4/5*
Being married to another woman, and having a few trans people make a big impact in my life, I thought this would be an interesting, educating book. It did turn out excellent. I had never heard of Female Husbands before I read the synopsis for this book, but it makes sense that they would exist in the past.
While the subject matter is fascinating, it is a history book, which draws from a lot of sources, so it’s not a riveting read. The author also uses they, them, and themselves as gender neutral identification, which can take a little bit of getting used to.
There are references to documents, but since it covers female husbands from 1750s to 1900s, it’s not like there’s any sort of exciting recording for the author to pull from. So it can get a little dry. There is a broad covering of female husbands in the UK and the US, including female husbands of colour, and those who were females assuming male attired and lifestyles, but who did not take a wife. So, all aspects are covered.
My only real problem with the book (besides the badly formatted ARC, which I’m certain will be corrected), is that the author would expound more on a topic midway through the discussion of a specific female husband. I realize the specific information, say about Blue laws, or whether cities had enacted laws against cross-dressing, is topical to the person at hand, but it drags me out of the narrative of their life. That being said, I don’t know of a better way to address it within the book, and I’m sure the author considered that as the book was being written.
The Garden of Hera – Alison Osias
3/5*
I won this in an Amazon giveaway, back when they had them. It’s billed as a lesbian Satyr erotica, but it’s really not. It’s more like a lesbian romance, on the spicy end of the scale, than an erotica. I was 73% into it on Kindle before the sexytimes began.
Overall, it’s okay. The writing is fine, and the setting is beautiful, a little glade in a forest with an apple tree and a pond. The satyr, Laura, has a fun way about her, with a distinctive way of talking that’s fun to read.
Codel is where I have trouble in the book. She’s very reserved, but her dialog is more stilted than reserved. It’s kind of awkward, which is part of how she feels, but even when she relaxes, it’s still awkward. I think there’s a lot of potential where where Laura could have coaxed her desires for a female companion out of her, and possibly set the sexytimes off sooner, making it more like an erotica.
The Life and Times of Butch Dykes – Eloisa Aquino
4/5*
I backed this from a Kickstarter in 2018 or 2019, thinking it was interesting. It’s about women who don’t fit the typical mold of feminine, pretty women, and the affect they had on culture and history. It’s an art book, like others I’ve read, and the art is neat. I really enjoyed it.
It’s a quick, easy read, with lots of women that I’ve either never heard of, or only heard of in passing. So I really enjoyed reading it.
Meal Prep for Two – Casey Seiden
4/5*
I’m always on the hunt for meal prep books, especially anything easy and able to be eaten cold. We don’t have microwave access at work, which can be a bummer.
This book starts out simply, with only a couple meals and snacks to prep for the week, and works up to an entire week of meals and snacks. I liked that. It also includes a map of sorts, telling you the most efficient way of doing that week’s recipes. Handy if you’re following the recipes for the week.
4/5*
I enjoy Chris Fox’s books, and am always looking to check out whatever he’s written on writing better. This one is good for those of us that aren’t strictly plotters or pantsers in the planning a novel.
Plot gardening lets you percolate an idea or a story in your mind, and you work on writing down pieces of it, and developing from there. Once you sit down to write, you have a workable outline for your project.
I have a project I’m starting soon, so I plan on using this for that novel.
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies! – Blake Snyder
4/5*
I’ve always wanted to write a screenplay, and so I looked into Snyder’s first book Save the Cat! and went from there. This one is different, as it breaks down 50 movies in 10 categories. It helps you locate the plot points in each movie, so you can break your own screenplay down into it.
It was a little redundant, reading 50 movies that were essentially the same breakdown each time. However, it was interesting to see how certain movies were the same movie in the end, even though they were totally different movies.
Merged – Jim & Stephanie Kroepfl
4/5*
Lake, Orfyn, Stryker, and 4 others are given an unusual option: due to their strength in a specific discipline, they have the chance to merge their consciousness with another person’s, a great in that discipline that will be their Mentor. With the help of the Mentor, it’s hoped these kids will be able to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, like Alzheimer’s or gun violence.
Things get off to a bumpy start, but soon, all 7 Nobels (the gifted kids) are working with their mentors. Lake notices some people spend more time sleeping, to work with their Mentors, and her own Mentor seems a little… off. From there, the kids start to realize that maybe what they signed up for wasn’t as great an idea as it seemed.
At first, I thought this would be like the Tok’Ra in Stargate, or the Trill from Star Trek. It’s not like that. They only get to spend time with their Mentor in dreamtime, which was an unusual take on it.
While the book changed perspectives every chapter, it’s not annoying. It gives a different perspective to the book, which I like. I also really enjoyed Orfyn’s love of painting, and how he saw the world and wanted to give it colour. It was one of the better points of view. I think Lake’s was the most dynamic, but the most seems to happen to her.
My only complaint it is felt like the plot moved really slowly until the 80% mark, and then everything happened at once. We see the problems happen, and show up, but progress isn’t made until very nearly the end. Then the ending feels kind of rushed, with a lot happening all at once. Since there’s no official sequel, the ending isn’t a cliffhanger, but rather open to a sequel, most of the book is tied up, but not all. Some of those parts bothered me, and I would have like to see them resolved.
2/5*
The main character of the book, who isn’t given a name, finds out he’s a time traveler. Apparently there’s a bunch of races in the universe, and they fight to change how people on a planet live. In short, the blurb fucking lied. So nameless guy learns to time travel and train with the help of an AI he names Houston, and gets sent to this planet to keep multiple races from tearing each other down.
Or something like that. It took fucking forever to get where he was going, it was never made clear exactly what he was supposed to do, so we wandered around with the main character. There was lots of telling, not a lot of showing. I was bored, but powered through because I won this in a giveaway and felt it only fairy to read and review.
5/5*
I saw someone else wanted to read this on Goodreads, so I checked it out. And man, it’s a super cute book. If you’re looking for lots of sexytimes, low drama, and a happily ever after, for two men, this is your book.
Teo (short for Teodor) is a cute little Italian nurse in an old folk’s home. He loves caring for the residents. His longtime crush, Chris, wants him to come work for his family’s big medical company, as a personal nurse for Chris’s grandpa and to write policy. In other words, what Teo doesn’t want to do. Chris implies that something move may spring up between them if Teo does this. Chris also makes fun of virgins, which Teo is (although Chris doesn’t know).
Chris is a douche.
Teo decides he wants one night of a boyfriend experience to not be a virgin anymore. Enter Jack, a sexy commercial airline pilot who uses apps to hook up in whatever city he’s in. He takes Teo up on the one night stand, not realizing Teo’s a virgin. They have mind blowing sexytimes.
Jack’s actually pretty decent.
Fast forward a few months, and Teo is nurse and policy writer, but Chris is putting him off. Teo’s watching Grandpa, who wants to fly to Germany to sign a deal with another company. Jack has left commercial flying, and is now a private pilot. He pilots the jet Teo and Grandpa are on. There’s a couple emergencies, and they have to land in Canada. Grandpa has to go back to Chicago. Teo and Jack spend time together and come up with a common idea: They should pretend to be dating to make Chris jealous.
Cue them doing that, and it working, and as you expect, them falling for each other. I just loved it. Teo is one of those characters I want to wrap in a blanket and give a hot cocoa to and his favorite movie. He’s just so cute. Jack’s a little blander to me, but the way the author wrote them, you can tell they have chemistry and get along. You root for them. And I loved that.
Made Marian Books: Borrowing Blue, Taming Teddy, Jumping Jude – Lucy Lennox
3 & 4/5*
Virgin Flyer led me to other books by Lucy Lennox. The Made Marian series is a set of books about the Marian family. Get the play on words? They spell it out on family reunion t-shirts. The Marians are Thomas and Rebecca, who had 9 kids. 6 are biologically theirs, 5 sons (2 gay, 1 in the closet) and 1 daughter. They’ve adopted 3 more sons that they crossed paths with at a homeless shelter/group home for LGBTQ+ children. So yeah, of the 9, six are gay.
The 3 books, Borrowing Blue, Taming Teddy, and Jumping Jude, deal with the biological siblings of the Marian Clan. Blue finds love with a vinyard owner, Teddy is the man who snares Jamie Marian, the animal whisperer, and Jude is a famous country star in the closet who falls for his bodyguard.
I enjoyed the series, and would 3 and 4 star them all. My biggest problem was sexytimes for the sake of having more sexytimes in the book. Every chapter, or every other chapter, the characters are getting it on. It kind of slowed the pacing of the plots, and that’s where I found myself skipping ahead. I know, skipping the sexytimes in a romance book, how dare I.
3/5*
Borrowing Blue has a pretty typical plotline, but it’s still fun. Blue, 6 months broken up from his boyfriend, is going to a vineyard for his sister’s wedding. His ex is there, with a hot new boyfriend, because we need drama. Blue finds instant attraction with the vineyard’s owner, Tristan, who he doesn’t immediately know is the owner.
Of course when Blue finds out the owner is Tristan, there’s a brief dustup, and more of a dustup when Blue’s ex repeatedly tries to get back with him, now that Blue is taking on a huge account in Europe and moving there. Thankfully, it all gets resolved.
The characters are fun and the Marian family is a nice addition, as well as Grandma and Irene from Tristan’s side. The homophobic members of Tristan’s family aren’t a lot of fun, but the other characters far and away outshine them. This makes me really want to visit a vinyard, even though I don’t drink wine.
4/5*
Taming Teddy has a weird name. Teddy Kodiak, yes Teddy Bear, is not a Marian. He’s the one hoping to follow along with a Marian, this time Jamie. Jamie is a wildlife consultant, and known as the Wildlife Whisperer. Animals like him and trust him, and Teddy, a wildlife photographer, knows that 1 good shot with him in it will win him the Glamring prize. Jamie isn;t interested in having Teddy tail him because he’s seen what photographs can do. One of him holding a bear cub resulted in a person being mauled by a bear, so he’s understandable reluctant.
Teddy persists, and they begin a long distance relationship. Teddy, being a freelance photographer, can manage to fly out frequently to Denali, where Jamie is. And since he’s used to being outdoors, he can follow Jamie without distracting him from his work. From there, they bond.
I liked this one more because it was serious, and they had to work to get the relationship to work out. Also, there wasn’t the sexytimes at the end of every chapter, which gets old.
4/5*
Jumping Jude is the book I wanted to read, after reading Borrowing Blue. Jude is a well known country singer of Jude and The Saints, and he’s in the closet. The problem? He find his bodyguard, Derek, hot as hell. When a stalker and a former lover come into the picture, Jude has to figure out if he needs to come out or not. The problem is, will Derek come out with him?
I enjoyed this one because I wanted to see what a closeted star would do, and how his relationship with his bodyguard would play out. I realize it’s a plot device that happens a lot, but I enjoy it when it’s well done, and Lennox did a good job with it. There’s a big twist at the end that I wasn’t anticipating, and I think that livened things up a bit.