Books

Book 839: Playing the Palace – Paul Rudnick

Two in a row that I really wanted to like more than I did. After devouring Red, White & Royal Blue last year and reading various other royal MM Romance novels here and there of course I was going to seek this one out when I heard about it.

The story wasn’t bad, it was well written and would adapt to a movie easily, but where I really struggled was the characters and their voices. I’m not surprised to see it on a list with books like Jay’s Gay Agenda and Yes, Daddy, others which I felt were written more to be adapted for screens than as books themselves. (And full disclosure this did not stop me from adding The Sky Blues to my hold list at the library which is on the same list :-D)

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ARC, Books

Book 811: Yes, Daddy – Jonathan Parks-Ramage

This is a dark ass book and a perfect example of what happens when I read too many MM Romances. I’m guessing I read the first part of the synopsis and either didn’t finish or blocked out the last portion when/after I requested a review copy.*

Don’t get me wrong, the fact that it’s dark definitely doesn’t take away from it being a good book, I just had no idea that it got dark and then even darker before starting to get a little lighter at the end. I did not like the protagonist, Jonah, and I do not think he redeemed himself by the end (and that is in no way victim blaming), he just wasn’t likeable.

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Books

Book 799: Teddy Spenser Isn’t Looking for Love – Kim Fielding

Some days those emails from Amazon with the deal of the day books really get it right 😀 In general I avoid buying MM romance novels because I read them so fast I don’t feel like I get my money’s worth when really, I absolutely do. I just know that if I bought everyone I wanted I’d be broke all the time. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to support my local library by checking them out. This time though I was too impatient!

I grabbed a copy of this earlier in the month with no intentions of reading it and yet here I am. I needed some padding for another galley and this was right there on my Kindle front page, what else was I supposed to do?

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Books

Book 791: Fall Through Spring (Winter Ball #3) – Amy Lane

And this just goes to show what happens when you have to eat your words. At the end of my review for Summer Lessons, I said I wasn’t sure Dane and Clay needed their own story and Lane proved me wrong for the most part.

I still wonder how all of this happened when Mason and Terry were getting together, but I guess Dane did disappear for large swaths of the books. The one scene that really gets me though was when Skip called Clay out during a heart-to-heart when they were eating lunch with Mason. Clearly things were a lot further along at that point than it appeared in book two!

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Books

Book 789: Summer Lessons (Winter Ball #2) – Amy Lane

After finishing Wolf Hall, I knew I was going to need a bit of a breather and where else to turn but the next book in a romance series I’d already started and the library just happened to have?

I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first one, it had a lot more humor, but it also brought to light a few more things about Lane’s writing setting that I’m not so sure I’m a fan of. There’s just one aspect of these books that has forced me out of the story at key plot points and that is NEVER a good sign.

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