Books

Book 725: Squared Away (Out of Uniform #5) – Annabeth Albert

You didn’t really think I was going to go more than five books without reading an Annabeth Albert book, did you? Okay noob. (I’ve got jokes.) I actually got this from the library (digitally of course) before I started the last two books, but since those were both ARCs with early July publish dates I wanted to make sure I got to them first and this was my reward for finishing them.

This is the fifth installment in Albert’s Out of Uniform series and features Isaiah (Ike) who made his first cameos in At Attention (as a potential distracting love interest) and On Point (as a contentious one-night stand) and Mark/”Wizard”, yet another super-hot navy seal with all sorts of hang ups.

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Books

Book 720: Camp – L.C. Rosen

So, this is apparently the LGBTQ+ young adult book darling of summer 2020, or at least that’s what it feels like. I’ve seen it on so many lists, numerous bloggers/instagrammers I follow have already read it and sung its praises, and I know it’s already been optioned for a film.

Honestly, though I don’t get it. It was good but it wasn’t that good, even if it is all about fighting toxic masculinity. It reminded me a lot of the early 2000s teen RomComs, specifically She’s All That and Never Been Kissed. AND there are so many other books that have similar strains of finding your happily ever after by pretending to be someone you’re not and everyone overcoming the shock factor to just say omg yes, we’re in love. My response is of course rather vague so as not to spoil too much of anything if you decide you want to read it.

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Books

Book 719: Wheels Up (Out of Uniform #4) – Annabeth Albert

I’m not sure if this is Albert’s first foray into kink, but honestly it was a little underwhelming on the kink front. The only reason I mention this and start my review with it is I feel like there was a warning or a mention of it in the front matter and I was like oh this should be interesting.

Maybe I’ve just read works with a lot more kink in them, even though it’s not my usual fare, but this one just seemed so tame. Either way, Albert continues to bring beautifully written character driven romances to my world, tugging at my heart strings will making me blush constantly.

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ARC, Books

Book 703: The Names We Take – Trace Kerr

By no actual planning on my part I’m posting this on the release date of The Names We Take, which never happens. To be completely honest, the publisher sent this to me months ago and I just now got around to reading it, but hey things work out for a reason.* I liked the idea of the publisher, Ooligan Press, which is a student run press at Portland State University that concentrates on Pacific Northwest Writers and because the blurb was interesting and they’d clearly spent some time perusing my blog I accepted the galley.

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Books

Book 685: A Gay Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – Bert Shrader

This has been sitting on my shelf for almost three years ever since I read the Rolling Stones’ article “How One Publisher is Rescuing 1970s Gay Porn Paperbacks”. I finally got around to this as I was looking at the shorter books already on my shelves. And after the emotional drain that was Ethan Frome I thought I should try and get a little further away and a smutty gay porn novel from the 1960s checked all the boxes plus some.

Let’s just say, not a lot has changed in erotica novels. I mean sure the large portion of MM romance/erotica novels are now written by women, but the few that I know for a fact were written by men are pretty damn similar to this one. The big things that have changed is that in general the toxic masculinity and hetero-toxicity in general seem to have been tone down in the more recent books and there are some overt racist scenes and comments sprinkled throughout the novel that were horrible.

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