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MANGA: Ryuuku Ai Utsu
Ryuuku Ai Utsu – Tobi Washio
One night, brash blonde high school student Toraji went to a party with his childhood best friend, Ryunosuke. At the party, they both got lucky and ended up having a threesome with a cute girl. However, in the heat of the moment, Ryunosuke leaned over the girl’s shoulder and kissed Toraji deeply! What’s a yankee boy to do when he realizes his best friend is in love with him!?
This volume also contains “ONE ON ONE”, a story about a delinquent’s first love with the aniki he looks up to!
Diamonds Cut Diamonds is a best-friends-to-lovers story about two delinquent high schoolers.
Ryuunosuke and Toraji are inseparable, the kind of friends who seem permanently attached at the hip. Their relationship is thrown into turmoil after a fateful threesome with a girl. During the encounter, Ryuu kisses Tora and later confesses his feelings.
Tora, an impulsive, go-with-the-flow kind of guy, realizes he has no problem sleeping with Ryuu and suggests they do it again. The more serious Ryuu, however, isn’t convinced Tora’s feels run as deep as his own. Tora has to prove that they can be more than just best friends.
Delinquents always bring a certain energy to BL, whether it’s their intensity, passion, or pure brashness. They never do anything halfway, and once Tora is in, he’s all in. Rather than agonizing over the situation, he spends his time researching man-on-man loving and unabashedly asking Ryuu to sleep with him again.
When Ryuu turns him down and starts avoiding him, Tora refuses to give up. He throws himself into convincing his best friend, even jumping into a fight to help him. Our boy, completely earnest, is impossible to resist, and eventually he convines Ryuu that his feels are real. It’s all very ridiculously cute, heartwarming and swoony!
One On One, the side story, follows an enemies-to-lovers romance between a sophomore and a freshman.Mikami and his senpai Aki is set for a one on one fight. One day, Mikami so determined on confronting Aki that he barges into a bathroom stall while Aki was using it. After accidentally witnessing Aki’s look of relief, Mikami becomes completely smitten and pursues the older boy with the enthusiasm of an overexcited puppy.
Annoyed that such a vulnerable moment was interrupted, Aki repeatedly reminds Mikami that they’re still supposed to fight. Undeterred, Mikami loudly confesses his feelings right before their match and declares that if he wins, Aki has to go out with him.
This is my first time reading a romance featuring a character with IBS. Scatological humor is a hard no for me, and thankfully the story never ventures into anything scatty.
Mikami has absolutely no sense of boundaries or shame, making him almost an unstoppable force. What ultimately wins Aki over, though, isn’t the grand declarations. It’s the moments when that boundless energy fades and Mikami wears the saddest defeated-puppy expression imaginable.
The quieter scenes of Aki fixing Mikami’s bike are more poignant because they have a genuine conversation, Also, Aki tending Mikami’s wounds when he defeated the younger boy showed a gentler side to their dynamic.
Overall, always a soft spot for tough deliquents with mashmallow hearts!
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REVIEW: The Geek And The Ghost by Cambria Hebert
I’m about thirty seconds from a toe tag and my own freezer at the mortuary when he materializes from the shadows and fights like hell to keep me breathing.
I had no idea homeless disasters like me got guardian angels—or that guardian angels punch people and smoke—but suddenly, there he is: a hero dressed all in black who ghosts me so hard I consider calling a medium.
But that would be a waste of money I don’t have.
I thought I’d never see him again, but just as I’m about to eat a bullet, he appears, using his body to protect mine. I might have swooned—okay, fine, I do but only on the inside—if it weren’t for the fact he thinks bleeding is an adequate apology for implying I’m a prostitute and running off with my heart.
Spoiler alert: It’s not.
Now the man with a PhD in vanishing, a tattoo that totally offends me, and eyes with their own force of gravity is suddenly stuck to me like glue and being wildly inconvenient about it.
And he won’t stop calling me a pipgeek. What even is that?
He insists I trust him, but I can’t trust anyone, not even my own body. Unfortunately, when the resident drug lord calls in that favor I foolishly owe, things go from bad to catastrophic with alarming enthusiasm.On the upside, having a hero with a villain complex for a stalker means staying alive will be easy.
But not getting hurt again is a whole other story.
The Geek And The Ghost by Cambria Hebert is the second book in The Protectors, a series featuring cinnamon-rolls and their overprotective, badass, morally gray boyfriends.
The geek is Rett, homeless and found himself victim of bullies when a mysterious man in black known only as Ghost stepped in. Ghost saved him, fed him, cared for him through an illness, and disappeared after one unforgettable night together, leaving behnd a bag of money and memories. Two years later, their paths cross again when Ghost takes a bullet for him.
Told in dual first-person POVs, the story balances Rett’s angstier perspective with Ghost’s humorous, irreverent narration. It picks up the events of The Hazard And The Hitman, wheree Kieran and Ghost protected Haz from killers.
To Ghost’s surprise, Rett is now Haz’s neighbor and best friend, having used the money Ghost left behind to start a new life. Unfortunately, a mobster wants Rett to deal drugs for him and Ghost is having none of that.
Like Haz, Rett is trouble with a capital T, seemingly with a concerning lack of self-preservation. Unlike his annoying best friend, however, he’s genuinely endearing.
Life on the streets has given him strong survival instincts, and while he’s often a dude in distress, he has plenty of grit, determination, and fight. I rooted for him from the start, and watching him build a better life despite countless setbacks was inspiring.
Ghost, whose real name is Hiro, is a government operative like Kieran. He’s also much sillier and funnier than his perpetually grumpy best friend. Just as Kieran fell head over heels for his Hazard, Ghost completely adores his Pipgeek. I loved the contrast between how everyone else sees him as one scary motherfucker while to Rett, he’s a cuddle bear.
Ghost was already my favorite character in Book 1, and here he’s absolutely glorious! His unwavering care and fierce protectiveness of Rett made this book for me.
The grandest gesture has to be the library he builds for Rett, complete with space for their beloved plant babies. It went straight to my kokoro especially when in the first part Ghost found him with nothing to his name except some loose change and a library card.
Their chemistry is squee-tastic from the very beginning, and their relationship so ridiculously adorable, so wholesome and supportive that it cleanses my soul. Rett trusts Ghost completely, and Ghost would burn the world for him. In fact, he literally burns one bastard for hurting his Pip.
Another favorite moment is Ghost researching Rett’s chronic illness so he can take better care of him. The level of devotions is peak. Seriously, the bestest boyfriend a.k.a. husbando ever!
Kieran and Haz are much more enjoyable here, and their friendship with Ghost and Rett creates that magical found-family dynamic that always gets me. Haz’s Uncle Enzo adds intrigue, and I already can’t wait for his book with Wyatt.
Overall, The Geek And The Ghost is a heartwarming story of second chances for deadly hitmen caring for dudes in distress,. While the first installment was a mixed bag, this book is the total package. Overall, a purely sweet, swoony, and satisfying tale of a Ghost and his Pip.
Rating:
5 Stars – absolutely perfectSoundtrack: Hero
Artist: Alan Walker & Sasha Alex Sloan
Albun: WalkerworldP.S.
The Protectors must be read in order. Witness a walking disaster charm a grumpy hitman with his mishaps and accidents in The Hazard And The Hitman.
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THE GEEK AND THE GHOST: Amazon UK | Audiobook
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SOUNDTRACK: Hero by Alan Walker & Sasha Alex Sloan
Soundtrack to The Protectors: The Geek And The Ghost by Cambria Hebert
Hero by Alan Walker & Sasha Alex Sloan for a book about a second chance for a hero named Hiro and his dude in distress.
The day before, it’s in my muscle memory
I’m pretty sure, I recognize you
There’s something in your eyes
Won’t let you get away tonight
You leave me in the dark, I’m still running like
I’m a push and work, wondering if you’re around me
Catch me if I’m full
If I can crash into the worldWill you lay me up, jump-start my heart
I need someone before the sun goes down
Who’s going to save me now
Some kind of hero -
The day before, it’s in my muscle memory
I’m pretty sure, I recognize you
There’s something in your eyes
Won’t let you get away tonight
You leave me in the dark, I’m still running like
I’m a push and work, wondering if you’re around me
Catch me if I’m full
If I can crash into the worldWill you lay me up, jump-start my heart
I need someone before the sun goes down
Who’s going to save me now
Some kind of hero
I can bring, hoping you are here
Rescue me before the sun goes down
Who’s going to save me now
Some kind of heroThe day before it’s in my muscle memory
I’m pretty sure I felt this energy
There’s something in your touch
Some there you lighting me of usWill you lay me up, jump-start my heart
I need someone before the sun goes down
Who’s going to save me now
Some kind of hero
I can bring, hoping you are here
Rescue me before the sun goes down
Who’s going to save me now
Some kind of hero -
MOVIE FEATURE: Forty Love
