Matthew reads, I guess...

  I’ll be 100% real, before I saw this book on the bookshelf of that gay bookshop in Affleck’s in Manchester, I had never actually heard about it until I picked it up off the shelf and read the blurb on the inside of the dust cover. I was literally looking at the books on display and looking at which ones I hadn’t read yet, and this was one of them. The blurb says that in 1986, Tommy Gaye is in love with his best friend, budding teen poet Renaldo Calabasas. But at the height of the AIDS crisis and amid the homophobia running rampant across America, Tommy can never share his feelings. Then one night, Renaldo is struck by lightning. And he emerges from the storm a very different boy. In 2044, Herron High student Pris Devrees jolts awake after having a strange nightmare about a boy named Tommy and a house in the neighbourhood the locals call “The Murder House.” When she ventures to the house to better understand her vivid dreams, she happens up an old self-help book that she soon re...

  This is one of those books that I have no cutesy way of saying how I found, other than the fact I’d say I’m an Adiba Jaigirdar fan, that’s it. Still, today I’m talking about The Dos and Donuts of Love . Our blurb says that Shireen Malik is still reeling from a breakup when she hears that she’ll be a contestant on a TV baking competition. As well as the prize money, she hopes the buzz will bring some attention to her parents’ beloved donut shop. But things grow complicated when Shireen learns that her ex-girlfriend, Chris, is also on the show. Then there’s Niamh, a fellow contestant who Shireen finds herself quickly growing close to. As the competition heats up, Shireen will have to put her feelings aside if she wants a sweet victory… In the first chapter Shireen is in bed with a bunch of donuts, slay, because she’s reeling from her recently breakup, not slay. She ends up video calling her friend, Fatima, who’s gone to Bangladesh, and then by the end of the chapter, she’s been o...