Ricky

I really don't understand why people love this book so much. It kind of reads like an annoying children's book, but it seems to be classified as a book for adults which doesn't really make any sense to me at all. I found it really grating throughout. It sort of reminded me of reading Lemony Snicket which I did like two decades ago. I don't remember those books very well but I remember them being kind of like this but I do remember enjoying them much more than I enjoyed this. I know the audiobook narration did not do this book any favors. I thought about just trying to read the text version, but I didn't really feel like I would enjoy the writing either way. I really hated the audiobook narration though.

There are some things about this book that are interesting enough, but I just didn't really care for the writing. It's a lot of millennial excess, and everyone is written as though they live entirely inside of Instagram comment sections.

This is all right. A thriller about a couple that gets mixed up in a secret society. It started out okay, but in the back half I felt kind of over it. Sometimes the characters seemed kind of dumb, but I don't know look around, maybe we're all dumb. It's kind of fun because it seems kind of Scientology-coded, but by the 2/3 point, I was over it for the most part.

This is all right. I guess it might be good for someone who is new to these ideas, but not much here really resonated with me as particularly new or insightful.

I gave this an extra star for all the Ilya content. Basically I liked anything in this book about Ilya, airplanes, or hotels. The central couple was okay. I like that we get another love interest who isn't serving straight-acting vibes. The hockey player seemed charming. I just wasn't super interested in their story or their connection. I think I'd probably rank this 4th in the series. It's cute though. And I like that it tries to address more serious issues like rape culture and there's a deeper exploration about life in the closet.

I've been thinking lately about how we dismiss a lot of media as wish fulfillment as though that's an ignoble phenomenon. What this whole Heated Rivalry phenomenon has highlighted is how desperate we've all been for stories in which people like us are allowed happy endings. This is really important and maybe the reason I found myself pulled into the world of gay romance in the first place. The other thing I've been thinking about is Philip Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project. The world needs stories in which people act in prosocial ways and things turn out okay. If all we get are cynical, dystopian stories, that's the world we're training ourselves for. We need to be reminded of our better angels and we need to be shown what doing the right thing looks like.

Definitely a step up from book 3. So far the couple with the most believable chemistry aside from Shane and Ilya. Themes include intergenerational relationships, mild B&D, bisexual awakening, avoiding communication (girl don't get me started), familial disconnection, the life course... Definitely the smuttiest of these books so far. Sometimes the intimate scenes felt much too long, but I appreciated that these scenes moved the plot and characters forward. I found myself contemplating how much of an impact the narrator makes on how much I enjoy an audiobook. This is something I wonder about a lot actually. I try to think that it doesn't make that much of a difference, but I'm wondering if I might be kidding myself in that way. The narration of this book is much better than the previous books. I think the narration was a real impediment to my enjoyment of some of the earlier books, especially the third one. looking forward to reading the next two books in the series. I know a lot of people say that the sixth book is their favorite and it seems like a lot of people really like book 5 as well. I saw a video today were Rachel Reid said it was one of her own favorites. I guess we'll see how that goes.

These books are decent overall, but every time Ilya shows up, that character really just crackles off the page. I've been wondering if he is the reason this series has taken off so much. Like some of the other characters are engaging as well, but these books are never more alive as when he is on the page.

I've been trying to work through a list I've made of authors of gay romance novels who are supposed to be good. I might try another book by this author, but I found this book pretty tedious. In general, I can't say that the writing style really resonated with me and I struggled to connect with the characters. Honestly this book reads like what people who have never read romance novels think romance novels are like. Maybe it's just that thing again where it reads too much like it's written by and for women. I'm starting to notice that the presence of children in these books is a massive red flag, although I read a German one recently about a single dad that was actually pretty good (Artur & Noël by Lila B Wilms).

I also didn't really care for the audiobook narration, which just surprised me because I've liked this narrator (Joel Leslie) in the past. There's this overwrought/petulant tone to his voice through much of the book which I found annoying and generally off-putting. I think he seems to do this in a lot of books whenever he does uptight British characters. I really wish audiobook producers did more producing/directing.

I came close to giving this one star, to be honest, but I don't know, I might have just hated the audiobook narration. It felt really inert to me compared to the other books. Initially my plan was just to read Heated Rivalry and The Long Game, but when I started the latter, I noticed there were a lot of references to characters and events from other books in the series. Thus I decided to read them all. These characters never came alive for me and their chemistry never felt real to me. The dialogue never felt like real people talking. It all leaned too far along the scale of wish-fulfillment-written-by-and-for-women for me to connect to. I also hated the big obligatory final conflict in this book. It felt really stupid to me. I mean they always feel stupid, but this one felt especially stupid. part of me wants to make this a spoiler review so that I can talk about why I think the relationship dynamics at the heart of this conflict are toxic, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Actually though, one of the ways these books are so nakedly wish fulfillment by and for women is that there's almost always one of the characters who is female coded and this character is usually unreasonable and demanding and somehow the Hulkish other guy is almost idealistically perfect but somehow is always the one apologizing. The balance is a little bit better in this book in that way, but it is a dynamic that makes me roll my eyes. although speaking of Hulk, this book feels like it could have been modified from Incredible Hulk fanfiction.

It's too bad because I'm always wanting to read romance novels where one or more of the characters are gender non-conforming or at the very least are not big straight-acting jocks. I also appreciate that there was an effort to include this big group of friends, but they never really felt too real to me either because they all had jobs and identities that felt like they came out of a Christmas movie or something. I think maybe the reason why I refrained from giving this book one star even though I didn't enjoy it at all is I have some awareness that part of my lack of enjoyment comes from the audiobook narration. Sometimes I get migraines if I read for too long so I tend to listen to everything on audiobook if I can but I really came close to trying to read the ebooks for these.

Also the other reason this kind of bummed up from a one and a half to two stars for me was the way that Ilya Rozanov keeps popping up and there's a dopey but enjoyable exchange toward the end of the book. It made me weirdly giddy even though it's kind of silly.

ETA: I was thinking of the incredible Hulk when I was reading this book, but now I'm reading book 5 and they explicitly refer to them as Beauty and the Beast so maybe that's what this was all along.

This one is all right. I wasn't going to read this one initially because the internet said to skip it, but then I was just going to read number two and number six but then when I started number six it felt like there were all of these characters from the previous books so I decided I should read them all. It's really wild how much better the second book is than the first book. The second book kind of transcends the genre a little bit. It's really one of the better books of this sort that I've read. This one just reads like a typical book of this genre I would say. For the most part I was pretty bored by this story.

Somehow there's always this longing to find undiscovered masterpieces from the past and it's always so thrilling when you do. This book is so well-written, it's hard to believe he hasn't written any other novels. So much of this reminded me of my own youth, despite being about 20 years younger than the people in the book. Honestly, a lot of the book is about the things I might wish I could do over again. Regrets I guess for what I did and didn't do and for the madness that swirled around me.

I wondered for a while if this would come together in any kind of satisfying ending, but I think it does. Even if you just consider the very slightly abrupt ending, I think it works, but the afterward really ties it up nicely.

The book is really well-written. I've read other narratives that were going for a similar effect and they're usually really shrill and self-congratulatory. There's a more down-to-earth tone to this book that makes you feel like you're there the whole time and I never felt alienated by the narrator, even when he was making bad choices.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. It's really well-written for the most part, but it's really about this guy who's going through a bit of a crisis and part of his downward spiral is joining a supposed gay men's support group that is actually a cult-like conversion therapy program with a shifty counselor. The premise itself is pretty engaging, but the guy gets way too into it and there's A LOT of Christian ramblings in this book. On the one hand I get it, I certainly found my spirituality after my sister died. But to choose this weird Christian cult... Girl, stop.

Aside from all of the crazed Christian ramblings, there's a lot here I enjoyed though. It takes place in Minneapolis in the early 1990s. Our protagonist is mad with grief after the death of his boyfriend. His life spirals out of control despite some good friendships and so forth. It doesn't help that someone keep vandalizing his home with threatening anti-gay graffiti or that some religious nut is trying to 86 the pro-tolerance agency where he is employed. It's not fully clear what drives him so deep into this weird cult. Maybe he's trying to symbolically repair the relationship he had with the super religious father who abandoned him in childhood? It's clear that after his father left, he had a pretty secular upbringing. Another thing I find myself thinking about is how dark the vibe was for gay people in the early 90s. I mean, I was just a kid, but it seemed like a pretty dark situation. Like the world was this constant firehouse of hate, directed at your face at pretty much all times. Plus the overwhelming specter of HIV and dissolution. Anyway, that's how it felt to me 5 hours east of Minneapolis. I understand wanting to run from that and ending up in a weird cult. Self-loathing was endemic then. I would have appreciated a bit more restraint though, in terms of the ex-gay ministry. It felt like a lot.