Tag: University

Books

Book 783: Secret Admirer (Love Notes #1) – D.J. Jamison

Geoff W

I PROMISE I’M READING MORE THAN MM ROMANCE THIS YEAR! Things just happened to work out that I needed to fill a few posts between nonfiction galleys to hit publishing dates so here we are.

I picked this up from Kindle Unlimited back in December when I read Naughty & Nice. At the time I was looking for MM Holiday Romances and was enraptured at the abs on that cover not realizing it was part of a series. Thankfully, they were pretty much standalones!

Secret Admirer features Ace, a super-hot upperclassman intelligent frat boy who is keeping an eye out for his best friend’s kid brother the other protagonist, Benji, a first-year who doesn’t want to be babied by his brother’s best friend and just wants to have fun. Continue reading “Book 783: Secret Admirer (Love Notes #1) – D.J. Jamison” →

Books

Book 782: Love Lessons (Love Lessons #1) – Heidi Cullinan

Geoff W

It’s been quite a while since I read anything by Heidi Cullinan—and this is distinctly different from her contributions to the Tucker Springs universe. I actually lost track of Cullinan after how rude Riptide Publishing was a few years ago because I went out of my way not to read anything by them and ultimately it was my loss. Thankfully, this isn’t published by them and I re-discovered an author I truly enjoyed reading.

I grabbed this one from the library because I forgot I wanted to read Secret Admirer by D.J. Jamison and I needed to read something to align a galley for what I thought was the publication date and failed miserably so you now get to have four back-to-back unplanned MM Romance reviews, oh darn 😀

Continue reading “Book 782: Love Lessons (Love Lessons #1) – Heidi Cullinan” →

Books

Book 770: Eight Nights in December – Keira Andrews

Geoff W

What a lovely little novella. After reading 10 Christmas romances I knew I wanted to find at least one non-Christmas romance for my 12 Days of MM Holiday Romances. And Hanukkah romances were a lot easier to find than Kwanza or Yule or anything else—so here we go!

Eight Nights in December is the story of Lucas, first year student whose dad recently passed away, and Nate, Lucas’s randomly assigned Senior roommate Sam’s little brother. Nate’s mom (being the take charge Jewish mother that she is, tells Lucas that he’s not spending the winter holidays alone when she goes to pick up Sam from school.

Continue reading “Book 770: Eight Nights in December – Keira Andrews” →

Books

Book 498: Remember How I Told You I Loved You? – Gillian Linden

Geoff W

I’m not sure why I picked this up back in January 2014, but I did. It was either the sadness in the title or the open envelopes on the front. I had no recollection of it being short stories as I rarely read them. And yet even when I went to read this, because I wanted a quick read before vacation, I was surprised they were short stories and it says STORIES on the front!

Honestly, this book disappointed me. There were two beautiful quotes, but overall I found the stories to be lacking and somewhat stunted. Many of the stories loosely tied together and I felt it distracted from what could’ve been a wonderful collection of (somewhat depressing) coming of age stories.

“Homesick is how Karen feels, though she doesn’t miss home, more like an earlier version of herself, a person who, in her memory is hardworking, starightforward, pure.” (Common Rooms, 12)

“Lewis and I decided this last night and it was a relief. Not everything has to do with me. Even the things that have something to do with me, like this contract, don’t have much to do with me.” (Sam, 87)

I would rather have not wondered if everyone was connected (and I could be wrong).

All of this being said, I think what bothered me the most about the short stories was that really good short stories to me, leave you curious about everything before and after, but simultaneously leave you feeling fulfilled. These did not, partially because there were characters that were either the same character or one with the same name and it was like wait what, is this a continuation? And partially because they just didn’t feel complete with the exception of Common Rooms, it was by far the strongest and it was the lead of the book.

Recommendation: Pass unless you are really interested in college coming of age stories or really interested in short stories.

Books

Book 421: The Magicians (The Magicians #1) – Lev Grossman

Geoff W

This book very strongly reminded me of the opening lines of MTV’s Real World: “what happens when people stop being polite…and start getting real.” This book is Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia without the young adult editing. It is the harsh realities of being a late-teens/early twenties magician.The sex, death, drugs, cursing and general frivolity of that time of life are all over this book.

I of course planned to read this book but never got around to it, but then all of a sudden SyFy is making a series (imdb link) and I had to move it forward! Thankfully I was able to get a copy from the library after a couple of weeks, now I just need the next two to come in on my Kindle and I’ll be all set to go!

Continue reading “Book 421: The Magicians (The Magicians #1) – Lev Grossman” →