Matthew reads, I guess...

Today I’m talking about Another First Chance by Robbie Couch. This book has come to me since I know for a fact that I’ve read all of Couch’s other books. There are a few authors that I’ll probably read just about anything they write just because I like the vibe of their writing. You know how you can feel a distinct voice, or vibe, when someone writes. Couch is one of those authors for me. The blurb says it’s been one year since eighteen-year-old River Lang’s best friend died in a car accident. And every day since, he’s had to pass by the depressing billboard that appeared as a result: a texting and driving PSA that reduces Dylan to a cautionary tale. Dylan was so much more than a statistic, though, and River hates that everyone in town seem to have forgotten. When he’s caught improving (aka vandalising) Dylan’s billboard, River is blackmailed into joining the Affinity Trials – a research study that’s observing teens who are “struggling socially”. As soon as he arrives, River’s thrown ...

  Guys! Sound the yaoi alarm, because I have read what? More yaoi. Exactly what I deserve really. Today it’s Delivery for You by Teku Rin. Something I will quickly say, when it comes to BL and manga, I think the art style dictates how into something I’ll be or how interested I will be. I don’t want to be reading something where the characters look weird – and thankfully they didn’t here. The blurb says that Izumi Fukaya is a shut-in bachelor whose only joy in life is seeing the handsome delivery man who drops off his packages every day. Every time Ryouta Tsuchiya arrives with another delivery, the contents of the boxes are only half the excitement. Determined to make himself seem cooler to match Tsuchiya, Fukaya has yet to realise that Tsuchiya already thinks he’s the whole package – and they’re both about to find out the already have everything they want right in front of them! The very first thought I had when I saw the concept of this BL was that it reminded me of the side co...

So I’m talking about Vesuvius by Cass Biehn – a book I had previously never even heard of, however, as I’m writing this first part of this post, I have a week off of work and am going to four different concerts so have ended up in a bunch of different cities and bookshops. Anyway, I got this from Gay’s the Word and read the entirety of it on train journeys, so is what I’m going to say about it going to be more erratic than usual? Perhaps. The blurb says that clever thief Felix seizes an opportunity to steal a helmet in Pompeii, but soon discovers it is not only a priceless artefact but a relic of the god Mercury. Loren, a temple attendant, is plagued by nightmares of Pompeii’s destruction. Nightmares that feature Felix, who stumbles into Loren’s temple as an earthquake rocks the city. They have mere days to uncover Felix’s ties to the helmet and to Loren’s own dreams if they have any hope of saving Pompeii from the boiling fury of Mount Vesuvius. The boys must piece together their fat...

  Hello, today I’m talking about a book that has been sat on one of my wishlists for I couldn’t tell you how long. It’s Always the Almost by Edward Underhill. Again, couldn’t tell you how long it has been sat on my wishlist. I think it was one of those that I added one day when I was looking for something to read, and then I just kept happening to choose other things. The blurb says that sixteen-year-old trans boy Miles Jacobson has two New Year’s resolutions. 1. Win back his ex-boyfriend (and star of the football team) Shane McIntyre. 2. Finally beat his slimy arch-nemesis at the Midwest’s biggest classical piano competition. But that’s not going to be so easy. For one thing, Shane broke up with Miles two weeks after Miles came out as trans, and now Shane’s stubbornly ignoring, even when they literally bump into each other. Plus, Miles’s new, slightly terrifying piano teacher keeps telling him that he’s playing like he “doesn’t know who he is” – whatever that means. Then Miles ...

Hey… so the last Trope Talk I posted was back in April 2023… I did not mean for it to take this long for me to work on or put out the next one. It just sort of happened. Oopsie! Truth be told, I had a bit of a crisis with what I wanted to do, content-wise, and realised I wanted to do more than just post what are essentially book reports – I wanted more personality essentially. Will I be able to get that across through the written word? Hopefully. I do tend to type more or less the exact way I think, so there’s some lore about me for you. I do also want to say now that this isn’t going to be a deep dive into the trope by any means, either. I did look back to my original Trope Talk and saw that I immediately started gushing about fake dating, which I’ll be real, hasn’t changed. Still love that bitch. Bury your gays? Bury your gays is my mortal enemy when it comes to tropes. Actually, I say that, I’m sure there are tropes that I don’t know about because they come in genres I tend not to r...