Content Warning: alcohol use, death (animal, child, and parent), past emotional abuse, outing. Minor Content Warnings: miscarriage, terminal illness
ThContent Warning: alcohol use, death (animal, child, and parent), past emotional abuse, outing. Minor Content Warnings: miscarriage, terminal illness
This is what you’d call a comfort read.
Written in third-person with charming prose, the book follows a lonely, lovely, and relatable soon-to-be retiree who truly pulled on my heartstrings. It starts out bleak as the author establishes Albert as a shy, closeted man who hid away from everyone under the influence of his dreadful parents. His only solace is dancing to quiet music in his living room after work, and that’s something he only allows himself once in a while. Once Albert learns that he’s losing his postman job, and with it the only thing he was doing with his life, he decides that things need to change. He decides that maybe, just maybe, he should try to do more than just live.
It doesn’t take long to find yourself rooting desperately for Albert. We follow him on the adventure of a lifetime where he must embrace himself to track down his lost love, the person who brought about the happiest time of his life.
Some of you, like a friend of mine, might be tempted to skip this book because of the animal death content warning. If that’s truly a trigger for you, absolutely take care of yourself, but if it isn’t and that’s just something you try to avoid, know that this isn’t a story about losing your pet. Unfortunately, it’s just a step in Albert’s moving journey.
This is so much more than a love story. It’s the most inspiring piece of fiction I’ve read in ages. Not only is it never too late to change your life, but maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.
Content Warnings: ADBL & age play, alcohol abuse/addiction, drug abuse, explicit sex, homophobia/lesbophobia, rape, transphobia
Books read by their authors, especially an #OwnVoices take are such a treat.
What I love most about Casey Plett is that she writes her books, her trans characters, their trans experiences for trans readers. Her work has never read as watered down to be palatable to cis readers but has remained accessible enough to them.
When I first read A Safe Girl to Love, I hadn’t quite figured out my gender situation. I won’t say it helped me do that, but I can say it helped me feel comfortable being messy. Trans women (note: I’m not a trans woman, just a trans person) rarely get the chance to be seen as messy and flawed but respected, so stories like hers that highlight realistic trans experiences are so wonderful to see.
These short stories are emotional and I loved every single last one of them. At the end of the first story I thought to myself, wow this is going to be great. At the end of the second, this one is going to be my favorite. But as it went on, each new story became a favorite. The gem of the collection is Obsolution, which is told in pieces through the entire collection.
The audiobook is read by the author herself. I freaking love that. She did a fantastic job reading and voicing the characters. The conversations flowed so smoothly that I felt some of these women were my friends.
This was just such a fantastic experience. I highly recommend reading this book, but if you like audiobooks please listen to this one! The stories are engaging and digestible in pieces or in a binge like me.
Thanks so much to NetGalley, Bespeak Audio and Casey Plett! I received a free copy of the audiobook to review.
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I kind of hate the way I wrote this review and may rewrite it....more
I seriously need to stop sleeping on indie authors and novellas so much, because this was really freaking good. TSign me up for every queer fluffy HEA
I seriously need to stop sleeping on indie authors and novellas so much, because this was really freaking good. The summary is cute and accurate enough, but I promise you that’s just the surface and there’s this twist that I almost let myself see coming but convinced myself that I was doing too much when i’m fact I was doing just enough, if not too little.
Regardless! This is good soup.
It’s gay, and soft, and we‘ve got our Sunshine and our Grump who find each other over a snake and then proceed to be amazing communicative supportive boyfriends in London. �...more
Yes, that’s correct - I’m giving a four-star review to a book with a horse silhouette on the cover. We’re both shocked right now, but I promise if you just read the book you’ll understand exactly why-
Remedy is the first installment in the Tulip Farm queer romance series. Our first couple is Reed (they/them), a non-binary Russian barn manager, and Peter, a bisexual Golden Boy of horse show jumping and son of the McAuley-Griffin family who’s been badly injured during a recent competition.
Honestly, I adored Remedy. I swear I didn’t think I would like it so much, but the queer representation is excellent, and I think I may actually like horses now. Reed, out nonbinary main character, is well-written with their pronouns being written in and it’s no big deal at all. They’re well-respected in their field, confident, and visibly queer (despite being misgendered by several characters) and they stand up for themselves in all of that. I just *love* Reed as a character. I’m not cool enough for them, but we’d be friends if they’d have me. And then there’s Peter, our ex-Olympic-hopeful who is recovering at his family’s farm and meets Reed. He doesn’t bat an eye at Reed’s pronouns and dislikes them until he doesn’t.
The development of Reed and Peter’s relationship felt very natural. It’s somewhat of an enemies-to-lovers, but once the two start to acknowledge their attraction to each other things take off between the two. They flirt, they’re explicitly intimate, they communicate maturely and get to know each other, they heal. We witness the development of their relationship alongside a realistic and inspiring story that genuinely revolves around horses. On top of that, the supporting cast is all fantastic and very distinct - you can already see hints of the relationships to come later on in the series.
The funny thing is that I picked this up because I’m bad with names and thought I recognized the author, but I’ve never read anything from them before. Remedy was really well done. I plan to read more from this author, and if a sweet and spicy queer romance with more to the plot than just the romance sounds like something you’d be into, I say you should too.
I received a free copy of this book. This review is voluntary and reflects my unbiased opinion. I ended up buying my own copy for some reason. I liked it, so it's fine!...more
Content Warnings: sexual content Themes: "enemies" to lovers (fast-paced), workplace romance, single fathers, characters over 35
Realistic black� � � �
Content Warnings: sexual content Themes: "enemies" to lovers (fast-paced), workplace romance, single fathers, characters over 35
Realistic black characterization. One thing that this book lacks is *homophobia* which is fantastic. Sometimes you just need to read gay romance without thinking about real life bullshit.
I didn’t really like the audiobook, but I plan to give the narrator another try in something else....more
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