Every year for bi visibility day, I create my list of favorite books with bi+ male characters (2021, 2022). The lists are always comprised of books I’ve read in the preceding year. I’ve decided to continue making this a yearly thing… because why not? Without further ado, here are some of the books I’ve read since last September that included bi+ male rep within the main cast of characters (book covers link to Goodreads and book titles link to my review, if available). Happy bi visibility day to all my bi peeps out there!
Hello, everyone! Today I’m participating in Let’s Talk Bookish. Let’s Talk Bookish is a bookish meme that was created by Rukky @ Eternity Books where each Friday, bloggers write posts discussing the topic of the week. Since April 2022, Aria @ Book Nook Bits has been the host of LTB, and she posts each month’s topics on her blog! This month’s topic is books that feel like fall, which is fitting as the season is just beginning. 🍂
The first iteration of the Book Blogger Hop was started in March 2010 by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books and ended on December 31, 2012. On February 15, 2013, Coffee Addicted Writer reintroduced the hop with Jennifer’s approval. The hop begins on the Friday of each week and ends on the Thursday of the following week. Every week, there is a prompt with a book-related query. The aim of the blog hop is to provide bloggers with an opportunity to follow other blogs, discover new books, make friends with other bloggers, and gain new followers for their own sites.
This Week’s Question
How long does it usually take you to finish a book?
This is a really tough question to answer with any accuracy because it varies so much. It depends on the book and the format I’m reading it in. I typically get through a 300-500 page book in about three days. If it is something like a YA contemporary, I could finish it in less than a day. Whereas, a denser adult fantasy/sci fi book might take me three or four days.
For audiobooks, I tend to space my consumption out a bit more. I typically only listen to them right before bed or while I’m doing chores. So, I usually finish one or two of them per week.
Regardless of length or format, I’m probably not enjoying a book if it is taking me longer than a week to read. I have absolutely no patience. So, if I’m motivated to find out what happens in the book, I have a need to read it quickly. The only exception to this is re-reads because I already know what happens in the end. I tend to read slower if it isn’t my first time through a book, and I’ve had some re-reads take me as long as a month.
Next month is marginally lighter on the book releases. Thank goodness. However, there are some that I’ve been wanting to read for a while, like the new KJ Charles, Chloe Gong, and V. E. Schwab books. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve wanted to read all nine of these books for so long, and I’m happy to finally be able to pick them up.
Hello, everyone! I recently saw The Firsts of 2023 Tag on Celeste’s and Dini’s blogs. It looked simple and fun, which is something I’m always on the lookout for. So, I thought I’d give it a shot! This book tag was originally created by Tanya @girlxoxo.
First book read this year
My first book of the year was Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake. Blake is one of my favorite authors, and I loved this book. It was a great start to the year.
Book Synopsis📚
CHICAGO, SOMETIME—
Two people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.
For Regan, people are predictable and tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.
To Aldo, the world feels disturbingly chaotic. He gets through his days by erecting a wall of routine: a backbeat of rules and formulas that keep him going. Without them, the entire framework of his existence would collapse.
For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?
From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you’re not broken.
First book reviewed
The first book I reviewed this year was The Sapphire Altar by David Dalglish. You can find my thoughts on this one here!
Book Synopsis📚
In this epic fantasy from a bestselling author, a usurped prince must master the magic of shadows in order to reclaim his kingdom and his people.
Cyrus wants out. Trained to be an assassin in order to oust the invading Empire from his kingdom, Cyrus is now worried the price of his vengeance is too high. His old master has been keeping too many secrets to be trusted. And the mask he wears to hide his true identity and become the legendary “Vagrant” has started whispering to him in the dark. But the fight isn’t over and the Empire has sent its full force to bear upon Cyrus’s floundering revolution. He’ll have to decide once and for all whether to become the thing he fears or lose the country he loves.
First book by a debut author
My first book by a debut author this year was Seven Faceless Saints by M. K. Lobb. I loved the mystery in this one and its dark and foreboding atmosphere. See all my thoughts here!
Book Synopsis📚
In the city of Ombrazia, saints and their disciples rule with terrifying and unjust power, playing favorites while the unfavored struggle to survive.
After her father’s murder at the hands of the Ombrazian military, Rossana Lacertosa is willing to do whatever it takes to dismantle the corrupt system—tapping into her powers as a disciple of Patience, joining the rebellion, and facing the boy who broke her heart. As the youngest captain in the history of Palazzo security, Damian Venturi is expected to be ruthless and strong, and to serve the saints with unquestioning devotion. But three years spent fighting in a never-ending war have left him with deeper scars than he wants to admit… and a fear of confronting the girl he left behind.
Now a murderer stalks Ombrazia’s citizens. As the body count climbs, the Palazzo is all too happy to look the other way—that is, until a disciple becomes the newest victim. With every lead turning into a dead end, Damian and Roz must team up to find the killer, even if it means digging up buried emotions. As they dive into the underbelly of Ombrazia, the pair will discover something more sinister—and far less holy. With darkness closing in and time running out, will they be able to save the city from an evil so powerful that it threatens to destroy everything in its path?
Discover what’s lurking in the shadows in this dark fantasy debut with a murder-mystery twist, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Kerri Maniscalco.
First book by a new-to-me author
The answer to this one is a bit of a lie. I don’t want to use the same answer twice. With that in mind, my first book in 2023 by a new-to-me author was Olympic Enemies by Rebecca J Caffery. I had high hopes for this one, but it ended up being just okay.
Book Synopsis📚
Three weeks at the Olympic Village.
Two Gymnasts who’ve been rivals for half a decade.
One tonne of sexual tension.
Forced to share a room at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Oliver and Lucas are less than happy. After five years of fighting, the team needs them to learn to work together if they stand any chance of medalling.
To make matters worse, Lucas, king of lone wolfs, has absolutely no desire to become best friends with the three musketeers who make up the rest of the male British Gymnastics team.
So when the press becomes intrusive towards Lucas and Oliver finally steps in to defend him, things are looking up. Until that sliver of common ground truly demonstrates how thin the line between love and hate really can be.
However, when their fighting turns to kissing which results in headlines in every newspaper and potential heartbreak for the pair, it isn’t just gold on the line – it’s their hearts.
First book that slayed me
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was the first book that slayed me this year. I was SOBBING and a total mess, especially during the NPC chapter.
Book Synopsis📚
In this exhilarating novel, two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.
First book that I wished I could get back the time I spent reading it
This book got on my nerves so much. So many things about the setup just didn’t make sense to me, and it ruined what could have been an enjoyable read. See all my thoughts in my review!
Book Synopsis📚
Scream meets Clown in a Cornfield in this young adult horror novel by bestselling Cale Dietrich featuring a masked killer who targets frat boys.
Freshman Sam believes that joining a fraternity is the best way to form a friend group as he begins his college journey – and his best chance of moving on from his past. He is the survivor of a horrific, and world-famous, murder spree, where a masked killer hunted down Sam and his friends.
Sam had to do the unthinkable to survive that night, and it completely derailed his life. He sees college, and his new identity as a frat boy, as his best shot at living a life not defined by the killings. He starts to flirt with one of the brothers, who Sam finds is surprisingly accepting of Sam’s past, and begins to think a fresh start truly is possible.
And then… one of his new frat brothers is found dead. A new masked murderer, one clearly inspired by the original, emerges, and starts stalking, and slaying, the frat boys of Munroe University. Now Sam will have to race against the clock to figure out who the new killer is – and why they are killing – before Sam loses his second chance – or the lives of any more of his friends.
Elements of horror, mystery, and a gay romance make this a story readers won’t want to miss.
Welp. There you have it! My firsts of 2023. I’m not going to tag anyone specific in this one, but I’d love to read the answers of others. So, consider yourself tagged. 😁
Another month has come and gone, which means it is time to look forward to next month’s book releases. August is completely stacked with great books, and some of these are among my most anticipated releases of the year. So, it is going to be a great month!
Hello, everyone! Today I’m doing something different. I don’t usually write up reviews/discussions of an entire series, much less give my random thoughts before I finish one. However, A Chorus of Dragons has me in a choke-hold, and I just need to talk about it. So, here we are. I recently finished the third book of the series (out of five), and I am seriously tempted to throw my TBR out the window and move on to book four. I’m trying to be good, though, and decided that bombarding you all with my thoughts would be enough of a distraction to keep me on task… hopefully.
Where do I start? Hmmm. I’ve realized that I love super complex stories with multiple layers, detailed world-building, weird timelines that jump all over, and lots of strange mysteries with reveals that make my jaw drop. This series has all of those things with a side of polyamory. lol. So, of course I have to love it. I was SO CONFUSED whenever I started the The Ruin of Kings. The characters were commenting asides to each other while narrating a story from multiple perspectives and different starting points. I had no idea what was going on for a while, but the characters and world were so interesting I didn’t want to stop reading. I was honestly dumbfounded at how well the different perspectives meshed up by the end and needed to know what happened next.
So, I quickly dove into The Name of All Things. I was almost immediately disappointed. lol. The characters from the first book were largely sidelined in this one, and the story seemed to go backward to events that happened before and simultaneously alongside those of the first book. I guess that shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise given how wonky the storytelling timeline was in the first book. The book’s focus on the horse people/kingdom and it’s repetitive explanation of their gender roles just did not work for me and really got on my nerves. The end of the book was interesting and finally moved the story forward, but it wasn’t enough to make this book a great reading experience for me. I considered DNFing the series and didn’t pick up the third book until a year later.
The Memory of Souls changed everything. It delved deeper into the history of the world, its gods, and all the main characters. I want to talk about all the crazy shit that went down, but so much of it would be spoilers. All of the main characters got important roles in this one, and it moved the story forward in some massive ways. The complexity of the plot and of the relationships between the characters was wild. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the ramifications of the past lives and the many layers of interconnections between the characters. It almost feels incestuous to a certain degree because of the complex history between them all. The ridiculous amount of revelations and the mind-blowing ending left my head spinning. That is how you use an epilogue. Seriously. This book even made me look back on the second one in a fonder light. lol. Now I’m curious to see what I’d think of it on a re-read with the knowledge I know now. I think I’d enjoy it more.
In general, this series has the potential to become one of my all-time favorites if the author manages to stick the landing. I haven’t really seen many posts about it in the book community. So, I felt the need to shout about it for a bit. 🙂 Thank you for reading my rambling. If you’re sleeping on this series, definitely give it a shot. I’m glad I did and that I didn’t give up on it.
I’ve done this tag every year that I’ve been blogging, and I always enjoy it. I’m still not quite sure where it originated, but I’ve seen it all over on a bunch of blogs. If you know where it came from, feel free to tag/link them in the comments. I’ve already finished 128 books this year. So, I’ve got plenty of great options to choose from for this tag. Let’s get started. 🙂
How is it already the end of June?! For this last day of Pride month, I wanted to do something to celebrate before the month is over. I found this tag created by Common Spence on Youtube a couple years ago and thought it would be fun to re-visit it to update my answers. You can find my first attempt at this tag here. I’ll be picking books that I think embody the meanings of each of the colors in the Pride flag. You can find out more about a book by clicking on its cover, which will take you to the book’s Goodreads page.
July is just around the corner, which means it is time to talk about the new books coming out next month. There are quite a few that I am excited about reading, but I’ve managed to narrow this list to the 10 I’m hoping to read ASAP. It is an eclectic mix of stuff, from queer romance to fantasy to space opera. So, hopefully you’ll find something to be excited about adding to your TBR, too!