigny (Five Points Stories #3) – Kyle Baxter

As promised I am 100% leaning into the MM Christmas Romances. I would say I’m going to limit myself to 12 to parallel the days of Christmas (this is the 4th of six I’ve already read), but who knows what is going to happen. I have now found so many I want to read and every time I find one I truly enjoy I add the author to my list of authors to look into for other non-holiday books.

I was of course going to read this one after finishing The Problem with Mistletoe and Bring Me Edelweiss and thoroughly enjoying them. And, when you add in that in the front matter Baxter explicitly states the reason he wrote these was because there were no LGBTQ+ holiday romance movies when he was growing up, I am here for it.

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Book 759: The Problem with Mistletoe (Five Points Stories #1) – Kyle Baxter

I gave ample warning more were coming 😀

I stumbled across this one after finding this Goodreads list of MM Holiday Romances and so you know there is no going back at this point.

I started with this series (because of course it is) since it had the cute illustrated covers I’ve come to appreciate as I’ve read more mm romances this year. There’s something about being able to fill in your own details when the covers are illustrated. I mean sure, the chiseled abs are nice but let’s at least get some variety going!

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