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MUSIC MONDAY: Bangladesh by The Sound of Animals Fighting
Pick a song that you really like and share it on Monday.
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NEW RELEASE: Falling for the Professor by Colette Davison (Excerpt)
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MANGA: Wonderlove wa Mayonaka ni
Wonderlove wa Mayonaka ni – Panda
Yashiro Haruka is suffering from insomnia after changing jobs. There’s only one reason for this- he’s been reunited with Isshiki, the source of his dark past.
Yashiro has been having one-night stands with men as a sort of “sleeping pill”, but one day, when he gets into an argument, Isshiki saves him, and for some reason, they end up sleeping together.
That night, in his dream, the Demon Lord Thomas, who looks just like Isshiki, appears, and he showers him with his extremely sweet affection!?
Even though Isshiki treats him coldly in reality, Yashiro is tossed about by the gap between his dreams and reality...
Wonderlove at Midnight is a workplace romance with a healthy dose of magic realism and concupiscent dreams.
Haruka’s cure for his chronic insomnia is to sleep with a man. He keeps it to one-night stands, never repeating his encounters with anyone.
When his boss Isshiki learns of Haruka’s predicament, he volunteers to platonically sleep with Haruka and cooks him delicious, healthy meals to help him sleep. The thing is, Haruka has been crushing hard on his straight boss. To make things even more complicated, Isshiki looks exactly like Haruka’s favorite BL game character, Lord Thomas.
Haruka’s friend Akira is an amateur tarot card reader who advised him on how to have better luck. Following his friend’s advice, Haruka started having smutty dreams of Lord Thomas and him going at it like rabbits. Meanwhile, he fell into a nice domestic, and still platonic, routine with Isshiki.
Awkward doesn’t begin to cover it, come morning, when Haruka eats breakfast with Isshiki. It’s hilarious how the lines of reality and dreams blur, frequently disorienting Haruka or making him horny at inconvenient times, or making it hard to meet Isshiki in the eyes in real life when he just boinked his boss in dreams last night.
Isshiki is aloof, gorgeous, and surprisingly good at taking care of Haruka. Lord Thomas is affectionate, doting, and smiles a lot. Haruka couldn’t help but compare the two, but is drawn to both. He’s pretty much resigned that platonic is all he’s getting from Isshiki. Oh, the pining!
It’s always a thrill when we get the love interest’s POV. Slowly, we get glimpses of Isshiki’s perspective and my favorite childhood connection trope, which was tragic on Haruka’s side, was actually hell of a lot swoonier from Isshiki’s view. There is sekuhara involved and Isshiki is the dashing prince to the rescue. Plenty of pining here too!
My favorite part was the little panel at the end, after present-day Haruka smiled brightly at Isshiki. Flustered, Isshiki thought, “If he smiled at me like that in middle school, I would have been so screwed!”
The real-life romance slowburned while the dream romance blazed like a wildfire, and the eventual reconciliation of the two was seamless and spectacularly executed!
While the themes and tropes are very familiar, the use of tarot and magic realism made this story fresh and unique. The artwork is colorful and fantastically detailed with beautifully drawn characters.
Overall, a wonderful, emotional story of wanting love and living the dream.
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REVIEW: Copper Script by K.J. Charles
Copper Script – K.J. Charles
Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler of the Metropolitan Police doesn’t count himself a gullible man. When he encounters a graphologist who deduces people’s lives and personalities from their handwriting with impossible accuracy, he needs to find out how the trick is done. Even if that involves spending more time with the intriguing, flirtatious Joel Wildsmith than feels quite safe.
Joel’s not an admirer of the police, but DS Fowler has the most irresistible handwriting he’s ever seen. If the policeman’s tests let him spend time unnerving the handsome copper, why not play along?
But when Joel looks at a powerful man’s handwriting and sees a murderer, the policeman and the graphologist are plunged into deadly danger. Their enemy will protect himself at any cost–unless the sparring pair can come together to prove his guilt and save each other.
Copper Script is another cleverly titled historical romance by my all-time favorite author, K.J. Charles. Set in 1920s London, the story stars an unlikely hero, a graphologist and war veteran, Joel Wildsmith, whose genius at analyzing handwriting is so eerily on point it’s practically magic.
He cross paths with Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler when the DS’s cousin’s cheating ass was revealed through a letter the cousin’s fiancée asked Joel to analyze. Aaron tried to come up with all sorts of possible explanations of how Joel knew about the indiscretion, and even went so far as to test Joel’s talents through a blind read of several different letters.
Not only did Joel give very accurate character profiles, he also smacked Aaron with not one, but two bombshells. First, hit hard close to home; the other was the spine-chilling revelation that there was a high-placed murderer in the Met.
Just as she gave us a bookseller who has no interest in books in The Will Darling Adventures, K.J. Charles gave us a handwriting analysis expert who couldn’t write properly.
Joel is a delightfully sassy, incredibly perceptive and quick-tempered ginger whose mouthy ways made me laugh. The man lost his left hand in the war, which unfortunately was his dominant one. It irked him to no end whenever people tried to console him with “at least it’s not your right hand.”
Aaron is the more even-tempered and controlled, also a fair-minded do-gooder who takes his duties and responsibilities to heart. He is a methodical and conscientious investigator who has to deal with office politics. He goes out of his way to help a certain jobbing graphologist, occasionally taking him to his favorite restaurants because he likes watching him eat.
Joel has no trust in the police, having been a victim of an entrapment scheme. So, while he was attracted to Aaron, it took a while for him to fully trust the detective. I loved the contrast between their personalities and how they played off each other. The chemistry was fantastic, and the banter between them was a joy to listen to!
The cousin was a real pain in the ass, and watching Aaron, patience stretched thin, yet duty-bound, a.k.a. threatened to be reported to the Fowler matriarch, dealing with the bastard was also funny. The scenes with the cousin are a classic poke by the author at entitled, overprivileged assholes.
My favorite scenes were the letter readings and the first bombshell on Aaron when Joel analyzed his handwriting. Joel, the tease that he is, really knew how to draw out the anticipation, keeping Aaron on the edge of his seat, then bam! I could vividly picture Aaron gaping like a fish at the reveal. It was hilarious!
The only reason this is not a 5-star book is that the villain and the comeuppance scene were mostly told, not shown. Maybe because the story has a low-key vibe to it, but the villain’s murderous ways were mostly implied. The climactic scene where the bad guy overtly acted was resolved with minimal fuss a.k.a. the evil man just walked away, and we only hear about his fate later.
This is a very minor issue. Overall, the plot was well-executed, and I was thoroughly entertained by Aaron and Joel’s interactions and adventures.
Copper Script is a story of seduction and crime-solving through handwriting analysis. It might lack a bombastic showdown, but the vivid personalities, engaging humor, and compelling narrative performed impeccably by audiobook narrator Cornell Collins made this a very well-written book indeed!
Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step awaySoundtrack: Handwriting Analysis
Artist: Late Night Takeaway
Album:
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COPPER SCRIPT: Kindle | Audiobook
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SOUNDTRACK: Handwriting Analysis by Late Night Takeaway
Soundtrack to Copper Script by K.J. Charles
Handwriting Analysis by Late Night Takeaway for a book about reading people and catching criminals through handwriting analysis
oh lalala
was it every stroke that implies
that there was something not quite rightit’s hard to understand
that errors and case don’t match
ooohh the vowel has betrayed
a shaky hand…
but i can oh lalala
i can analyze
i can cut
and i say if its true
i’ll never emphasize
the silver sides
and i’ll take a path everywheredeconstruct and rephrase
and note the change in the A’s
put these vowels into placei know they’ll gonna catch on to you
rewrite through the voodoo
back the way they’re going
crawling over somebody else -
soft lands the slow flyers (?)
in the gated circle
night and day
crosshairs the blank page
oh so violentbut i can oh lalalala
i can analyze
i can compare
slight errorsoh lalala
was it every stroke that implies
that there was something not quite rightit’s hard to understand
that errors and case don’t match
ooohh the vowel has betrayed
a shaky handbut is(?) how is the seamless space
between the loops (?) nice
there is pencils i use though (?)
it bleeds all the timebut if this girl completes you
you not tell from the signature
oh boybut i can oh lalala
i can analyze
i can cut
and i say if its true
i’ll never emphasize
the silver sides
and i’ll take a path everywheredeconstruct and rephrase
and note the change in the A’s
put these vowels into placei know they’ll gonna catch on to you
rewrite through the voodoo
back the way they’re going
crawling over somebody elseoh lord
they got it somebody elsebut you can run
you can hide
slipping(?) on the spine
they gonna catch on to you
let them see right through you
my friendoh lord
oh and again and again***not the official lyrics. this is my own transcription, apologies for any misheard lyrics
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MOVIE FEATURE: Pillion
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COVER REVEAL: MistleFoe by Cambria Hebert
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NEW RELEASE BLITZ: The Devil’s Garden by Jack Bumgardner (Excerpt)
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FLICKer: The First Saturday of May
Featuring LGBT short films I found around the interwebz a.k.a Youtube. Okay sucky intro, but yeah, that’s it.
The First Saturday of May is a short film that follows the story of an Irish-Traveller father as he struggles to raise his son to be the man he was destined to be. As a well-respected figure in his community, Paddy yearns for nothing more than to have the perfect family, however, pushing his son to be the next man of the McDonagh family will only drive a bigger wedge between them. You never know what’s happening behind closed doors.
****TW: violence towards a minor
