How in the heck do I read so much? I have no idea. Anyway, here’s two more weeks’ worth, with links to help you find authors of interest.
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compiled October 15:
1. ‘Most Valuable Player’ by A.M. Woody. YA MM, very good. MC1 is the high school quarterback, MC2 is the team’s non-jock water boy, who volunteers to tutor the QB after grades bench him, despite having just said No to a date. Both have slightly antisocial coping mechanisms for past (and in MC2’s case, ongoing) trauma, much of which surfaces as their relationship evolves. Their interactions are super snarky and adolescent. Good balance of dark and light, with a credible age-appropriate happy ending.
2. ‘Boarding Schools and the Indigenous Story’ by Ashley Fairbanks. This is a teen-oriented history in the Race to the Truth series, just as sad and infuriating as expected. This series is really excellent, highly recommend.
3. ‘Comfort Read’ by Dylan Morrison. There’s a lot to like about this MM if you vibe with the tropes: small town bookstore in trouble, Hollywood personality in trouble, fake dating. While the character building was as good as ever with this author, I am tired of the less powerful person in a fake dating situation being the one to accidentally betray it. The more powerful person in this case is 100% the one who needs it, and it’s 100% due to his own inability to govern his tongue. It would have been much more in character for HIM to fuck up. The other MC has his own problems, most of which really aren’t his fault, so making him the problem causer here rubbed me the wrong way. There was also another incident of using a real person as a character, but at least this was brief – a single word – vs putting him in a whole scene. Overall a satisfying book, and the resolution worked.
4. ‘Release’ by Patrick Ness. An excellent YA novel with a gay MC who’s having a variety of troubles over the course of a single day in a Seattle exurb. Interwoven with a fantasy subplot involving a fae queen who’s become linked to the spirit of a murdered girl, and her faun attendant who’s trying to get them separated by sunset or the world will end. These two stories don’t cross until the very end, but the fantasy thread is substantive and relevant to the environment the MC contends with. Really liked this.
5. ‘Murmuration’ by TJ Klune. MM love story, though not a romance. Think ‘The Truman Show’ but very dark, and not for a TV thing but as part of an experiment using brain-damaged people who couldn’t consent to being plugged into a virtual world. Beautifully written as usual with Klune. Srsly though, it’s dark.
6. ‘Death Comes Darkly’ by David S. Pederson. A gay Agatha Christie pastiche set in Wisconsin in 1947. The detective is an actual Milwaukee police detective (I like mysteries better when the crime-solver is a professional); his sidekick is his new boyfriend, a beat cop; the setting is a gloomy, remote mansion full of people with reasons to kill the host, who indeed ends up dead. It’s a clever setup and while there’s a bit too much exposition stuffed into the dialogue, well executed.
7. ‘Acquaintance’ by Jeff Stookey, another MM historical. This one is 1st of a trilogy, which I plan to pursue, because the history, the fictional world-building, and the character-building are all really good. Set in Portland, OR in 1923. The POV character is a thirtysomething doctor, WWI veteran. One of the conflicts/obstacles is the rise of the KKK in Oregon at the time.
8. Binged 3 historical fiction graphic novels by Lauren Tarshis with various artists. All of these are great and recommended if you have a young reader you’d like to lure into history:
I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912
I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941
I Survived the Japanese Tsunami, 2011
9. ‘They Called Us Enemy’ by George Takei with Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker, graphic memoir, excellent.
compiled October 22:
1. ‘Search for the Lost’ by J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding, sequel to their MM fantasy opposites-attract romance ‘Office of the Lost.’ Fast-paced (nonstop action!) as our heroes undertake a quest to find the Fae Queen, with some friends (?) along for the ride, all of them flung from one classic YA fantasy fiction setting to another. Pretty chaotic but fun and even delivers some character development.
2. ‘Run and Hide’ by Don Brown, author & illustrator; nonfiction graphic based on survivor stories of European Jewish children during the Holocaust. Effective, by which I mean harrowing.
3. ‘And Then He Pressed Play: Track Two’ by Robert J. Halliwell. Sequel to an excellent YA MM featuring one Canadian boy and one Irish, in which the CA boy spends a school year in IE; in this one, the IE boy comes to CA for his own exchange year and their relationship continues to evolve. I would happily read another volume about these two; this book closes on them in their new shared flat in Ireland, about to start at their respective institutions of higher education.
4. ‘Nora Goes Off Script’ by Annabel Monaghan. Mixed feelings here. I was entertained while reading; the FMC felt credible as a writer and single parent, *except* the part about letting a world-famous actor assume a quasi-parental role based on absolutely nothing except her own inability to stay off his dick. My initial rating lost a star after sleeping on it. MMC’s advantage-taking, boundary-blind encroachments did not support the insta-love, especially given FMC’s back story.
5. ‘Something Different’ by Philippa Lodge. FM second-chance contemporary novella featuring former partners in a rock band who haven’t seen each other for 10 years. The MMC turns up in Tahoe, where FMC has been living and where he’s sitting in with another band, hoping to reconnect and resume writing music together. I liked the professional focus of this, thought the characters were both well-developed, appreciated the galvanizing effect the story’s main events have on both characters’ professional lives, and approved the happy ending.
6. ‘The House of Now and Then’ by Edward Underhill. A touch of magic in this Cape Cod-set novel about recovery (from a breakup) and new beginnings (requiring serious self-reflection). The work is on the page; you know I love that. I also loved that this book’s MC is a trans man and his transness is simply a non-issue for everybody. And I appreciated (especially after ‘Nora’) the realistically slow growth of the MC’s feelings for the love interest, and vice versa.
7. ‘The King of Halloween’ by Ellen Mint. Well, it’s seasonal, and it sounded amusing, which it was, but would have benefited from a strong editorial hand. MM and billed as a romcom, too much explicit sex for me and a few more complications than a short book needs.
8. ‘3 Old Gay Men: Revenge is Best Served with an Excellent Bordeaux’ by Ron Zutz. Not a romance, though there is a promising rapprochement. If you like gay men and are intrigued by the concept of three of them negotiating aging together as housemates (none of the main characters seem to be bedmates), I recommend. I liked this a lot and have left it in my e-reader, because I zoomed through it and want to reexperience at a more deliberate pace