Ricky

Definitely one of the better romance novels I've read. I enjoyed the writing and the characters. There's more depth and complexity than you usually find in books like this. I had seen this recommended on social media and was very skeptical, but they had it on display at my library so I just grabbed it on a whim and I basically could not stop reading it once I started. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day at work since I ended up reading all night lol. I really appreciate it how it broke from the standard formula. There was a little bit of silly plotting toward the end, but even though I was impatient with it at times, it ended up amusing me. I actually liked that the intimate scenes were not very explicit. I always wonder what that's for when I'm reading books that are more explicit. Most of those scenes just feel awkward and funny.

It was just nice to spend time with these characters and their world in this book and its slight sequel. As far as this genre goes, I enjoyed the prose. I didn't realize how much until I went back to the library this evening to try to find some more fun reads like this, but every queer/MM romance I picked up I would read the first page and cringe at the awful prose. So I guess these must be fairly well-written... I find myself looking forward to any future MM romances that this author might write.

I really enjoyed this. I enjoyed inhabiting this world even if I didn't particularly love the final pages. I kind of knew what I was in for from the beginning because they go to the fair at the beginning and they don't like the lemonade. And when they don't like the lemonade at the fair, you know what kind of book you're in. Anyway I really loved a lot of this book, but sometimes it felt like there was something missing and I didn't really feel satisfied by the ending. As historical fiction, it's intriguing because it feels somewhat true to the time, but also fairly anachronistic in other ways. It works on a political level though. It feels kind of Brechtian to leave you in that place. Anyway if this were a specific sub-genre, it might be most of what I read. I guess it's a love story about sensitive characters, sensitively rendered. It does a pretty good job of painting a picture of this world and of some of the issues of the time. Better written and more complex than a lot of stories, even if it isn't perfect. A number of compelling characters, even some that you only meet for a moment.

It's definitely one of those books though where after the book is over, I feel kind of sad because I liked being a part of that world.

A cute little trifle about a petty thief getting mixed up with an earl who has fallen on hard times. The couple was cute and I felt their connection, but the plotting around the climax was just okay, although honestly I loved that the plot wasn't just about whether they would fall in love or some dumb communication trope. Anyway, I'm kind of torn about how to rate this one because I did kind of like the characters, but I thought a lot of the plot was sort of boring.

I read this because I kept seeing social media posts in light of HEATED RIVALRY talking about how this book deserved a better adaptation because the book is so much better than the movie. I would say the book is slightly better than the movie, but it's not that much better than the movie. Parts of it are okay and parts of it are really boring. The writing is slightly better than your average romance novel, but I wouldn't say it's great. The one thing I liked about it is the way it incorporates stories of famous queer lovers in history. You get a lot of quotes from love letters and stuff like that. On the flip side, all the stuff about the nuts and bolts of the political work and everything like that felt pretty hollow to me. Also the British people all felt like they were written by an American. For some reason I thought this author was supposed to be British so I was really confused by that, but it turns out she's American so that makes sense.

Is it a novel? Is it short stories? Is it autofiction? Idk. I like the writing though. He has a really engaging voice and I found myself really engaging with some of the themes here, particularly the queer search for home and the desperation to resolve that feeling the world infects us with that we are unclean and in need of redemption. Also I guess that feeling of being young and trying to make a life for yourself when there's no clear track laid for you. A young American is living in Bulgaria and working as an English teacher. At the center of the book is a loving relationship with a Portuguese Erasmus student. Before and after that we see a young man experiencing his queer identity and a particularly homophobic society. I had a lot of thoughts while reading this book and felt a strong desire to already start writing some notes about it, but now that I've finished this book I'm just sitting here with sense of vulnerability that I'm having trouble fully understanding. It must be something about finding something reflected here about my experience which I either hadn't previously seen or personally unpacked. Maybe a sense of relief mixed with sadness. Anyway, I would certainly read his other books. I get the sense from a review that I just read that maybe I should have read What Belongs to You first, but I never would have guessed from reading it that it was a follow-up to another book with some of the same characters.

Is it a novel? Is it short stories? Is it autofiction? Idk. I like the writing though. He has a really engaging voice and I found myself really engaging with some of the themes here, particularly the queer search for home and the desperation to resolve that feeling the world infects us with that we are unclean and in need of redemption. Also I guess that feeling of being young and trying to make a life for yourself when there's no clear track laid for you. A young American is living in Bulgaria and working as an English teacher. At the center of the book is a loving relationship with a Portuguese Erasmus student. Before and after that we see a young man experiencing his queer identity and a particularly homophobic society. I had a lot of thoughts while reading this book and felt a strong desire to already start writing some notes about it, but now that I've finished this book I'm just sitting here with sense of vulnerability that I'm having trouble fully understanding. It must be something about finding something reflected here about my experience which I either hadn't previously seen or personally unpacked. Maybe a sense of relief mixed with sadness. Anyway, I would certainly read his other books. I get the sense from a review that I just read that maybe I should have read What Belongs to You first, but I never would have guessed from reading it that it was a follow-up to another book with some of the same characters.

Junk food, basically. gay romance from a gay author, which is nice. the writing isn't that strong and the plot is pretty generic, but it ends up being okay if you listen to it with the speed up. It occurs to me that two stars might seem like a bad rating, but for me that's about what I would give an average romance novel.

When you first hear that there's a lost novel of Walt Whitman that was rediscovered like 5 years ago or something, it sounds thrilling. and then you actually start reading it and it's absolutely somniferous.

dnf at 38%

The truth is I came here hoping for a reason to stay.

I have mixed feelings about this book, truly a love/hate relationship. It's literally taken me years to get through it because for some reason I keep trying to do the audiobook even though the performance is overwrought and off-putting. also the prose is just too much sometimes. I just want to be like girl dial it back. The emperor of tortured metaphors. But here and there there are parts of it that are effective in various ways. There are these little stretches that are compelling, but a lot of the book felt more annoying than anything. It's hard to read a book like this because there's some stuff of real value here, but mostly I was annoyed by the writing. Too precious and too much of what I think of as millennial historionicity.

It makes me think of how when I was young, I thought when I was an adult I would go to poetry readings all the time. Even at various points in my life I thought, oh I don't know maybe it will be something I do all the time. but the problem is there are these things I hate about poetry readings and you experience both of them in large quantity in this book. especially the audiobook. The first is the overwrought performance. there's always this overly dramatic way of performing poetry and it always feels generic. It feels like everybody is doing the same bit and it's alienating because it doesn't feel authentic. It feels histrionic. you're getting all of the sound and fury, but it seems to signify nothing real. and it's the same thing in the writing. It's like a creativity cult in which everyone has been baptized in the same conventions of expression and every human experience is tortured into that stereotyped, historionic mold.

Ultimately this book feels like the kind of book that a very self-serious author in a movie or TV show would do a reading of. Listening to the audiobook, I would sometimes chuckle imagining the movie that would include this performance in a bookstore. And all of the earnest applause that would follow.