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NEW RELEASE BLITZ: Rocking the Boat by C. Koehler (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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AUDIO REVIEW: Out On The Serve by Lane Hayes
Out in College: Out On The Serve – Lane Hayes
Roommates to friends to lovers…
Elliot-
I need a roommate fast. Even a temporary one. Beggars can’t be choosers. Going pro after graduation has been intense, and time is precious. Thankfully, Braden seems cool. He’s a little quirky…and very sexy. Of course, I would never get involved with a roommate. That’s a bad idea. Isn’t it?
Braden-
Moving to Long Beach seems like a no brainer. It’ll be a perfect chance to wind down before grad school and a nice respite from my folks. Plus, my new roommate is a great guy. A little messy, but sweet. Gotta admit, I like him more than I should. And we’re off to a strange start when a mutual friend hooks me up with his ex. Elliot’s the one I want, but going from friends to lovers is a risk. We could end up out on the serve…or we could win it all.
Out on the Serve is a low-angst MM, bisexual romance starring two roommates, one neat, one messy, beach volleyball, a lot of sand, and a little summer fun. This story is part of the Out in College series but can be read as a stand-alone.
Lane Hayes spun the well-loved roommates-to-lovers trope into a fun and sweet story with two MCs that were opposites but synced so well with each other.
New roommates Elliot and Braden get to know each other’s quirks as they deal with their mutual attraction, difficult teammates, theater dreams, meddling friends and last hurrahs before September comes and put an end to everything.
Elliot is the goofy, messy one who leaves sand all over their floor while Braden is a neat freak who alphabetizes their pasta. Both men were out as bi and while Elliot’s hippie mom was more than okay with that, Braden’s conservative Catholic mom was in denial.
The evolution from roommates to friends to lovers was fantastic! I really liked how the two men worked around their differences and just came together naturally even if at first, they had to fight their insane attraction to each other. For the sake of being roommates and friends. But even they couldn’t deny their sizzling chemistry!
Conflict came in the form of a misguided attempt to boost popularity, a fiasco brought about by Elliot’s volleyball partner, Gus and their annoying friend Sophie. Braden also had things to say to his mom.
Thankfully, the book avoided the usual pitfalls. There were no unnecessary dramas and the pacing was smooth and fast. It also it resolved things in a sensible manner, something many of us highly appreciated. It might not have the grandest grand gesture moment but it definitely hits you right in the kokoro!
From start to finish, the story had me rooting for Elliot and Braden. And though it began as a summer hook-up, there were no doubts that theirs was a forever thing.
This is my first book from the Out in College series. Many characters from the other books make appearances and my interest was piqued. I loved meeting Elliot’s friend, Colby and his boyfriend Sky, and Braden’s ex, Phoenix. Max, Phoenix’s boyfriend gets a mention. Many of the characters were likable except Sophie and Gus.
The audiobook was narrated by Michael Dean. I’ve always liked his narration. Although here, I felt his voices for younger 20-somethings were a bit too mature for their age. Dean makes great voices for the age range of 30s and older. Other than this niggle, I think he made the book even more enjoyable with his energetic reading style and well-acted dialogues.
Overall, Lane Hayes served up another win in this delightful story of sports, sand and summer romance. If the beach is your happy place, this book will definitely take you there.
P.S.
Thank you to IndiGo and Audible for giving me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Review of Lane Hayes books here.
Rating:
4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bitsSoundtrack: Wait For Me
Artist: Kings of Leon
Album: Mechanical Bull
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REVIEW: Antisocial by Heidi Cullinan
Antisocial – Heidi Cullinan
A single stroke can change your world.
Xander Fairchild can’t stand people in general and frat boys in particular, so when he’s forced to spend his summer working on his senior project with Skylar Stone, a silver-tongued Delta Sig with a trust fund who wants to make Xander over into a shiny new image, Xander is determined to resist. He came to idyllic, Japanese culture-soaked Benten College to hide and make manga, not to be transformed into a corporate clone in the eleventh hour.
Skylar’s life has been laid out for him since before he was born, but all it takes is one look at Xander’s artwork, and the veneer around him begins to crack. Xander himself does plenty of damage too. There’s something about the antisocial artist’s refusal to yield that forces Skylar to acknowledge how much his own orchestrated future is killing him slowly…as is the truth about his gray-spectrum sexuality, which he hasn’t dared to speak aloud, even to himself.
Through a summer of art and friendship, Xander and Skylar learn more about each other, themselves, and their feelings for one another. But as their senior year begins, they must decide if they will part ways and return to the dull futures they had planned, or if they will take a risk and leap into a brightly colored future—together.
Wow! Just wow!
Antisocial by Heidi Cullinan reminds me of my weaboo phrase once upon a time ago when i profess undying love of Japan, colored my hair and dress up like a third rate shounen anime character. Nowadays,i still love Japan but i have significantly tone down the clothes and hair to generic. I enjoyed all the manga and anime references found in book the as well as the various trivia on Japanese culture but when Xander started using broken Japanese as come-ons, I thought it was time to reel all that Japanese kink in.
This book also reminds me of Amy Tasukada’s works. Both authors are fangirls of Japanese culture and were quite heavy handed in using it in their books but while Tasukada did manga-in-novel form style and had the sense to use Japanese characters, Cullinan did more of the blatant objectification and fetishizing of the culture, mostly white boys fapping to anything Japanese they encounter. There wasn’t any single Japanese character in the entire story. The dead Japanese professor does not count, he was off page and smacks of tokenism.
The novel started out strong and I enjoyed the first half of the book. Mostly the part where Skylar was pursuing Xander. That was squee-tastic! I liked Xander more when he was grumpy and Skyler when he was Silverstoning his way into Xander’s life. Then they were a couple and the book turned out to be one of those ace books where the ace agonizes about being an ace then undergoes some sort of sexual awakening with the help of the allosexual partner. I know each ace have different experiences but I don’t like that trope because it seemed to cater more to the allosexuals rather than accepting the asexuals for what they are. I also don’t like having an ace character hating himself and thinking there’s something wrong with him. If that was not bad enough, the author ripped a page out of Bakuman wherein Skylar worked as a writer and Xander as an artist in a manga because one can write but can’t draw and the other can draw but can’t write just like in
Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s famous manga. Ok, I’m out! I can’t take any of this shit anymore!
DNF
P.S.
I really wanted to like this but I’m sorry, it was a disaster.
For better books on the ace spectrum, I recommend the hilarious How To Be a Normal Person by TJ Klune and the utterly adorable, beyond brilliant His Quiet Agent by Ada Maria Soto.
Rating:
2 Stars – it’s a struggle to finish the damn book
Soundtrack: To Be Alone
Artist: Hozier
Album:(source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35652776-antisocial)
