Posts

Showing posts from January, 2025

My Fair Brady is the easy romance I needed

Image
  Today I’m talking about My Fair Brady by Brian D. Kennedy, author of A Little Bit Country. I remember reading the latter, and remember it being about people working in a Dolly Parton-esque theme park – or something to that effect. But this is really all just to say that after Camp Damascus and Desert Echoes , I felt like I wanted something that was just going to be straight up romance and wouldn’t need me to use my brain too hard. Hence why I’ve gone with this. The blurb says that Wade Westmore is used to being in the spotlight. So when he’s passed over for the lead in the spring musical, it comes as a major blow – especially when the role goes to his ex-boyfriend, Reese, who dumped him for being too self-involved. Shy sophomore Elijah Brady is used to being overlooked. Forget not knowing his name – most of his classmates don’t even know he exists. So when he joins the stage crew for the musical, he seems destined to blend into the scenery. When the two have a disastrous back...

Moving on after loss in Desert Echoes

Image
  This post is about Desert Echoes by Abdi Nazemian. And I think this might actually only be the second book by him that I’ve read. It’s the case of I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to another one of his books. But I found this one in Gay’s the Word down in London. I bought it the same time I got Legend of the White Snake . The blurb says that fifteen-year-old Kam is head over heels for Ash, the boy who swept him off his feet. But his family and best friend, Bodie, are worried. They struggle to understand Ash. He also has a habit of disappearing, at times for days. When Ash asks Kam to join him on a trip to Joshua Tree, the two of them walk off into the sunset… but only Kam returns. Two years later, Kam is still left with a hole in his heart and too many unanswered questions. So it feels like fate when a school trip takes him back to Joshua Tree. In the desert, Kam must reckon with the truth of his past relationship – and the possibility of opening himself up t...

Religious trauma, bugs, and demons in Camp Damascus

Image
  Today I’m talking about Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. I actually bought this book when I went to Gay’s the Word the time that I bought Legend of the White Snake . This is one of those books where I’d never heard of it, but I picked it up because the cover looked cool, that’s it. The blurb says that love is real. Demons are real. Kill the demons. Camp Damascus, nested in the Montana wilderness, is the world’s most effective gay conversion camp. Parents send their children from around the world to experience the program’s 100% success rate. But this story isn’t about that. This is about Rose Darling, a God-fearing young lady who can’t stop puking up flies. It’s about her parents who ignore her visions of an eerie woman with sagging, pale skin who watches from the woods. It’s about the desires deep inside Rose that don’t seem to make any sense, and her waking nightmares that are beginning to feel more like memories. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a little bit about Camp Damascus aft...