Book 636: Bloom – Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau

SO MUCH CUTENESS!!!!!!!!

Seriously though! With the second volume of Ukazu’s Check, Please! being pushed back to April 2020, I needed more adorable gay comics/graphic novels in my life so I went searching at the local library and found this one. I’d seen it at a few bookstores in LGBT young adult sections, but hadn’t given it a second thought.

Bloom is the story of Ari Kyrkos and Hector Galea. It’s a coming of age, coming out, coming together, teen rom-com type book and it was wonderful. You’ve got the meet-cute, the miscommunication, the driving passions of each of them, the drama-point, and then the adorable make-up/happily-ever-after.

Book 635: Severance – Ling Ma

I’ve been digesting this one for a little over a week as I write this (it’s posting much later than that). I very much enjoyed the work, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

The story follows first generation immigrant Candace Chen after an apocalyptic virus has decimated the human population creating habit zombies. You loose all higher function and go about doing a habit/routine until you die. The problems that Candace faces (and even creates in some occasions) are uniquely urban and (predominantly) millennial.

Book 634: The Mother of the Brontës – Sharon Wright

I somehow managed to read a biography of Maria Branwell Brontë prior to reading a biography of any of her offspring. I’m not sure why, but when I saw this one on NetGalley it just spoke to me.*

Maybe it’s because I finally got to visit The Brontë Parsonage last year, or maybe I some how knew that Kirkstall Abbey (which I visited over a decade ago while living in Leeds) was connected to the Brontës without really knowing it. Or maybe, like Wright, I was appalled that I spent a considerable amount of time less than 60 miles from their home. Or maybe it was just another opportunity to revisit God’s Own Country via this book which Wright references. Who knows?

Book 630: Kade & Cameron (Something About Him #6) – A.D. Ellis

And I’m done. I actually read part of the acknowledgments, but only to confirm that Ellis does use beta readers and apparently has an editor/reading group, but I’m still suspicious. She also thanks someone for creating the covers for her and I’m still in awe that she loves them. I know you’re not supposed to judge, but they’re just bad.

95% sure it wasn’t worth the hate read, but at least it got me through them and I don’t feel like I wasted money on them. I just have to keep even more vigilant about self-published works, especially on Amazon.

Book 629: Ryker & Gavin (Something About Him #5) – A.D. Ellis

I think this is the one I hate-read the most. I say this because apart from the opening and closing lines, I only highlighted two lines/passages and one of those was because of its reappearance after an absence, but I’ll get to that.

Ryker’s mom kicks him out when he comes out. She gets a gay bff and then tries to reconcile with Ryker. Gavin is the gay bff who happened to be balls deep in Gavin a few days before said reconciliation. They decide to give it a go, don’t tell mom/bff, and shit hits the fan. Oh yeah and there’s a 14 year age difference that is a “big deal”.