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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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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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 691: The Sealed Letter – Emma Donoghue

A few months ago I went through my bookshelves and made a couple of piles of books. The only qualifications were that they had to be on my shelves for a while (this has been on my shelves since April 2014) and that they probably be a quick read. This one falls somewhere in the middle of the pack of Donoghue’s books that I’ve read. It’s definitely not as good as Room or Slammerkin, but I do think it’s a little better than Hood, mostly because Donoghue really excels at historical fiction.

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