Books

Book 976: Baking Me Crazy (Apple Meadows #2) – Catherine Cloverdale

Book cover of "Baking Me Crazy" with Amazon Affiliate linkOOOF. You know when they tell you not to judge/choose a book by its cover? That 100% applies to this one. When this landed in my inbox, I thought, ” Oh, that’s a decently professional cover, the model is attractive, and the font isn’t too amateur,” so I requested a copy.* AND then a few weeks later when I sat down to read it, I realized it was the second book in a series, the first was Apple-y Ever After, by an author that I barely made it through the first because there were so many issues.

So, I thought okay, maybe she hired a copy editor and a proofreader to fix a lot of the minor (but persistent) issues I found throughout, or at the very least read the book out loud so the dialogue was less stilted and the passages flowed naturally.

NOPE.

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Books

Book 949: Apple-y Ever After (Apple Meadows #1) – Catherine Cloverdale

Book cover of "Apple-y Ever After" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen this one landed in my inbox I got excited, a fall New England romance set in a small Vermont town obsessed with their local apple festival, sounds like the perfect summer read.* Unfortunately, it’s a big ol’ NOPE from me.

Apple-y Ever After features travel writer/photographer Adrian who has been assigned to cover the local Apple Festival and the only place left with space for him to lodge is a local B&B run by hopelessly scattered and accident-prone still grieving from the death of his fiancé, Julian. Now, this should be the perfect setup, a well-traveled city boy coming to a small town where he meets the still grieving country boy, and boom happily ever after, right? Right?

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Books

Book 936: Café con Lychee – Emery Lee

Book cover of "Café con Lychee" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhat another wonderful juxtaposition from Dream Boy with so much light and happiness and just pure wholesome queer joy, I’ve really been putting myself through an emotional rollercoaster these last couple of weeks. Seriously, emotional whiplash is not fun and thankfully I can work from home where tearing up on my lunch break is totally acceptable.

I requested a copy of Café con Lychee because 1) I love lychee, like seriously on everything and lychee candy is the best—I say “LIE-chee” not “LEE-chee”; 2) to BIPOC protagonists which YA Lit is a lot better about than MM Romance; and 3) New England.*

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Books

Book 881: The Best Gift – Eli Easton

Book cover of "The Best Gift" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen this one came in to my inbox I didn’t jump at it.* I was drawn to the veteran storyline and the  other protagonist having lost his son recently, but Easton isn’t an OMG must read even though I enjoyed her Clyde’s Corner series.

And I was more-or-less right. There wasn’t anything wrong with the story but I finished less than three days ago as I’m writing this and I’ve forgotten so much of it already. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to MM Romance novels, because they’re really for fun and enjoyment not deep thoughts and pondering, but three days seems a bit short even for that.

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ARC, Books

Book 818: Keeping Kellan (Keeping Him #2) – Amy Aislin

Book cover of "Keeping Kellan" with amazon Affiliate linkAfter thoroughly enjoying Keeping Casey, I knew when the next one was released I would jump at it. So, when it came up on Gay Romance Reviews I did.*

This is the story of Kellan, the quiet brooding friend and teammate of Ethan from Keeping Casey, and his childhood crush Brant, a landscape architect in his Canadian childhood hometown. They’ve both been crushing on each other for quite a while, Kellan since he was a pre-teen, and the timing has finally worked out when Brant moves back home to get away from his post-college life.

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