Tag Archives: m/m romance

Matchmaking Beyond the Veil

Book Review of Matchmaking Beyond the Veil, by Mara Townsend

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I’ve had Matchmaking Beyond the Veil, by Mara Townsend, for a while. I think I picked it up as an Amazon freebie.

Description from Goodreads:

Endure the company of his rival…or suffer ghostly retaliation.

Emery Belmont is a snarky, uptight realist who likes his life ordinary. Like any skeptic, he’s content using mundane explanations to write off signs of paranormal activity. That’s no longer an option when the spirit haunting his house wrecks his new kitchen, forcing Emery closer to facing the supernatural truth. Desperate for a new handyman, he unknowingly hires his hot ex-rival from high school to fix it. Paxton Santos, Emery’s former lacrosse team captain, followed in his father’s footsteps to take over the family business. Annoyingly, Emery requires his talented hands more than he needs to keep Paxton out of his life. However, getting Paxton to leave after the repairs may prove difficult with the meddlesome ghost taking a shine to him, which Paxton seems to take in his grating, good-natured stride, remaining irritatingly unruffled by numerous weird occurrences.

Emery is bombarded by mysterious paranormal hijinks, keeping Paxton at arm’s length, and deciphering things that aren’t quite what they seem. There’s nothing Emery hates more than an unfinished puzzle. In his determination to solve this one, Emery reluctantly opens himself up to new possibilities all while trying to remain firmly rooted in life the way he prefers it—orderly, logically explainable, and, above all else, ghost-free.

Join Emery and Paxton as they face off with a spirit that has no limits to how far it will go to push them together, enduring locked doors, faulty plumbing, and sharing a bed. Together they are determined to navigate their way out of this mess using any means necessary to send the ghost packing. Will they make it out of the traps awaiting them before their pesky tormenter gets any other ideas to make things worse and further blur the line between them?

Review:

Soooo, I hated this book. That’s a pretty blunt, but true statement. I finished by force of will alone and I frequently felt like I would never reach the end. The problem was that I simply HATED the main character. Emery was selfish, snobbish, and self-centered. And he was just as selfish, snobbish, and self-centered at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. He didn’t even grow as a person or character. The fact that the Paxton was too much of a kind himbo to realize Emery was actually being cruel doesn’t make Emery’s abusive behavior less horrendous. And Paxton was a gem. I didn’t want to see him saddled with Emery in the least.

Then there were the completely graceless changes of mind on Emery’s part. He spends his whole life hating his high school rival (who holds on to shit like that) and then SUDDENLY out of nowhere decides it was all one-sided and in his head. What’s more, he thinks Paxton is the same as always. So, kind and generous and giving? If that’s how he’s always been, how am I supposed to believe anyone (except maybe a selfish, snobbish, and self-centered asshat) would think him the machiavellian villain Emery was supposed to have believed him to be. It was 100% unbelievable. The transition between never being willing to enter a relationship and desperately wanting one with Paxton was just as sudden. And the reason Emery never again wanted a relationship was never addressed, despite being harped on forever.

If you’re hoping for some good paranormal fun, don’t look here. It doesn’t even enter the book until the halfway mark and then it’s ridiculous. All in all, I am really glad to be done with this book and I will not be continuing the series.

Book Review: Boyfriend Material, by Alexis Hall

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I pre-orded a copy of Boyfriend Material, by Alexis Hall. (Though it must not have been through someone participating in the pre-order swag pack because I never got the activity book. No biggy, I’m not going to complain about not getting something for free, but sad face all the same.)

boyfriend materialDescription from Goodreads:

Wanted:
One (fake) boyfriend
Practically perfect in every way

Luc O’Donnell is tangentially–and reluctantly–famous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father he’s never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad’s making a comeback, Luc’s back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.

To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationship…and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He’s a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and he’s never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.

But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And that’s when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Don’t ever want to let them go.

Review:

Not my favorite Alexis Hall book, but still very sweet. I’ll start with what I liked, which was everything except for two particular things. I loved Oliver with a passion that frightens me a little. I liked Lucien fine, but Oliver shook me. I liked the supportive groups of friends who tease and mock one another. I laughed a lot. And Hall writes queer books for queer readers. In a world full of MM romance written by women for women, that’s a gift (and I say that as a woman).

The two things that held me back from giving this 5 stars were kind of amorphous. One, Hall loves himself some messy heroes. Which is fine. I like messy heroes too. But I have somewhat limited patience for them. The reason is that so often, in their mess-a-tude, they slip over into cruelty towards those who care for them and I sometimes have a hard time forgiving them for it. Luc did that here. I suppose toward the end Oliver did too. But it was Luc I had trouble forgiving because it felt like a pattern with him.

And two, while I laughed a lot, some of the characters played for humor went overboard. Most of the aristocratic characters are unbelievable buffoons. I would have liked this aspect a lot more if it had been pulled back a little bit and was a tad more believable.

All in all, I call this a success in the more general sense. I did enjoy the last half more than the first half, but on the whole, it’s a winner for me. I’ll close with a humous personal anecdote. For a while, in the beginning, I was driving myself absolutely crazy because I was certain that I remembered another of Hall’s books with an Oliver in it and thought there might be a crossover. But I couldn’t figure out which book. I suspected For Real, but it seemed unlikely that Oliver would be into BDSM. Finally, a friend (P.), who has all the book on kindle started simply opening them one by one and searching Oliver. I was just deciding that I’d made the whole thing up when she messaged me that there is in fact an Oliver in In Vino, but it’s a completely different one, no crossover. What a relief to discover, at least, that my brain didn’t just decide to make it up and taunt me with it.

wild sky

Book Review: Wild Sky, by Zaya Feli

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I received an ARC copy of Wild Sky, by Zaya Feli, through A Novel Take.

Description from Goodreads:

Tauran Darrica has been retired from the Valreus Sky Guard for four years following the Battle of the Broken Wings that resulted in the death of his dragon. Now, all Tauran wants to do is spend his days forgetting the past and gambling his way to an unsteady income.

So when his old general from the Sky Guard hunts Tauran down to request his help with staving off the increasingly aggressive wild dragon population, Tauran refuses. But a fire ruins his rented room and leaves him without a place to stay, and Tauran finds himself on the road to Valreus, after all.

Tauran is determined to stay as far away from dragons as he can get, but a starry-eyed young man from Sharoani, land of the wild dragons, might just ruin his plans.

Kalai Ro-Ani has spent his life watching the stars, knowing he could never reach them. With his wild dragon Arrow, he sets out for the city of Valreus in the hope of building himself a better future than he could have stuck at the foot of the Kel Visal dragon temples.

But nobody told Kalai that only the Sky Guard is allowed to own dragons, so when Arrow kills a guard in Kalai’s defense, it looks like his adventure might be over before it can begin. But a chance encounter at the old Valreus archive offers Kalai the future he’d been hoping for. In the span of a single day, he has a home, a job, and a purpose.

In Valreus, something much bigger falls into his lap – along with a tall and striking Valrean man with a rather strange disposition.

Review:

I generally enjoyed this a lot. I thought the pacing was a little inconsistent, making it feel overly long at times, the plot progression depended on too many coincidences, and that the two main characters were a little too perfect, especially in their dealing with one another. However, outside of that, I loved the dragons; thought the plot engaging, liked the characters and world, and appreciated the slow-burn romance. I’d be more than happy to read more books by Feli, be it in this series or another.