"a rom-com about what happens when the first openly trans professional baseball player in history is forced to share the infield with his arch nemesis"a rom-com about what happens when the first openly trans professional baseball player in history is forced to share the infield with his arch nemesis - a standoffish, super-talented, and inconveniently gorgeous player"
the whole concept of "arch nemesis" is inherently gay, and you're giving us trans rep too????...more
rep: biracial Indian Scottish gay mc with depression and anxiety, bi mc, Black trans side character, nonbinary side character, Indian Scottish side chrep: biracial Indian Scottish gay mc with depression and anxiety, bi mc, Black trans side character, nonbinary side character, Indian Scottish side characters TW: alcoholism, past drug use, past suicide, suicidal ideation
fellas is it gay to just want to keep another boy safe, and maybe cuddle...more
rep: gay mc, Jewish gay mc, Indian side character tw: extreme gore, violence, blood, murder, suicide, body horror, period typical homophobia, internalirep: gay mc, Jewish gay mc, Indian side character tw: extreme gore, violence, blood, murder, suicide, body horror, period typical homophobia, internalised homophobia, PTSD, panic attacks
an honest book about war, and simultaneously the most tender one you will ever read. all thanks to the bottomless love those boys feel for one another.
near the very end a character quotes a philosopher arguing that gay love is the purest form of love, and somehow the book itself feels like a homage to that statement, while also showing all the ugliness of human emotions.
this is comfort food, okay. this is the content i've been craving ever since i first finished mansfield park all those years ago
yeah, some events arethis is comfort food, okay. this is the content i've been craving ever since i first finished mansfield park all those years ago
yeah, some events are kinda dramatic, and yeah, it's a bit too long and repetitive at times, and the miscommunication trope is horribly done, but the characters are absolutely nailed down perfectly & it does deliver what it promises to deliver!
also it makes mr. crawford extremely romantic & thoughtful towards fanny, chivalrous even, and i think that's sexy...more
rep: gay mc with anxiety, bi mc, Black side character, Asian side character tw: internalised homophobia, implied past homophobic abuse, vomiting, panicrep: gay mc with anxiety, bi mc, Black side character, Asian side character tw: internalised homophobia, implied past homophobic abuse, vomiting, panic attacks, toxic parents, blood & violence (hockey)
shut up! this is my comfort food! a romance book has NEVER made me this feral!!! everything abt this is perfectly tailored to my taste
okay so what this books offers: - an amazing slowburn, and i mean an actual slowburn - the tension & pining is just *chef kisses* - super-well fleshed out main characters, which leads to great chemistry btwn them - great supporting characters as well, a true found family - very interesting family dynamics, and actually explored too - a lot of focus on mental health - an extremely oblivious mc (who only realises he's bi through the course of the book), who's also a bit of a himbo tbh...more
rep: gay mc, gay li, Black bi side character, South Asian Muslim lesbian side character, gay side characters, lesbian side characters
ARC provided brep: gay mc, gay li, Black bi side character, South Asian Muslim lesbian side character, gay side characters, lesbian side characters
ARC provided by the publisher.
When it comes to books with the fake dating trope, different people will have different expectations and I’m pretty sure it comes down to what fics you have read in the past. And yes, this intro is necessary for me to explain why I feel about Boyfriend Material the way I do.
See, what I’m personally hoping to get from a story like this is: some cute shenanigans while the pair pretends to be a couple in public, with some mandatory careful (and constantly over-thought) touches and kisses; two people who already knew each other before and actually might be harboring secret feelings for one another; lots of pining and angst because none of this is real and that angst ending with the couple breaking up before they start dating for real some time later.
Boyfriend Material gives you bits and pieces of that, but never concentrated enough. It glosses over the parts where real feelings could be had. And yes, mostly it happens because the guys have adult conversations and that is healthy, but at the same time, the fake dating trope demands some miscommunication to work in a story.
This is not to say Boyfriend Material is a bad book. Not at all. It’s well written, the characters are great, the humour is very good and just how I like it (Oliver’s texts alone are hilarious and make the book a must-read). It’s all good. Which is exactly my problem. I didn’t come here for pure fluff.
So this is really a very subjective matter: if you want a light, cute, fluffy novel with basically no angst, read Boyfriend Material. If, like me, you like to suffer a little bit before you get to the happy ending, maybe read a fic. ...more
some of the events are clearly like 'who cares abrep: gay mcs tw: internalised homophobia, homophobia, homophobic slurs, abusive parents, homelessness
some of the events are clearly like 'who cares abt logic, we need this to move the plot forward and have the character do some cute shit', at times it can feel like it's written by a straight person just lowkey idealising gay ppl, but overall it's actually pretty fun! and, for a new adult m/m romance book, very respectful...more
rep: achillean mc with anxiety, Filipino achillean mc, sapphic mc, Black lesbian mc, hijabi side character, Black side character, nonbinary side chararep: achillean mc with anxiety, Filipino achillean mc, sapphic mc, Black lesbian mc, hijabi side character, Black side character, nonbinary side character tw: magic requiring self-harm, gore, blood, drowning
i love thomas, my most dramatic son, and also his actual hungarian name (tamás) isn't hard to pronounce, it basically only differs in the last sound & the accent, thanks for coming to my ted talk...more
rep: bi mc with anxiety, Chinese American lesbian li, Black sapphic sc, Puerto Rican American trans sc, gay Jewish sc, Black gay sc, Black pan sc, Czerep: bi mc with anxiety, Chinese American lesbian li, Black sapphic sc, Puerto Rican American trans sc, gay Jewish sc, Black gay sc, Black pan sc, Czech sc tw: past homophobic violence, off page death
Review also on Reads Rainbow. ARC provided by the publisher.
I am once again crying about fictional lesbians. Actually Jane Su is the fictional lesbian, she's the book girlfriend, she's the blueprint. This is really all for her. I'm not in a group chat called “Dicks out for Jane Su” for nothing.
This of course is not to say that other parts of the book don’t work. In fact, they work perfectly well. If you’re not expecting exact science from this time-travel book, that is... It's not about science, it's about people coming together and loving each other with their whole hearts.
Yes, this is a romance. And it might actually be one of the best f/f romances to ever enter the mainstream. There are multiple reasons why I say that, but the most important one is the intensity of emotions and feelings between August and Jane. It's not usual for sapphic books to allow their characters to be, well frankly, more than a cute aesthetic. Unlike m/m romances, the ones starring sapphic characters tend to be more soft and delicate, and tend to focus on how sweet it is that those people love each other, and not so much on the fact that they’re horny.
One Last Stop doesn't have those hesitations, it explores all sides of the relationship between August and Jane. It uses the same kind of focus and detail to talk about August yearning after Jane, as it does to talk about August finding Jane hot and desirable. I mean, for the love of god, August literally keeps a journal of all the sex things she wants to try with Jane. Name one other mainstream sapphic book doing it like that.
But it's not just a romance. It's also a story about people loving each other in various different ways. It's a story about found family, which is frankly a quintessential kind of story for LGBT folks. This idea that we will always find each other, and we will always understand each other, and support each other. That is a very definition of the found family. And is portrayed in the most beautiful way in One Last Stop. It works so well because the characters are fleshed out to the extent that they truly do feel like real people.
And because literally the whole cast is LGBT, Casey provided for themself a great opportunity to talk about our community. It doesn’t come across as a history lesson, but at times that’s what it essentially is. And given how little we ourselves know about the LGBT people who came before us, it’s actually an excellent choice. It also helps that Jane is from the 70s’ and provides a whole other perspective on the community.
I initially said that One Last Stop is “a gay history lesson wrapped up in a found family wrapped up in a romcom wrapped up in, once again!, a love letter to the LGBT community” and I was right. It’s also a gift to sapphics everywhere....more
rep: bi/pan Chinese-American mc using a hearing-aid, non-binary Chinese-American li, side interracial sapphic couple
this is an incredibly sweet & loverep: bi/pan Chinese-American mc using a hearing-aid, non-binary Chinese-American li, side interracial sapphic couple
this is an incredibly sweet & lovely story, with so much effortless and respectful representation!! pls can we get more stuff like this??
so this is an urban fantasy kind of story, with werewolves and witches who care about nature & forest spirits (which i absolutely loved). there are some demons, some evil cults, some plot twists turning the whole thing even lovelier, some cute friends-to-lovers romance...
all in all, a great graphic novel and exactly what i needed right now
i read it so absolutely none of u have to read it & believe me when i say: it's absolute shit
highlights: - none of the characters have any actual.... i read it so absolutely none of u have to read it & believe me when i say: it's absolute shit
highlights: - none of the characters have any actual.... u know.... character traits - there's Zero (0) emotions in the whole book - the word 'ruchać', in some form, was used 33 times across the 288 pages - the gay character 1) thought him being gay killed his mom, 2) masturbated with a screwdriver's handle, 3) had sex (for the first time) without giving the guy a chance to consent to the act (and without lube) to make sure he's gay - the other pov character's biggest dream was to have sex with a black girl & he thought getting a blowjob from a latina girl was a good stepping stone to that - the author is an editor (!) & yet this book reads like a poorly written first draft...more
rep: bi Jewish blind mc, gay ace li, Jewish aroace major side character
ARC provided by the publisher.
There are books that have great blurbs, absolrep: bi Jewish blind mc, gay ace li, Jewish aroace major side character
ARC provided by the publisher.
There are books that have great blurbs, absolutely fantastic sounding blurbs and then. They just. Disappoint you in every possible way. This is one of those books.
TL;DR (like I wish I could have done with this book): this is more a (boring) how-to guide on becoming a successful youtuber & dealing with that success than a novel. The characters are utterly forgettable, the tension doesn’t exist, there isn’t any real plot & the ending jumps out at you out of nowhere.
Now, let’s get into some details.
» the writing is very simple but that’s not all. The author describes each and every action their characters take, down to an almost complete recipe for something Dovid cooks at one time. I do not need a play by play of every scene, no one does. And the worst part is, those descriptions are also incredibly boring, so there’s really nothing to defend them.
» the boringness is in the dialogues as well. Really, that’s no surprise, dialogues are actually harder to write. Dovid and Sam talk for the majority of their relationship through DMs and texts and those reads like it’s a couple of 13yo texting. How many times can a person say “Sorry” and “Thank you”! How polite does Wayne think people need to be and why do they think people can only be polite by saying “sorry” and “thank you” twice in every sentence. I honestly don’t remember the last time I’ve read something that felt this unnatural. You’re probably thinking that it got better, once they started talking in person? Oh boy, are you wrong… Nothing I complain about in this book gets better.
» and if you thought the whole book is boring just because of the writing style, you were wrong again. It’s the main contributor, sure, but actually the pacing of this story? It’s so slow and unexciting, it’s kinda hard to say it even exists. Listen, I know I might enjoy angst a little bit too much, but you gotta have some, in order for a story to work! Here you just get fluff, more fluff and then some problems that get worked out on like the next page. It’s exhausting. The fluff isn’t even enjoyable, either, and that’s because the writing is stiff, like I said before, but also:
» the characters are just cardboard. I can list a few main characteristics for them, sure, but they are going to be extremely generic and vague. It’s impossible to connect to either of them and thus also root for them. Not that there’s any indication in the text at all that they won’t get a happy ending… But anyway, both Dovid and Sam are very much one-dimensional, more a canvas for representation than anything else. Neither of them really grows throughout the story, even if it’s made to seem like Sam does. But does he really? It feels more like Dovid has an idea of how Sam should act, rants about it randomly in the heat of the moment, and then finally Sam acts in a different way. (More like, tells Dovid he agrees with him.)
So we established that this is simply a poorly written book. Honestly, it kind of feels like not even the first draft, but more - a very detailed outline of the first draft. All the events that the author imagined are described and that’s… it. But there’s another thing I wanted to mention and that’s representation. Dovid and his twin sister Rachel are Jewish, Dovid is bisexual and blind due to illness, Rachel is aroace and Sam (the love interest) is a gay ace. I’m not disabled in any way, so I can’t really judge the rep here, but then - the author isn’t blind either. And frankly? With how much constant focus was put on Dovid’s blindness? With how much of a main point in the story it really was? I don’t know, I just feel like it’s not exactly a sighted person’s place to tell a story like this… I might be wrong and I would love to read some ownvoices reviews but sadly I couldn’t find any. (Which is a whole other problem, but more for the publisher than the author.)
Listen, if you want to read a cute, fluffy romance between two youtubers, just read How to Repair a Mechanical Heart. It even features fake dating! Meanwhile, all Play It Again has to offer is a happy ending that doesn’t make you feel any kind of way, because by the time you get to it, you’re bored out of your mind....more
this novella takes place during operation "hyacinth" in communist poland and a quick google search will tell u what that was.full review in polish
this novella takes place during operation "hyacinth" in communist poland and a quick google search will tell u what that was.
it's great that we're getting books like this, but sadly it just reads like a poorly written first draft. (that's also the reason the ending got me more angry than sad.) the idea for this story was nice actually, i just wish all that potential wasn't wasted on very mediocre writing....more
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