Books

Book 741: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong

I have no idea where this book came from. I was 100% certain it was a recommendation by Kat Chow on the NPR podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, but I can’t find a reference to it anywhere. I did, however, find this wonderful story (profile?) in The Atlantic written by Kat about spending an afternoon with Vuong, who happened to be a few years ahead of her in high school.

No matter where it came from I’ve been trailing this book from the BPL for months. I was on hold for a long time and then it finally came available at the same time they offered the ability to delay claiming the book, so I delayed for weeks. I knew I needed to be in the right mindset to read it, but I couldn’t remember why. Well, I finally felt ready to read it and I’m SO glad I waited.

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Books

Book 738: Another Chance with Love (Chances #2) – Blake Allwood

I kept going with Allwood’s books because I wasn’t totally put off by the less-than-stellar copy editing and I had nothing more pressing to read. Plus start a series = finish a series 😀

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this one more than I enjoyed the first book in Allwood’s Chances series, Love by Chance. This is surprising because he veered very close to over-complicating things with the mystery/thriller addition again, but somehow managed to bring it back with some great minor characters who had their own plot lines but really supported the overall plot.

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Books

Book 737: Love by Chance (Chances #1) – Blake Allwood

Since I have ZERO sense of self-control these days as soon as I finished Romantic Renovations I immediately jumped into Allwood’s Chances series, because why not?!

I did a little more digging and Allwood was planning to release a book a month starting in February 2020 with this being the fourth release and the next two in the series released fifth (Another Chance with Love) and sixth (Taking a Chance for Love) in June and July. As far as I can tell he has yet to release the July book so may be falling behind on his schedule or, fingers crossed, he’s going back and getting them better copy edited and proofread (more to come).

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Books

Book 736: Romantic Renovations – Blake Allwood

I stumbled across Blake Allwood on the MM Romance Reader blog with their review of Love by Chance and thought I’d give him a chance (ha!). Allwood isn’t a five-star read for me yet, but there is a lot of potential. I will say though, if he doesn’t hire better developmental and copy editors and proofreaders he’ll never get there for me.

Rather than diving directly into the Chances series that MM Romance Reader reviewed I thought I’d start with a stand-alone. It didn’t hurt that this one was set on a home renovation show.

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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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