Happy Gay Friday & What I Read

Oops, it’s Friday night again! And I can’t miss another Happy Gay Friday, now can I? :) Maybe it’s just the perfect remedy for feeling sad all of a sudden (hubby’s fault, he showed me a pic of Binny and it caught me off guard). Browsing through my cookies is just what I need… and chocolate… and book shopping of course! So, you can all guess what I’m doing later tonight ;)

I have been away from home a lot the past week which meant less computer time but more reading time (the benefit of traveling with public transportation). Besides two novels for work (by José Eduardo Agualusa and Lisa Moore) I’ve read quite some romances, all of the m/m kind.

First there are two shorts: Night Shift (49p – 3.5 stars) by Jenna Byrnes and JackMagic (64p – 4 stars) by Jillian Snyder.

Both were good for quick reads but also suffered from the limited amount of pages. In the case of JackMagic this resulted in a HFN instead of a HEA, which is not my favorite. So, I really would like to read a sequel about Aaron and Jack. Those guys were hot together although it took quite some pages before they actually got together. But when they finally did it was definitely worth the wait and I got an eyeful of steamy kisses and sex mingled with some sexy bondage play.

It unintentionally turned out to become the theme for my reading week (and hence this weeks pic).

Because next I read two books and one free story from Ava March’s Bound series. In this case I knew that there would be D/s scenes involved because the backblurbs indicated so. This is a historical series with the same main characters (Oliver and Vincent) in both books and the short story.

I’ll try to review them later this month, but I can spoil that I enjoyed them a lot and that I got my first 5 stars read of May with the second book in the series! It really was an intense read and it had great emotional scenes as well as scorching love scenes. My heart ached badly at one point and the HEA scene was so darn good *sigh*. So, I highly recommend this series, especially when you like historicals or bondage themed stories. Here are the titles in this series and my ratings:

Bound by Deception (Bound, #1) by Ava March, 85p - 4.5 stars

Bound to Him (Bound, #2) by Ava March, 91p - 5 stars
Deliberately Unbound (Bound, #3) by Ava March, 12p - 3.5 stars

And last but not least, last night I finally could start the book Chris and Lily recommended to me earlier this week and that I bought a while ago after some talk about it at Tam’s blog and that I decided to read soon when I read Patti’s review last month. So, my expectations were high for Cheating Chance (177p) by James Buchanan. It’s another first in a series (Taking the Odds), like I haven’t started enough series yet, that I still haven’t finished, lol. I’ve almost finished Cheating Chance, only 30 pages to go. I don’t think it’s going to be a 5 stars read, unless the last pages will be out-of-this-world awesome, but certainly a 4 or 4.5 stars rating. That has to do with the pace of the story. The very detailed descriptions of the technical and gamble law stuff slowed the story down imo. What I really like though is the premise of this novel (a suspenseful investigation), and the unusual characters: Nick and Brandon meet each other at a Goth convention and have the accompanying looks. Nick has long, dark hair and a vamp look, Brandon looks more like a biker boy and has short, spiked, dark hair and tattoos covering his back. One wouldn’t guess that Nick is an agent for a Gaming Commission and Brandon is a cop.
Oh, and it fitted into my bondage themed week unexpectantly because in the second half Nick turned out to be a Japanese bondage specialist *nom nom nom*.
I really enjoy these guys and I’m glad I already have the second book (Inland Empire) on my ereader and I think that it won’t take me long before purchasing the, only recently released, third book (All or Nothing). Maybe tonight, to serve my feel good book shopping mood :)

Another book I want to go buy tonight is the, this week released, new m/m romance from Jambrea Jo Jones called Retribution. I’m really curious about that one! And for more info on new m/m releases I think I better check out Lily’s Wednesday post first.

After the shopping I’ll probably be beat and ready for bed so that I can finish Cheating Chance tonight (it's nearly 11pm already).

Tomorrow has some more ‘outdoor activities’ in store for me and hubby (or actually there’s a bar involved and a dart tournament), so again hardly a chance to be online, *sigh*. I even doubt if I can read much among all them dart players who’ll get louder and louder with every hour. And I don’t know if I want to risk one of them asking me to show him/her my ereader in the middle of some smexy scene, lol! It actually happened to me yesterday in the train that a business guy asked me if that was an ereader and if he could see it. Good thing I wasn’t reading a smutty book at the moment but February by Lisa Moore (very decent, no sex). Pfeww!

Okay, I’ve nearly finished the bar of chocolate so it’s time to go do some book shopping. :)

Have a Happy Gay Friday!!