Books

Book 621: Knit Tight (Portland Heat #4) – Annabeth Albert

And now I’m FINALLY to the book that started this binge and it was worth the wait. I was going to use “weight” for yarn weight but thought it might work so you get this awkward follow up.

Albert takes her characters even further away from your standard white male could be mistaken for straight romcom lead. We have Brady, the bisexual barista taking care of his four siblings after his parents untimely deaths, and Ev, the yarn store owner’s dedicated nephew who has come back to Portland because she’s dying of cancer who was originally sent from his home in Turkey because he was caught making out with a male friend.

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Books

Book 620: Delivered Fast (Portland Heat #3) – Annabeth Albert

Flew through this one like the first two, basically reading one a day (on my commute to/from work) and maybe 20-30 minutes before bed. I started to see some of Albert’s tropes that she depends on/works into every story, but I’ll get to that.

Albert continues to diversify her characters and their relationships. In this novel we have Chris, the aging disgruntled restaurateur (the same restaurant that the others visit or supply bread for), and Lance, the young undergrad delivery boy from Vic’s bakery and the development of their relationship. It’s not a crazy amount of age difference (12 years), but Chris has a major hang up on it.

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Books

Book 619: Baked Fresh (Portland Heat #2) – Annabeth Albert

In book two of Annabeth Albert’s Portland Heat series we meet Vic, a baker, and Robin, a trust fund kid with a big heart. Their road to romance is of course paved with misunderstandings, stubborn personalities, and steamy sex scenes. That’s all good romances right?

Vic and Robin meet at the local homeless shelter that caters to addicts and teens. We find out midway through the story that Robin got his fresh start/second chance thanks to the shelter and has very high expectations for what he can do there to help others going through similar experiences. This novel wasn’t as specifically diverse as Served Hot or Knit Tight (they’re both white men as far as I can read), but it does have characters that I’ve never read before.

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Books

Book 618: Served Hot (Portland Heat #1) – Annabeth Albert

After I finished reading The Book on Rental Property Investing, I knew I wanted to read something lighter and more fun before I jumped into another nonfiction work. That story is a tangent so skip to the end if you want to read about how I ended up on this series (damn overly available libraries :-D).

Now, as I’m writing this six days after I read this and four books into the series, I have a feeling this summer is going to be full of smutty romance novels. I’d apologize in advance, but I’m not sharing the sexy bits (mostly) and well we all need a mental break sometimes. Plus, they’re just so quick and entertaining!

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Books

Book 607: Worth Searching For (Heart of the South #2) – Wendy Qualls

I grabbed this, along with eight other romance novels Qualls wrote or co-wrote, when Amazon was having a sale in February. I enjoyed Worth Waiting For and figured why not. They’re usually pretty short, under 200 pages, and engaging enough to read pretty quickly, especially when laying in a lounge chair on a beach/boat.

Like most romance novels the connection between the two is tangential and almost a friend-of-a-friend connection. It doesn’t really bother me, except when I get 3-4 books into a longer series and then I stop and question every new minor character introduction because I’m like ohhhh is that the next one, or ohhhh is it this new person?

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