Tag: Wilde Love

2019 Round Up-Top 10 MM Books Pt. 1

I’ve read MM for years, but this year, it seemed to ramp up even more. It ramped up enough that I’m giving it its own Top 10 list this year. Remember, these are in no particular order.

K. Webster-Wicked Lies Boys Tell

Once a year or so, K writes an amazingly, overwhelmingly emotional book that rips you apart and puts you back together. Her books My Torin and The Day She Cried fall into this category. So does Wicked Lies Boys Tell. This is a friends to enemies to lovers kind of story with some coming of age tossed in. The relationship between Penn and Cope is beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time. I will fully admit that there were times that I cried during this. K really just knows how to create characters that break me down and stick with me for a while.

Nicky James-Long Way Home

Long Way Home was beautiful and devastating. It’s the story of Gavin and Owen. They were high school sweethearts, but when they turned 18, they ended up being split up, and the story spans many years of their lives. We get to see what happens to each of them. It sounds like it could be nothing but a heartbreak, but I promise that it’s not. It really is a beautiful story. It was the first Nicky James book that I read, but not the last.

Susan Hawke-How to Heal

Susan Hawke is also Susi Hawke, but she writes contemporary under this name. Her first series was the Lovestrong series, and How to Heal was the last book in that series. It’s a great series, with a lot of humor and love. There is also a lot of pain, especially in this book. This is my favorite book in the series. It’s a hurt/comfort, redemption, Daddy/boy kind of book, and it works so perfectly together. Clark had been a bully in the first couple of books, but this one takes place several years later, after he has changed, but he still thinks that he has to pay a penance for what he did. His journey is a hard one, but a beautiful one. I have all these books signed, and I ARCed most of them. How to Heal is also the book I’m currently listening to in my car when I’m alone. I’ve read it at least 2xx this year.

Lucy Lennox-Wilde Love

Lucy Lennox has two main series that she’s written. They are the Made Marian and the Forever Wilde books. The two series are interconnected. Marian came first, but I read the Wilde books first and I fell in love with Grandpa and Doc, because it’s totally impossible not to. I, like all of Lucy’s readers, was desperate to find out all of their story, and thus Wilde Love was born. I own both an e and an audio copy of this. I took a mini-vacation this year and listened to this on my drive. It starts with when the guys first meet, during Vietnam while they were both serving, and runs through the current day. There are so many beautiful little moments in here and so many heartbreaking ones at the same time, and sometimes they are the same moments. This book made me just love Grandpa and Doc so much more.

Alice Winters-The Hitman’s Guide to Making Friends and Finding Love

I laughed hysterically the whole time I read The Hitman’s Guide to Making Friends and Finding Love. Leland is a hitman, no really, a real hitman, and Jackson is the PI who is trying to help catch him. Leland is so fucking snarky and may or may not have a gun fetish. I mean, honestly, Alice writes a damn good story that keeps you interested, while letting you laugh at the most ridiculous stuff possible. I swear that Leland just has no filter at all, and it’s glorious.

Tune in for part 2 tomorrow!

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Lucy Lennox-Wilde Love

Wilde Love is one of the most epically beautiful MM romances that I have ever read. Lucy Lennox has written a story that spans decades, starting in 1968 and going all the way through today. I read this book when it first came out, and I bought it on Audible and listened to it on my drive earlier this week. If you have the chance to listen to any of the audiobooks of Lucy’s books, I highly recommend it. Michael Pauley’s voice is amazing, and it makes the story 1000000% more intense.

So, this book is part of the Forever Wilde series. It follows a family, named Wilde, who live in Hobie Texas. The family is huge, I mean, huge. The patriarchs, Doc and Grandpa, who ran a ranch, had 4 kids, 1 boy and 3 girls. Bill, their son, had 10 kids, and I can’t remember how many are boys and girls, but most of them are queer. The Forever Wilde books mostly focus on Bill Wilde’s boys, but a cousin and a friend of the family sneak through. This book, though, doesn’t follow the boys. It follows Doc and Grandpa from the first time they meet until now.

It starts in Vietnam, where Major Weston Marian is a medevac helo commander. He’s one of the guys that would rush to injured people and take them to the hospitals on base or the MASHs. One day, he meets Liam Wilde, green lieutenant and brand new medic, and thinks that Liam is the most beautiful man he’s ever seen. The problem is that it’s in the late ’60s and he’s in the military, and being out then would’ve meant a dishonorable discharge at best, and being beaten within a centimeter of his life at worst. So, he hides his attraction to Liam, and becomes the man’s friend. It helps that Liam is married with kids. Eventually, Liam and Major end up as part of a permanent team on a helicopter, and worked together as part of a team for quite a while.

But, as it does, life and team move on. Major rotates home, to a base in TX, not far from Hobie, actually. Doc makes it home and drags Major home to the ranch, where he meets Liam’s wife Betsy, their kids, and both sets of parents. West ends up being basically adopted by everyone, because he’s pretty awesome.

There’s so much more than what I’m going into here, including a lot of pain, emotional and physical. There’s also so much love and humor. You get to see through the eyes of a gay man during a time when being gay was enough to get you arrested. I mean, this happened a year before Stonewall and the birth of the Pride movement. Plus, you add in the stuff about Vietnam in the beginning and all the social upheaval of that. There’s just a lot of changes that happen while the book goes on. Lucy doesn’t document each and every change and say oh, this change, that change, and the other change, but what you do see is how the changes affect the main characters and their families.

I know that I am not doing Doc and Grandpa justice. They are an amazing couple and great characters on their own. They love each other fiercely. They love their children and grandchildren. Doc and Grandpa would do just about anything they had to for someone they love. That’s just the people that they are. Being near their love story is like standing next to a bonfire on a cold night. It gives you light and warmth and it makes you feel better and like things are all right in the world. It truly is one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever read.

Part of what makes this story so great is Betsy. She is an incredibly loving and generous woman and she puts her definite stamp on the whole book.

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Oh Betsy, sweet Betsy. Poor sweet Betsy. But without her, I don’t think anything else would’ve been as possible as it was.

OK, that’s all I have to say about this one. Go check it out, really. Happy reading!

 

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