The week in books.
1. ‘Their Four Date Experiment’ by William Gayheart & Jeff Adams (the gentlemen who used to run the Big Gay Fiction Podcast). MM enemies-to-lovers; MC1 is a skeptical journalist with an axe to grind, and MC2 is the head of a dating app company. I tripped over the timeline here and there, a security breach subplot evaporates without resolution, and I never want to see the word ‘algorithm’ again, but there’s a lot good about the relationship. Ultimately, I bought the romance, with some side-eye for other aspects.
2. ‘Until You’ by TJ Klune, a very funny novella about the last few weeks before a queer wedding. All the characters are foulmouthed love monsters. Would definitely read the rest in series.
3. ‘Catch of a Lifetime’ by Isabel Murray, a sequel to ‘Catch & Release’ about a human man who falls in love with a merman. In this novella, the merman washes up badly injured and the relationship suffers, because of course they can’t actually speak to each other, and the human can’t truly provide what the merman needs to heal. The neighbor who knows about all this delivers the kick in the ass the human needs to change perspective from ‘doomed to pining away half my life’ to ‘what fairly achievable change could I make that would mean we can be together most of the year and both be healthier.’ Kind of hoping the story continues, because this novella came to an abrupt end. Author site HERE.
4. ‘Down the River’ by J. Scott Coatsworth, ARC of his new book releasing Nov 30. Not a romance. This is a circle-of-queer-friends slice-of-life set mostly in Sacramento (with a side trip to Italy!) that takes a whole lot of characters through downward trending life changes, then gives them ways and means to repair, redirect, and reimagine. Almost all the story threads get wrapped up leaving the characters in a better place on the page (i.e. one doesn’t have to guess). A bit of magic is involved.
5. [re-read] my own MM short story ‘Reinvented,’ the one about two patent paralegal single dads; and my own MM novella ‘Breathing Space,’ the one about an accountant and a yoga teacher who meet through their hobbies. It’s a love-after-loss story (the accountant lost his husband to cancer).
6. ‘After Hours at Dooryard Books’ by Cat Sebastian. I came down on the side of loving this book, though I didn’t love it from page 1; I wanted more of a sense of the two main characters earlier than I got it. But I did love the precipitating crisis of the sister-in-law and niece, and the way Unavoidable Coping forced them all to bond. I loved the separate but equally crucial glue of music. Loved how the “stray” refused to live/work in squalor and forced the younger bookstore manager to live with being renovated. That kind of action resonates with me as someone who has lived with life-limiting compromises for much too long and copes by Affecting My Environment. There’s a lot of healing in this book, and I’m sure I’ll re-read it. Author site HERE.
7. [re-read] my own MM novel ‘Liberty,’ the one about a small-town realtor and a big-city lawyer.
8. ‘The Whyte Python World Tour’ by Travis Kennedy. Not a romance. It’s a debut novel about a CIA operation 1987-1989 in which a rock drummer becomes an asset and his band is used to foment anti-Soviet unrest in Eastern Europe. It’s an absolute riot and I want it made into an R-rated TV series immediately. (It’s apparently in development as a movie. Let’s hope they don’t fuck it up.) The author won a ‘most cinematic’ award for a different work and, in truth, this book reads like a movie. It’s long, and there are several different POVs, and you must have a tolerance for 1980s glam metal, casual sex, abundant drug use, and shady dealings. Author site HERE.
9. [re-read] my own MM novel ‘Be Mine,’ the one about a private school teacher recovering from a violent sexual assault with the help of his coworker boyfriend.
Want any of these? Mine are available as e-books on most platforms. Others: buy direct if you can!