Tag: Substance Abuse

ARC, Books

Book 1,031: Speak of the Devil – Rose Wilding

Geoff W

OMFG. I can’t believe I waited as long as I did to read this. I accepted an ARC ages ago from the publisher, but then school and life got in the way and I blew past the publication date.* Then there were so many MM Holiday Romances I just had to read, and this is where we ended up me reading it in January 2024, six months after publication, and then finally getting the review posted almost a year to the date after publication (six months after I read it but back-scheduling). OH, THE SHAME.

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Book 961: Levi’s Love (Maine Men #7) – K.C. Wells

Geoff W

Finally! The culmination of six books and we have every story of the group of friends 😀 Honestly, it wasn’t that long of a wait, but you know I snapped this up the second it appeared in my inbox.*

This final installment of Wells’ Maine Men series gives us the story of the remaining two singles in the group of friends: Levi, the pining virgin abandoned by his mother and raised by Grammy who created a home and a safe space for the band of friends, and Noah, obsessed with trains who thought he was asexual (but ends up demisexual) and was oblivious to Levi’s unrequited love.

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Book 946: Just by Looking at Him – Ryan O’Connell

Geoff W

If I’m 100% honest I first was drawn to this book because of the cover art, a cropped version of Henry Scott Tuke’s The Critics (Wikiart link). Tuke does water like no one else and they pumped up the blues and greens on the cover.

Then when you add the title of the painting to what the main character does for a living: mind blown. So THEN I realized this was the same Ryan O’Connell who created, wrote, and starred in Special on Netflix, and of course, I requested a copy.*

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Books

Book 940: Seb’s Summer (Maine Men #3) – K.C. Wells

Geoff W

As I continue blazing through Wells’ Maine Men series to get ready for Aaron’s Awakening, book six, I’m not really hoping this isn’t a downturn in the series. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t as good as Finn’s Fantasy or Ben’s Boss.

In this book, we have Seb from the core friend group who has had to leave Ogunquit to head further north to Cape Porpoise to help out his injured uncle on his lobster boat. While there he runs into Marcus, an older (mid-30s) copywriter who fled his demons in NYC and is seeking refuge in his family’s vacation house.

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Book 937: Burn Rate – Andy Dunn

Geoff W

When someone in the marketing department at the publisher reached out about this because I’d positively reviewed David Chang’s Eat a Peach, I had to take a few minutes to really think if I wanted to go back into this world.*

In Chang’s book, his mental health struggles are peripheral, but in Dunn’s Burn Rate, he centers them. I spent quite a bit of time reading about bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and other mental health issues before my mom died a few years ago to try and understand what she was going through and what my sister and I were experiencing. And that REALLY hit home when the first quote Dunn uses in his book is a quote from Kay Redfield Jamison who wrote THE book (An Unquiet Mind) about brains and bipolar/manic depression/brains in general.

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