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AUDIO TOUR: Point Blank by Morgan Brice (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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COVER REVEAL: Their Wicked Ways by Willow Dixon (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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BLOG TOUR: Icebreaker by Blair Brady (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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NEW RELEASE BLITZ: Getting To Know You by Jennifer M.D. Cox (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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REVIEW: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
Midcentury NYC: We Could Be So Good – Cat Sebastian
Casey McQuiston meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo in this mid-century romdram about a scrappy reporter and a newspaper mogul’s son–perfect for Newsies shippers.
Nick Russo has worked his way from a rough Brooklyn neighborhood to a reporting job at one of the city’s biggest newspapers. But the late 1950s are a hostile time for gay men, and Nick knows that he can’t let anyone into his life. He just never counted on meeting someone as impossible to say no to as Andy.
Andy Fleming’s newspaper-tycoon father wants him to take over the family business. Andy, though, has no intention of running the paper. He’s barely able to run his life–he’s never paid a bill on time, routinely gets lost on the way to work, and would rather gouge out his own eyes than deal with office politics. Andy agrees to work for a year in the newsroom, knowing he’ll make an ass of himself and hate every second of it.
Except, Nick Russo keeps rescuing Andy: showing him the ropes, tracking down his keys, freeing his tie when it gets stuck in the ancient filing cabinets. Their unlikely friendship soon sharpens into feelings they can’t deny. But what feels possible in secret–this fragile, tender thing between them–seems doomed in the light of day. Now Nick and Andy have to decide if, for the first time, they’re willing to fight.
Lots of conflicting feelings here.
We Could Be So Good, Book 1 of Midcentury NYC by Cat Sebastian, is one of those modern historicals I’m exploring since Regencies and Victorians aren’t doing it for me recently. Set in the late 1950s New York, it’s a best-friends-to-lovers romance between a closeted newspaper reporter, Nick Russo, and his newly awakened bisexual friend, Andy Fleming, the publisher’s son.
The book is touted as a “Casey McQuiston meets The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” in that comparative marketing style I hate. I usually see this when a niche genre/indie author (is this the proper term?) is marketed to mainstream readers (again, not sure of the proper term). It’s helpful to a wider audience who might want to venture into queer books, but I prefer the book to stand on its merit.
That said, I’d love it if more people discover Cat Sebastian and other brilliant MM romance authors. That way, their books would be popular enough to be picked up by Hollywood. My dream is to have my favorite books turned into movies. Sometimes, I entertain myself with the idea that if I win the lottery, I’d create my own production company just for that purpose.
Anyway, I’ve seen the movie version of the royal rom-com, though I’ve no idea about Evelyn Hugo. There are a few similarities to the former.
There’s the opposites attract trope where Nick is uber-competent and Andy is a bumbling himbo who can’t even shut a drawer without getting his tie caught. There’s the class difference where Nick comes from an Italian immigrant working-class family while Andy is third of his name and has more money than he knows what to do with. They also had to keep their blossoming romance on the down low.
There’s also a wonderful found family for Nick, Andy, and their queer/non-queer friends. I loved that, by some unspoken agreement, they built a safe space for everyone in Nick’s building apartment.
The story has all the ingredients that make a Cat Sebastian book a swoony, unforgettable experience. The scenes are brimming with mutual pining and longing and fluffy, adorable moments wrapped in cozy domesticity. There’s so much love and kindness between Nick and Andy, and I adore them! They reminded me of the author’s squee-tastic friends-to-lovers masterpiece Two Rogues Make A Right.
Sadly, the feels didn’t soak through to the bone. I wasn’t squee-ing. The romance is of the slow burn variety, which I usually love, but it’s so damn slooow that the slowness is all I could think about. I was audiobooking this, and even the great Joel Leslie couldn’t stop the draggy feeling.
The glacial pace is compounded by the fact that there is barely any plot. It’s just Nick and Andy doing not-so-exciting everyday things and sending feels to each other. While era-specific LGBTQIA issues are tackled, as well as Nick’s family woes and Andy having his bisexual awakening, these threads felt shallow.
I wanted to love the book so much but it is what it is. I’d still recommend this, since many people loved it and YMMV from mine.
We Could Be So Good is a story of loyal friends, complicated families, and hopeful lovers against the backdrop of the Big Apple. It could have been all my yes had it been faster. Overall, a cozy, sweet romance built on kindness and care that falls in that place between like and love.
Rating:
3.5 Stars – that place between like and loveSoundtrack: So Good
Artist: Public Library Commute
Album: Close to the Sun
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WE COULD BE SO GOOD: Kindle I Audiobook
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RELEASE BLITZ: Easy, Schmeasy! by Becca Seymour
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BOOK TOUR: Now, Conjurers by Freddie Kölsch
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SERIES REVIEW: Boystown Books 1-3 by Marshall Thornton
Boystown Books: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries – Marshall Thornton
Finalist for the Lambda Award in Gay Mystery, Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries takes place in Chicago during the early 1980s. Haunted by his abrupt departure from the Chicago Police Department and the end of his relationship with librarian Daniel Laverty, Nick Nowak is a beat cop-turned-dogged private investigator. In this first book of the series, Nick works through three cases: a seemingly simple missing persons search, an arson investigation, and a suicide that turns out to be anything but. While working the cases, Nick moves through a series of casual relationships until he meets homicide detective Bert Harker and begins a tentative relationship.
Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step awaySoundtrack: Boys Town
Artist: Babes
Album: Leave Your Leather On
Boystown Books: Three More Nick Nowak Mysteries – Marshall Thornton
The Boystown Mystery series continues as Chicago private investigator Nick Nowak finds himself involved in three new cases. He’s asked to help a young man who murdered his stepfather but refuses to assist in his own defense, hired to find the murderer of a dead porno star, and, in a case that traps him between the two men he loves, must search for a serial killer’s only living victim. Set in the second half of 1981, Nick juggles his deepening relationship with Detective Bert Harker with the return of his ex, Daniel Laverty. Which man will he choose? Or will he be able to choose?
Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step awaySoundtrack: OOO
Artist: Karen O
Album: Crush Songs
Boystown Books: Two Nick Nowak Novellas – Marshall Thornton
In the two novellas that make up the third book in the popular Boystown Mysteries private Investigator Nick Nowak works two challenging cases and grapples with an even more challenging personal life. In Little Boy Boom, Nick’s car explodes when a thief attempts to steal it. Realizing the bomb was meant for him, Nick sets out to discover who wants him dead only to find that the list of possible suspects is longer than he’d like. When he begins to run out of suspects he wonders if the bomb was truly meant for him. Little Boy Tenor finds Nick investigating the murderer of a church choir’s star tenor, while at the same time his friend Ross asks him to discover the truth behind his lover, Earl Silver’s mysterious death. As he juggles the two cases, he becomes increasingly disturbed by what he learns.
Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step awaySoundtrack: Slipping Away
Artist: Moby
Album: Hotel
A bit strange to call a series set in a decade you lived through as historical, but I considered Boystown by award-winning author Marshall Thornton as such. My first series from the author, The Wyandot County Mysteries, was entertainingly bitchy, and another modern historical (if we can call it that) set in the 2000s.
The usual Regencies and Victorians are not working for me as of late, so I’m hoping to dive into more books set in the mid-century and later eras.
Boystown starts in 1980, with prequels set in 1979. It chronicles the life of ex-cop-turned-PI Nick Nowak. He’s 33 years old and in the prime of his life. He’s good at his job. His business is going well and he’s free of debts He lives in a garden apartment, a.k.a. basement apartment in downtown Chicago in the known queer neighborhood called Boystown. Every weekend, he works as a bouncer at a gay club owned by a friend.
The storytelling is one of the best and a top favorite in my reading history. Nick has a very compelling voice and a charismatic character. The books are written like episodes in a TV series. Also, Marshall Thornton has always been fantastic at flavoring his stories with period-specific events, culture, technology, and so on. They have a palpable patina of time and they always feel authentic and lived-in.
Nick’s cases intertwine with his private life, and threads from the previous books are continued or mentioned in the succeeding. There are many recurring characters or references to past events that Nick would follow up on or would impact the current story. We see Nick’s everyday habits and work routine, plus the more action-packed moments.
My favorite part is the cases. Almost all mystery series tend to default to murder as the crime, so I loved that Nick’s cases vary from background checks to missing persons to arson to car bombing, and sometimes protection for rock stars. I loved that they realistically portray the variety of work a PI handles.
And Nick’s one hell of a PI! He doesn’t give up until he’s satisfied, not even if his client feels the matter is already settled. He’s got wily investigation skills and is not above lying, impersonating someone, seducing the gullible, or breaking inside an apartment to get answers.
Nick knows he’s a looker and enjoys an active sex life. There is no shortage of people eager to throw themselves at him and Nick’s not inclined to say no. From informants he’s interviewing, to corporate lawyers, to friends with benefits, beat cops mistakenly apprehending him while undercover as a homeless man and even the very person he’s investigating, as well as orgies. A couple of times, he asked himself if he was giving off some kind of pheromones.
Nick is also pining for his ex, Daniel Laverty. They had a bad breakup after a homophobic attack that left Daniel with a broken cheekbone. Daniel wanted to report what happened, but Nick, then a closeted cop, refused.
Nick eventually develops a relationship with a closeted police detective, Bert Harker. Theirs is an open relationship, which means Nick still goes around fucking any willing body. Nick is also torn between Daniel, who recently reunited with him, and Bert, currently living with him. The series is not romance, and it didn’t make promises of a romance HEA, so the open relationships didn’t bother me.
What bothered me was the APPALLING lack of protection in all the sex scenes. There’s also some scenes where the characters take drugs. It was a wild, hedonistic era and Nick is in the thick of it. In contrast, contemporary MM books make it a point to mention rubbers or an exchange of health status.
Knowing what we know now of the 80s and the AIDs epidemic, it is heartbreaking that some of the characters here were among the early victims, and Nick and his friends have no clue yet of what is happening. It’s going to hit very close to home. I almost don’t want to read the succeeding books because the impact is going to crush Nick.
As mentioned earlier, Boystown is written as a continuous chronicle of Nick Nowak’s life and should be read in order. I had grand plans of reviewing the entire series until I learned there are 13 books. It’s a lot for me, so I’ll probably do three books at a time.
The first three books of Boystown opens a highly engrossing mystery series that captures a pivotal era through the eyes of a gay PI. Blending Chicago grit and 80s sex appeal with LGBTQ+ issues and noir mystery, these stories are authentic, steamy and as irresistable as Nick Nowak himself.
If you like my content, please consider using my Amazon affiliate links below to buy your copy of Boystown. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying Amazon purchases at no additional cost to you.
BOYSTOWN: Kindle
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RELEASE BLITZ: Dad Next Door by Willow Dixon (Giveaway)
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REVIEW: Not All Himbos Wear Capes by C. Rochelle
Villainous Things: Not All Himbos Wear Capes – C. Rochelle
PLEASE NOTE: Full list of Content & TWs can be found in the front of the book and at c-rochelle[dot]com.
Xander
Big City is supposedly the place where dreams come true. As someone just trying to live my life, I can tell you, it’s more like a recurring nightmare where dreams get c*ckblocked at every turn.
Especially if you’re a supervillain like me.
The irony is that I have zero powers, despite coming from purebred villain stock, but try telling that to Big City’s beloved hero, Captain Masculine.
This himbo is ruining my research, and if his firepower doesn’t kill me, the sight of him in Lycra surely will. Luckily—or unluckily, in my opinion—my bestie just signed me up for the Bangers dating app and found my perfect match.
If this isn’t the start of my villain arc, I don’t know what is.
Butch
It’s hard feeling like I have to wear a mask every day—that the only value I bring to the table is the sparkling image others have created for me.
Such is the life of being Captain Masculine, Big City’s greatest superhero. This is the existence I was destined for, and I will gladly defend this city against every threat to its people.
Except Doctor Antihero.
I’ve seen countless villains come and go, but something about Antihero intrigues me more than the usual hero-villain encounters should.
It’s because of him that I impulsively signed up for a dating app, hoping a meaningless fling with a local normie will help get my head back in the game. The truth is, what I really want is someone who sees me—the man behind the mask.
But that’s a luxury no superhero can afford.
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Not All Himbos Wear Capes is an MM romance between a superhero and a villain. Our men find other men in tight supersuits incredibly attractive. Sometimes, they keep these supersuits on while engaging in explicit extracurricular activities with each other (and sometimes they even use bad words!).
This is not your kid’s superhero book. This is Sin City and The Boys having a love child with extra spicy Spideypool and is meant for 18+ adults who can handle such things.
The Villainous Things series contains standalone books (each with HEAs) that feature interconnected characters and an overarching plot.
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*FULL LIST OF Content & TWs can be found in the front of the book and at c-rochelle[dot]com*
CONTENT & TROPES:
• MM romance
• Dual POV
• Superheroes/villains
• Grumpy/sunshine
• Star-crossed lovers + fated mates
• Lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers (yup)
• Hurt/comfort + found family
• D/s dynamic that’s more bedroom than lifestyle
• MM romance (in case you missed that part)
• Plus suspenseful plot + save-the-world epicness for pizazzPOTENTIAL TRIGGERS:
• Sweary dialogue
• Naughty irreverent humor
• Extremely morally gray characters with moments of psychotic ideation
• Extra spicy extracurricular activities (see inside book and c-rochelle[dot]com for specifics)
• Minor gore in villain lair and during hero/villain battle scenes
• Controlling + neglectful parents with some physical (superpowered) abuse
• Lack of autonomy + indentured servitude
• Restraints (not the fun kind)
• Detailed descriptions of humans’ negative effects on coastal wildlife (specifically with pollution and including a seagull autopsy with details of the contents of its stomach)
Heroism and villainy as a matter of perspective, or in this case, a matter of signing the contract, is a frequently explored theme in superhero stories.
Villainous Things, by C. Rochelle, is another take on the subject. The series opens with Not All Himbos Wear Capes, an enemies-to-lovers secret romance between Big City’s golden boy, the cheese-tastically named Captain Masculine, and Doctor Antihero, a member of the infamous villain clan, the Suarez family.
The world here is divided between normies and supes. The supes are considered different species and shouldn’t procreate with normies because their abilities might harm ordinary humans. They are expected to form strategic alliances with other prominent supe families to create more supes.
The supes are further divided between superheroes and supervillains. The heroes are backed by the government and signed contracts to protect the city from the bad guys.
Cap Masculine and Doc Antihero first met as Butch and Xander via an online dating app. They immediately hit it off on their first date. Still clueless of each other’s alter egos, they continued dating until things became serious between them.
Then Xander invited Butch to meet his family. Only for Butch to realize Xander is from the notorious Suarez clan, having recognized his sister as Ultraviolent, and his mother as Glacial Girl. Xander still remained the clueless loving boyfriend, while Butch tries to find the right time to tell him.
Also, his family has arranged for him to marry a girl from another famous superhero clan, treating Butch as nothing more than a breeding stud. His entire life has been mapped out since birth and Butch is used to following orders.
The plot starts simple enough as a secret identity romance, where the supposed villain shows his caring side and the hero discovers his kinkier desires. There’s also a grumpy/sunshine aspect, Xander being the growly top and Butch as the sunshiny himbo.
I’m not a fan of the romance because it’s mostly boring daddy/boy foreplay with cringy dirty talk. Outside the bedroom, they were okay, mostly just there as eyes to see the world through. In short, I don’t care for the MCs. I just like the things happening around them.
Because bigger things are happening than just a forbidden love affair. Cap Masculine’s blinders fell off, and he took a stand against the indentured servitude his famous superhero parents signed him in when he was born. As they and the rest of the superheroes have signed such contracts.
At this point, the plot became a convoluted game of political machinations, supe rights, family upheaval, and unlikely allies where power is challenged, and murders are committed to maintain the status quo.
I wished the Saurezes came on page much earlier because they were the more interesting characters. Xander has a complicated relationship with his family. He says they’re all psychopaths and stays away from their house. They appeared halfway in the story, and made things a hell of a lot more chaotic and exciting.
Apocalypto and Glacial Girl have five known children, Violencia, Wolfgang, Baltazar and twins, Gabriel and Andre. Xander is the secret baby because he didn’t show any superpowers. His high IQ gave him multiple PhDs and nifty inventions, which he used to save the ocean. These inventions were hijacked by his evil dad into dastardly gadgets.
Wolfgang, a.k.a. Hand of Death, practically stole the show, when he made his move to secure the Suarez family. One of the most powerful villains and a sly psycho who will protect his family at all costs, but is also surprisingly vulnerable, he’s my favorite character and happily, his book is next.
The rest of the books feature the male siblings and continue the overarching plot so the books must be read in order.
At first blush, Not All Himbos Wear Capes is a fun, raunchy take on the superhero trope. Then it goes grey and gritty the more we know about Big City and its secrets.
While not really saying anything new about heroism and villainy, it still gave us an intriguing world that is fun to explore through the eyes of its superheroes and villains. Overall, heroically kinky, villainously wears its heart on its sleeve.
Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bitsSoundtrack: Villain
Artist: Ado
Album: Ado’s Mitattemita Album
If you like my content, please consider using my Amazon affiliate links below to buy your copy of Not All Himbos Wear Capes. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying Amazon purchases at no additional cost to you.
NOT ALL HIMBOS WEAR CAPES: Kindle | Audiobook
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