Book Boyfriend
Book Boyfriend by Kris Ripper is $2.99! This is a bookish, gay contemporary romance. Ripper’s books have been routinely recommending in the comments and by Tara. However, this one isn’t rated as highly as some of Ripper’s others on Goodreads.
A secret crush leads to not-so-secret romance in this delightful romantic comedy from Kris Ripper
There are three things you need to know about Preston “PK” Kingsley:
1) He’s a writer, toiling in obscurity as an editorial assistant at a New York City publishing house.
2) He is not a cliché. No, really.
3) He’s been secretly in love with his best friend, Art, since they once drunkenly kissed in college.When Art moves in with PK following a bad breakup, PK hopes this will be the moment when Art finally sees him as more than a friend. But Art seems to laugh off the very idea of them in a relationship, so PK returns to his writing roots—in fiction, he can say all the things he can’t say out loud.
In his book, PK can be the perfect boyfriend.
Before long, it seems like the whole world has a crush on the fictionalized version of him, including Art, who has no idea that the hot new book everyone’s talking about is PK’s story. But when his brilliant plan to win Art over backfires, PK might lose not just his fantasy book boyfriend, but his best friend.
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We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!The Ghost Bride
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo is $1.99! This is a mixture of historical fiction, fantasy, and romance. The Ghost Bride. It’s also been made into a Netflix adaptation that I’m super curious about!
‘One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride…’
Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.
Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.
After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!The Wolf of Oren-Yaro
The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso is $2.99! Ellen wrote a great review of this one, giving it a B-:
The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso presents a strong entry in the annals of badass fantasy heroines in the form of Queen Talyien of Jin-Sayeng.
A queen of a divided land must unite her people, even if they hate her, even if it means stopping a ruin that she helped create. A debut epic fantasy from an exciting new voice.
“I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.”
Born under the crumbling towers of Oren-yaro, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves that nearly tore her nation apart. Her upcoming marriage to the son of her father’s rival heralds peaceful days to come.
But his sudden departure before their reign begins fractures the kingdom beyond repair.
Years later, Talyien receives a message, urging her to attend a meeting across the sea. It’s meant to be an effort at reconciliation, but an assassination attempt leaves the queen stranded and desperate to survive in a dangerous land. With no idea who she can trust, she’s on her own as she struggles to fight her way home.
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We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Cooking with Mary Berry
Cooking with Mary Berry by Mary Berry is $1.99! Though Mary Berry is known for her baking prowess, this cookbook focuses on savory cooking with a few sweets thrown in for good measure. Readers found the recipes pretty straightforward to understand, while others found some of the recipes to be rather British – whatever that means.
150 everyday recipe favorites from the star judge of the ABC series The Great Holiday Baking Show and the PBS series The Great British Baking Show.
Cooking with Mary Berry covers a broad selection of recipes-brunch ideas, soups, salads, appetizers, mains, sides, and desserts-drawing on Mary’s more than 60 years in the kitchen. Many, like her French Onion Soup, Steak Diane, and Cinnamon Rolls, are familiar classics, but all have been adapted to follow Mary’s prescription for dishes that are no-fuss, practical, and foolproof. Step-by-step instructions, tips, and tricks make following in the footsteps of Britain’s favorite chef easy, and full-color photographs of finished dishes provide inspiration along the way.
Perfect for cooks who are just starting out-and anyone who loves Mary Berry-the straightforward yet special recipes in Cooking with Mary Berry will prove, as one reviewer has said of her recipes, “if you can read, you can cook.”
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Needed to pop in to say I adored The Ghost Bride. I love her descriptions and how the story unfolds. The Netflix adaptation is a bit more inspired by the book, but I enjoyed that too. Also enjoyed Choo’s Night Tiger.
I loved Choo’s Night Tiger but haven’t read The Ghost Bride yet–sounds like a good time to pick that up…
My mother-in-law got me a a dessert cookbook as a present once that was clearly originally for the UK market and had been re-edited. . . unevenly. The American publisher had gone through the book and switched out the spellings and the metric measurements for imperial ones, but had left “pecan pie” and “apple pie” in the “foreign and exotic desserts” section. It was a decent cookbook and fascinating to look at. A lot of recipes needed a pudding mold which wasn’t something I was about to go out and buy, but I’m sure that non-Usians have to deal with that sort of cultural food mismatch all the time.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand the UK love of beetroot.
Todd
So you don’t fancy bright pink (?pepto-bismol pink?) risotto? 😉
@Todd: my English mother always had cans of beets on hand. It was her trick to make a salad “fancy”! I like roasted beets, but I learned very quickly that unless you want pink fingers for several days, always wear gloves when preparing them.
I enjoyed Book Boyfriend (m/nb contemp romance) but it’s definitely a departure for Kris Ripper and most def not for every reader. Read the sample first.
Here’s a bit from my GR review:
4.5 stars or B+/A-
I enjoyed this very meta and silly m/nb queer romance much more than I expected to. It took me a while to relax into the story and warm up to the (completely clueless) narrator but once I did, I was all in. I loved how it set up and then skewered genre expectations without making me feel dumb.
This is a romance novel about a character who writes a romance novel about how much he loves his best friend, an avid romance reader (instead of like, actually talking to them). And how his attempt to act out the grand gesture trope backfires spectacularly in his actual life. And about the differences between acceptable behavior in a “book boyfriend” and an actual human boyfriend or potential boyfriend.
I think your enjoyment will depend on how much you enjoy / can handle being in the narrator’s chaotic, anxious and stream of consciousness brain. It’s a lot. He’s a lot – an under-achieving 26 year old who is at least aware that his privilege is allowing him time to figure out things like emotions and adulthood.
In a lot of ways it reminds me of Alexis Hall’s Something Fabulous – they’re very different books but they’re both smartly satirical and also deeply ridiculous romances written by authors who seem to genuinely love the genre while seeing and poking at some of the flaws.
I’ve been reading Kris Ripper for years and it is such a pleasure to see zir get more attention and success and also continue to grow as an author and to take risks. This feels quite different from zir previous books in some ways – it’s much more satirical and meta. But a lot of zir strengths shine through – particularly writing about queer community and queer characters that feel like real people. Ze isn’t always great at relationship development, particularly in zir single POV books, and that is an issue in this book too. But I didn’t mind because I enjoyed the rest of the story so much.
I think the link to the cookbook is malfunctioning…
Maybe there is something to synchronicity: Today’s Eat Voraciously blog from G. Daniela Galarza of The Washington Post has a recipe for a beet and arugula salad with spiced yogurt. In the blog she quotes a colleague who says “Beets can be so divisive. Some people love them. And other people are wrong.”
I never liked beets as a child, because they tasted like a combination of bitter and dirt. Then my mother found a recipe for Harvard beets, using a sweet and sour sauce. They quickly became a family favorite because the sauce was so tangy you couldn’t taste the beets!
I saw mention elsewhere that author Julie Garwood died on June 8. She was interviewed here in a podcast last July.
I loved the Ghost bride series on Netflix and really wish there would be a second season because although it didnt have a cliff hanger ending – there was still a thread that could be followed