justinlife's Reviews (916)

I enjoyed this book. 

It’s very Klune. He has a style that works for me and sometimes he used phrases that repeatedly between works. It’s not bad, but it’s recognizable. 

This book is steeped in 90s nostalgia and he does a great job of showing a non traditional road trip story set in the 90s. So much felt familiar- the kookie talk radio, the x-files of it all, the Heaven’s Gate cult. All of its here and used in ways that satisfies the reader. 

If you’re wanting to get into Klune’s work, I don’t think this is the one to start with. It’s a lot of fun, but I think familiarizing yourself with his style before going in on this one might be better. 

Listen, I wanted to like this. I really did. I chose it for book club and when I finished, this book made me question my judgement. 

The book is fine. It’s ok. It feels like it was supposed to be a romcom in the 90s. The book follows Max Moody as his best friend asks him to be her best man for her wedding. He’s not the kind of gay that enjoys that stuff but they’re like life long besties so he agrees. Her fiancé’s gay brother is the other best men. This leads Max to question himself, his friendship, and his relationships. 

The book feels like a specific person living in NYC will LOVE this book. The characters were miserable and selfish and I couldn’t understand why anyone wanted to around the other. It felt like it the book is marketed as a romance when it really should’ve been about the changing of friendships. 

I can’t in good faith recommend it. It wasn’t for me.

This book is dumb. Dumb in the best way. 

It’s a sequel to the Nightmare before Kissmas and the joy that I wanted from that book, I got from this. It’s ridiculous, magical, and fun. 

We follow Nick, one of the princes of Christmas, as he’s dealing with the fallout from the first book and trying to find his place in the new world. When they realize someone is stealing from Christmas, Nick takes it on himself to investigate, which leads him to the Prince of St. Patrick’s day, Lochlan. (The way I smiled writing that sentence) This is a little enemies to lovers and it’s low key. Raasch succeeds in knowing exactly what she’s doing and embracing it. The dialogue is fun, the friendships entertaining, and the love story is cute. 

I want an entire holiday royalty series. Inject it in my veins. If you’re looking for the fluffiest fluff, give this series a 

This book was not what I expected. My original thought was this was young adult and while it’s about young adults, the writing was so good and felt like it was written for adults. 

If character development is more your thing, then I highly recommend picking this book up. It’s atmospheric and lush in its descriptions of 50s queer San Francisco. The book focuses on Chinese American Lily as she enters her senior year and realizes she’s not like the other girls. She begins to explore that side of her in the midst of the Red Scare and McCarthyism. 

The book takes its time and lingers in moments. It allows the reader to walk with the characters and see what they see. That being said, there’s a tension that lingers between/c it’s the 50s and we know how that period was for queer people. It takes awhile for the main drama to happen and when it does, it isn’t as stressful as I thought it’d be. Lo handles it with grace. 

A complicated book about a complicated time. Worth a read. 

This book. It’s not what I was expecting. I want other people to read it, but it felt less like a romance and more like a regular new adult novel. 

With a title like this, I was expecting it to be a little campy and light, but instead we have a realistic portrayal of living in America as an undocumented person. Alejandro is undocumented and in a job he hates. His roommate and best friend Kenny offers to marry him to get his citizenship. Hijinks ensue. 

Instead of a romance, Reyes shows us what it’s like being undocumented- the stress, the powerlessness of it all. It’s difficult and one point in the book I was like “this is someone’s reality and we as a society are ok with it.” 

I highly recommend it. It’s cute and a bit predictable. You know the villains from the beginning and Reyes doesn’t torture her audience. Things are stressful, but not awful.

I liked this one, but I didn’t looooooove it. 

I appreciate what Mondell is doing for linguistics and her approach to it opens the conversation for the importance of language studies. Her approach is a bit too casual for me with this. 

It’s a good a book and provides a solid information base and introduction to how language has the ability to manipulate thousands of people. She goes through some big cults, discusses mlm schemes, exercise gurus, and shows why discounting vocabulary and language only serves to hurt. Being aware of how and when words and phrases are used helps give us a defense when used against us. 

I did learn a lot, though. I think her casual tone provides the reader a safety net to listen. I’m not sure it’s needed. I wish it was a smidge more academic. 

I really enjoyed this. It’s a story about how, in the immortal words of Tatiana from Drag Race All Stars 2, what you see, isn’t always the truth. 

Dylan and Derek are temporary neighbors and Derek hates Dylan. Due to situations beyond their control, they end up having to stay together. Slowly they each see what the other hasn’t been showing and start to develop feelings.,

This book does a great job of exploring how trauma and mental health affect people and those around them. I appreciated that it offers ways to work through it and allows audience members the possibility to see themselves. 

It does wrap up a little too neatly and quickly but there are some standout moments where you see two people be there for each other and grow to see each other. 

 I really liked this book. 

It felt like a writing experiment and it was fun to read. North Woods takes place in a spot in the hills of Massachusetts over hundreds of years. It follows generations of people and interweaves the past with the present. Mason succeeds in giving each story a different voice with different feelings all while honoring his past sections. 

To me, it was like if Cloud Atlas met If These Walks Could Talk. Not every chapter is a winner and Mason’s language and vocabulary changes as the centuries go by. That is to say, the first half of the book is a bit more challenging. 

Overall though it was well done and it was fun to read. 

I liked this book. 

It wasn’t great but it wasn’t awful. Young 22/23 year old hockey players and coaches figuring out how to maintain privacy while also solving each other. 

The characters are (mostly) consistent with the first one. My only issue was the problems these characters were having were of their own choosing and they know it too. They put these unnecessary rules in place and then get mad. 

The ending is sweet and the audience dies root for the characters throughout.

White gay history written by a white gay man. 

It's not bad, in fact, it's very informative, but I'm also a white gay man so my perspective is limited. There's a lot to be learned from the pre-stonewall era of the gay liberation movement. This book mainly follows Frank Kameny, who some refer to as the grandfather of the gay rights movement, in his quest for equal protections and organizing to obtain that. 

Cervini paints a picture of 40s-60s that needs to be shown and understood. He provides a path to understanding the different approaches from gay men and lesbians. He shows the extent that respectability politics can get you. 

The book is thorough and mostly enjoyable. It's fascinating in these times to read how bad our government has been and how invasive we can be. It was strangely reassuring. Secret police? Firing from government positions for little reason? spying on organizations? Yeah... we did that. A lot of Americans like to look outside of the country for comparisons to the current climate when we really just have to look at our own history. 

The book does lack color, it lacks queer minority perspectives. Not that I blame the author completely. I just don't know how much overlap and intersectionality was available at the time. There are some black people who he does mention but it's not much. 

Overall, though, it's a really good history about a period of time where sexuality was shifting to identity instead of history.