Matthew reads, I guess...

  I’m not really one for making New Year’s resolutions, because I just don’t care, personally. But one thing I told myself that I wanted to start doing was reading more female-led queer books. Because, if I’m being honest, most of my bookshelf is male-led queer books. That’s simply down to the fact that I really only got the confidence to even read all these queer books a few years ago, and I figure, as a queer man myself, I’ll go with the male-led ones, as I’ll be more likely to see myself in them. But I’ve realised that I’m really limiting myself and, honestly, likely missing out on a shedload of amazing books by not reading female-led ones. So, this is a long-winded introduction to basically say I want to read more female-led queer books. The first of which is Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar. Immediately I want to include that this book comes with a content warning. The book itself mentions that it contains instances of racism, homophobia (specifically ...

  Well, apparently, I’m two for two now on dual-POV books written by two authors. It was Here’s to Us last post, and now we’re onto If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich. So, I’ve read Cale Dietrich’s other books, I believe he only has two, and I’ve read one of Sophie Gonzales’, but I don’t remember what happened in it. I know I liked it enough to keep it on my shelf, but I don’t remember what happened in it. Either way, like I mentioned above, today I’m talking about If This Gets Out . Also, if you want the video version of this post (CLICK HERE) Our “Hey, Miss Blurb” tells us that Ruben and Zach are two members of Saturday, one of the world’s biggest boybands. They’re teen heartthrobs on camera and besties off. However, their management is pressuring Ruben to stay in the closet, and that pressure is taking its toll and Zach is the only one he can confide in. The two come to rely on each other more and more during a European tour, and friendship evolves into ro...

  I’ll say, I am a fan of both Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, so the two of them writing together seemed like a perfect match for me. So, I did read What If It’s Us when it came out. To place it, it wasn’t my favourite book by either of them, but it also wasn’t my least favourite. It sits solidly in the middle for both authors. I’m pretty sure I even wrote about What If It’s Us in my MA dissertation. Still, today I’m talking about the sequel, Here’s to Us . I do quickly want to mention that this post will spoil the end of the prequel, so just be warned there. Also, if you want to video version of this post (CLICK HERE) The first thing our blurb says is, “How much can change in two years?” I remember at the end of the first book, Ben and Arthur didn’t end up together, because, for whatever reason, things just kept going wrong. But Miss Blurb says that Ben survived his first year or college but is feeling more stuck than ever. His writing partner, Mario, has been giving him S...

Welcome to: Another book that has been on Matthew’s radar for a while that he’s finally gotten around to reading. On today’s episode we will be talking about Jay’s Gay Agenda by Jason June. I don’t have anything that I immediately want to say, other than the cover of the book is really pretty, and I finished reading this literally on December 31 st 2021. Our good Judy, The Blurb, says that there’s one thing Jay Collier knows for sure – he’s a statistical anomaly – because he’s the only gay kid in his rural Washington town. His friends can’t stop talking about their heterosexual hookups and relationships while he can only dream of his firsts that he hopes to experience one day, his gay agenda. Then his family moves to Seattle, which I assumed the book was going to be set in, given that the Space Needle is on the cover, and when the family is in Seattle, he can make a start on this agenda. Then it’s your standard, life doesn’t go according to plan. Solid, from that, before I even sta...

  So, there are books that certain part of BookTok (the book community on TikTok) I see talking about a lot, and one of those is Red, White and Royal Blue (RWaRB). Now, I’ve already read that, and it’s not actually what I’m talking about today. No, the book I’m talking about is Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick. However, I bring up RWaRB since, and I don’t know whether it was an intentional choice or not, but the cover of Playing the Palace immediately reminded me of RWaRB. I normally include an image of the cover of the book I’m talking about, so you’ll see the cover of this book, and you can look up RWaRB for yourself, but you’ll see what I mean. Not only that, but Playing the Palace gave me very much the same concept as RWaRB : American gets into relationship with British royal. The only immediate difference is that in RWaRB,  it’s the son of the president of the US, and in Playing the Palace , it’s an event planner. Now, what also doesn’t help is how similar the royal...