Blowing Time

Is the title too confusing? I think it is. Let me explain. Louise Collins wrote three books where the plot takes place in different prisons. Apart from that they are not connected in any way, there are no common characters, they don't know each other, it's not even the same prison, but I can't help thinking about these books as part of a series simply because they are so similar. The novels are, in the order they were published, The Freshman , The Psychopath , and The Rat . I first came across The Psychopath and I read that, afterwards I saw there were two more books and decided to read those as well, so I am going to go ahead and mix them up a bit next. 

             There are those type of novels where you read the synopsis and think to yourself, hmm, this sounds interesting, action filled, funny, maybe cute , and you go read it expecting that. Only that you start reading and the novel is nothing like you expected it to be.  That being said, if you don't already know anything about this series I encourage you to not read my 'review' and go straight to reading the series.

I just finished reading this series last night and I have to write about it. I went through the first five out of seven books really fast and then I slowed down on the last two because I started work again, after the lockdown. A bit of a background on how I got to read this series: A while ago I came across a link to Jenny Trout's blog where she wrote a chapter by chapter review to a popular and questionable at best BDSM novel. Something about the colour grey. I didn't read all of the posts, but I do occasionally go read a chapter review to have fun and see an example of "this is not good" or read some of the replies. Happily reading these reviews, I also learned about another questionable BDSM novel recently turned movie. This was when I started asking myself is there no good F/M BDSM novel out there? And then I realised: there might be, Jenny Trout wrote something!

Yakuza Pride by H.J. Brues is one of the first BL novels I ever read. After reading S series by Saki Aida I was eager to read more in the genre and so I came across Yakuza Pride . Since then I re-read the novel (re-read S too) a few times and it is one of my favourites. I am surprised I didn't write about it yet. The main characters are the yakuza underboss Shigure Matsunaga and the son of an American congressman, Kenneth 'Kenshin' Harris. They meet at a boring event and almost immediately fireworks start sparkling. Both for them and for me because I was hooked from the first pages. The novel follows the start of Shigure and Ken's relationship, the struggles they have to face, the way Shigure's people view Ken, how Ken can cope with it all, as well as unexpected threats and complications.

I've had this film on my watch list for a while. I don't know what made me want to watch it, most likely Emma Watson because I like watching the cast of HP in various movies and see how they manage to slip into another character. I don't know, I think they are great actors and I enjoy watching them in roles as diverse as possible. I don't go out of my way to do it, but if I come across a movie that looks interesting, why not. So while I had Little Women on my watch list I happened to see the book in a store and I thought it would be fun to read the book then watch the movie and compare the two. What I did not know when I bought the book was that Little Women is a series. As I am not a fan of the genre I had no idea and no one bothered to specify that on the cover, I only got a hint about it on the very last page. There are two other books, Little Men and Jo's Boys that I have no interest in reading (I'll get to that).

I'm not going to write a review for this book because I wrote one here . Instead I want to focus on a passage that I liked a lot and made me want to write about. But before that, Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L. C. Rosen is a fantastic read, it might be one of the best books I read this year, it has everything and a little bit more. It is very well written, it offers some very good lessons and it is interesting, mysterious and touching. About the passage I mentioned and that I'm going to copy/paste here, I would like to specify the page it is on too, but on ebooks apparently there are no pages, only percentages, so I'm only going to specify the chapter.

A while ago, sometime in February, I read the Marshals series by Mary Calmes, and these days I finally published all the reviews I wrote about the series on Yaoi Otaku . If you want, you can read them all on YO, if not, this post is going to basically be a summary of what I wrote on YO. I guess? It's probably going to be more like a what's it about because my hatred for spoilers inhibits me from actually letting loose. Maybe let me know if I managed to spark your interest or not. Before I go into it, the Marshals series was first published in 2014, the fourth and last volume being published in 2018. Yes, there are four books, five if we count the short novella that I'm going to talk about in a few paragraphs, and sadly there is no news or hint of a sequel.  If you plan on reading the series and don't like spoilers, maybe don't read the whole post, read perhaps only about the first book of the series if you are not yet convinced you want t...