My Goodreads Reviews Part 59
- Bernard Jan
- Feb 20
- 5 min read
I know, it’s been over half of the year since I last posted my Goodreads review here. I didn’t stop reading books; I stopped reviewing most of the books except for a few. My personal situation forced me to switch focus to other more pressing things, so I hope my fellow authors will understand that and forgive me.
Anyway, ten new, chosen books are here. Check them out, buy them, and support their authors.
Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts, Up for Air (Wanderlust Book 2), Glitches and Kisses (The Havenwood Series Book 2), The Glass Hotel, Everything That Made Him Up, The Silence Between, Beauty and the Basher (Frostbitten Book 1), The Thunderbolt Effect, Stikki the Squirrel: Tree Spirits, Coming Up for Air
Curses, roses, tears, and boyhood loves wrapped up in a sweetness of a rom com.
When you set your story on the coast of Belize, surround it with ocean, an eco-friendly project, nature protection, and a mm love story that breaks hearts and heals coral reefs, you cannot miss it.
You get my intention; you’ve got me hooked.
Add to it fluent, easy-to-read, and romantic prose, and Kent Holland guarantees you another enjoyable reading experience.
If you are into a slow-burn, character-first, relationship-building, and high-octane MM romance, you don’t want to miss Glitches and Kisses. This is an ode to flirting, a long, authentic, realistic, almost like the author is taking us by the hand through his own personal experience.
There is no place for doubting this romance; it is both convincing and enjoyable, filled with enough moments when you get frustrated and tempted to kick Noah in his butt with your foot. Because Noah is broken, untrusting, suspicious, scared, with the Great Wall of China built around his heart to keep it from another tragic love, from another hurt, shame, disappointment, and failure. From another man who will crush him and leave him lying abandoned in the debris of his life.
Opening the way to a broken heart is not for everyone; many would turn and walk away after the first encounter. Evan deserves all respect for his persistence, faith, patience, and handling of his emotional pain and hurt. Craving someone who is not ready to embrace—sometimes subtle, sometimes open—signs of admiration and affection is a mission set for failure.
But both in books and real life, the happiest love stories can be born out of complicated love, zero odds for success, and irrational faith to believe in the impossible.
Glitches and Kisses burns with tension, longing, flirtation, desire, and the raw need all the way through, until steam and spiciness consume tender intimacy, leaving you breathless or blushing.
I thank the author for the advance reader copy!
I wish The Glass Hotel thrilled me as Station Eleven did, but this was not the case. I loved the writing, but I failed to connect and relate to any of the characters. A female protagonist with a male name only added to my confusion, and often I had to remind myself that it was a woman and not a man.
Probably the most real and realistic erotic fiction I have ever read. Lovemaking and sex scenes so slow and painfully detailed that they won’t let you remain a passive bystander. They involve you as their third participant, forcing you to feel the emotion, vibrancy, intensity, heat, smells, insecurity, lust, obsession, steam, tenderness, without beautifying up anything but keeping it natural, imperfect, and addictive as it is. Vance Anthony created a convincing love story that leisurely unfolds in front of you until you are ready to seize it in its fullness and raw nakedness. Intense and impressive.
This dark, queer romance and family fiction hit hard and close to home. It’s not only that caring for my old and bedridden mom by myself helped me to relate and identify with Leo; it is the writing and the plot and the protagonists who made me fall for this story. Even if the ending were different, it would still be a story that won my heart.
Kent Holland’s steam in Beauty and the Basher melted all the ice in the Rink at Bellford University, turning it into glittering puddles of happy tears. Dank u, Kent, ook omdat je me zo aan het huilen hebt gemaakt.
If you haven’t met Kristina Gallo and read one of her suspenseful books yet, The Thunderbolt Effect is a good story to begin with. This mysterious and dark fantasy, spiced with a murder and intriguing investigation, will appeal especially to fans of the paranormal and personality change. I liked a lot the strong accentuation of the bullying at work, which is happening so much everywhere that we are accepting it as something normal and expected. Except, it is NOT normal. Far from it.
I have received an ARC from the author at no cost and with no obligations toward the author. This is my honest review.
Winter is not my favorite season. Winter is my most abhorred season. Its coldness, its grayness and lack of color, its cruelty to those who are homeless and have difficulties getting food which jeopardizes their survival. It shows no mercy to human and non-human animals alike. It bares only its white, sharp teeth, ready to dig them into your body and extracts your juices, your life out of you. Like it almost happened to Stikki and Rella, like it happens to many unknown animals not mentioned in this beautiful children story, a successful sequel to Stikki the Squirrel.
The only kind of winter’s beauty I can see in Jane H. Wood’s writing, and not from the reasons mentioned above. Just like in her YA fantastic duology, GoldenEars, beauty of winter lies in those who are willing to risk everything, even their lives, to help those troubled and needed. Friendship, camaraderie, selflessness, and kindness, among other virtues, are the most beautiful winter moments. And what’s even more beautiful is that they are not limited to a certain species, they know no boundaries, they are universal. So is cruelty, true, but Stikki the Squirrel: Tree Spirits is not a story about cruelty of predators to their victims; it is the story of giving, helping, sacrificing, and sharing with other fellow creatures of one big, magnificent family.
I thank the author for letting me read an advance review copy at no cost and with no obligations toward the author, and I also thank her for the gorgeous illustrations which make the story even more appealing and adorable, just like its protagonists are.
Following this Golden Boy for a few years already on social networks was not a mistake. I am certain of that even more after reading an inspirational and motivational memoir of dreams and success, Coming Up for Air. Respect, Tom!
Happy reading!
BJ
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