I think this is my favorite sapphic historiacl romance that I’ve read so far. Jo has a lavender marriage with her husband Paul, and that generally works well but some things have led to her having more anxiety that he might divorce her. While that’s happening, she meets Emily, a doctor who might help AND the woman she falls for. They end up really connecting while writing letters to one another? And it’s all very sweet and very fun. This is the third in a series (the other two being achillean romances) so I’ll definitely be going back to read those as those characters made appearances and I loved them too!

This book is SO funny?? Like Violetta shows up with a (fake) story to try and get some money from Bertrice, and this woman is like okay but what if we just do a bunch of ridiculous stuff to RUIN my nephew’s life instead? And then they do things like hire a very bad choir to follow him around singing the Hallelujah Chorus??? Then we get a hard shift into a conversation about how society treats older women, whether they have money or not. Having a romance between two older women (69 and 73) was such a good change of pace, and look IDK what it’s like to be that age but idk I felt like Courtney Milan did a great job with it!

This story is about Sara (writer) and Diana and their relationship as Diana realizes she’s a trans woman, Sara realizes she’s bisexual, and they shift from a straight relationship to a very very queer one. Also there’s a cat!! The story is beautiful -- I was smiling through most of the time I read it, and the illustrations are SO STINKIN CUTE. I came out of this book immediately looking to see if Sara had written anything else because I LOVE her style.

My mission to read Cat Sebastian’s back catalogue is proving to be a very enjoyable one! I love love love when a romance has a strong enough side storyline that it could hold its own even if the romance hadn’t been there. The mystery that Jack was trying to solve in the middle of dealing with his feelings with Oliver? Fantastic. They worked together and their strengths and weaknesses balanced out so stinkin well and I love being able to root for their romance AND just general success with everything else.

I will say that I'm less into this audiobook narrator. I still had a good time but he's just generally less engaging than Joel Leslie, who I'm used to having as the narrator for Cat Sebastian.

3 major issues:

Ok ok ok I was not even going to read this book because of the title but I ended up having a pretty good time? Mateo is a porn actor who’s studying to become a therapist but he isn’t going to therapy and honestly that’s kind of the main conflict with the whole book cuz if our boy just learned to ya know, handle emotions properly, things would’ve been perfectly fine. Seeing Hawthorne fall in love was so much fun though and Mateo thankfully got his shit together (even though it isn’t mentioned that he’s going to therapy till the FINAL CHAPTER OF THE BOOK?!).

This particular book also gave me some moments of "ah yes this was not written by someone who actually knows what it's like to be a gay man" which isn't like, BAD, but when you have one guy like "omg now I get to teach you about frotting" it just...sounded like a woman talking about something she learned about while reading a fic or watching porn instead of ya know, two men who are about to have sex???? Lmao

Do not get me wrong overall I still had fun but in a very meh kind of way.

Okay this is the absolute slowest burn I’ve ever read? Like Wyatt has decided he’s in love with Easton by the time he’s like 15 and they don’t get together until their mid-30's. I had not been prepared for Easton’s wife to die in childbirth so FAIR WARNING for that, but it still takes like 12 years for them to get together even beyond that, so their get together doesn’t feel icky. It was not a perfect book, but I cried a LOT and thought their romance was lovely.

Hiding the critiques under spoiler tag:

So the way that Easton and Wyatt reunite after Wyatt has moved to Chicago is that Becca, Easton's wife, dies in childbirth. I personally don't think this was handled poorly and wasn't bothered by the "dead wife trope", however I also don't read a lot of books that utilize this as a plot point so it doesn't feel overdone for me. I know this isn't the case for a lot of folks, though, so maybe it is an overused thing.

At one point, Easton is thinking about the concept of demisexuality and how maybe that's him! But it never comes up again? So as much as I'd love to be like "yay, demi rep!" that doesn't feel quite accurate here since it's never explicitly stated. It felt like him exploring his sexuality and figuring that out was dropped for the sake of getting back to Wyatt pining.

Speaking of Wyatt's pining, him being in a full on relationship with Harrison and living with him and "trying to love him" but never actually loving him...really sucked? Like I put that the characters were lovable but it was behavior like that that led to me marking that there wasn't much character growth because that was some childish behavior.

Petition for Joel Leslie to narrate all mlm historical romances!! I’ve enjoyed this series so much and Two Rogues was an EXCELLENT way to wrap up a wonderful set of romances. Martin (grumpy) and Will (Grumpy At Martin) are just couple of sad boys who don’t think they deserve much of anything but they finally got their friends to lovers story together. Can be read as a standalone, but I think part of what made this one as good as it was is the buildup that you get from the first 2 books in the series.

This book is for anyone who is curious about learning more about all the different facets of asexuality. As someone who’s been doing a lot of exploring of asexuality lately, this was great for me but also brought up some really interesting points of discussion with my allo friends. The book was super engaging and provided a variety of perspectives. I did feel like it got repetitive at times? But a minor sin that doesn’t even require forgiveness. Also, Natalie Naudus’s narration was FANTASTIC and I need her to do more nonfiction.