Krinklecut Reads & Maybe Reviews

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Why I'm reviewing here on tumblr:

So basically, I'm not actually a huge fan of criticizing people. If you manage to write a whole ass book and publish it? That's INCREDIBLE and probably something I could never do. I'm just an avid reader. I have pretty low standards, to be honest. I will read almost anything and enjoy it in some way. To go to a place like goodreads or directly on amazon where the author can easily see and find my bullshit review? Makes me feel icky, tbh. Because no book is for everyone, right? Why should they have to hear my opinion? Like I get that that's the point of websites like goodreads, but still. I'd rather just post them here where no one will see lmao

My reviews will probably contain spoilers!

My rating system:

1/5 DNF, didn't make it to 50% and found almost nothing enjoyable.

2/5 DNF, made it past 50% so something kept me interested to that point.

3/5 Finished. Probably took a lot of breaks to get through it.

4/5 Finished. Enjoyed the book! Probably took minimal breaks.

5/5 Finished. Loved the book and couldn't put it down!

Why I read what I read:

I pretty much only read queer romances at this point. Typically M/M, but occasionally F/F or F/M/M or other poly stories, trans stories as well, but those are not very common, in my experience, though maybe I'm not looking in the right places. I'm queer, so obviously I prefer queer stories. I tend to be more on the ace side of things these days and I'm more likely to find ace/demi stories in M/M fiction, in my experience. I also just find queer stories much more interesting to read.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: September 29, 2025

Review: Alright. So in this book we get Maverick's story. He is one of the adopted Marians. When he was a kid, around 15, his parents tragically died in a car accident. And while he expected to live with his grandmother on Rabbit Island, she ended up choosing not to take him in. He definitely had some anger toward her. He ended up with the Marians after hanging out at the shelter they volunteered at. He did have a foster home and all of that, he was just at the shelter because he was a queer kid.

But then Mimi, his grandmother dies and leaves him her entire estate. Which is not small at all. It's also on Rabbit Island, a tiny island in South Carolina where developers are chomping at the bit to expand into for touristy reasons. So he goes there to handle the sale of her estate and everything like that.

And when he does that, he finds out that Beau, his best friend from Rabbit Island vacations as a kid, was managing the estate and essentially taking care of Mimi.

They hook up almost immediately. So I was really hoping this would have some slow burn to it. With the whole "childhood best friends who haven't seen each other in 15 years" thing. But alas, the first sex scene is 35 pages into the book. So this was like, the FASTEST burn.

This book continues with the "casual, just hooking up" to "oh no, we fell in love!" They spend a ton of time together getting the estate ready for sale, all while bonding over their love of salt and pepper shakers, which Mimi instilled in both of them, apparently. There is a cute little plot line with the salt an pepper shakers that gave me a bit of a laugh.

But yeah, they fall in love and get their happily ever after with pretty minimal angst, as is the trend with this series.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: September 24, 2025

Review: I've hit my book goal for the year! Woohoo!

Onto the actual book. This book followed Griffin Marian, one of the guys that the Marian's adopted from the LGBTQ kids shelter. I was expecting a little more angst around Griff's background, but it was mostly glazed over, which is fine. They definitely hinted toward some of the stuff Griff dealt with, but didn't go super in depth.

Griff is a writer. And to start the book, he is writing a food review, something he normally doesn't do, but as a favor to a friend, he goes to a fancy shmancy restaurant and reviews the food. And he is NOT kind. The word testicles comes up much more than it should in such a review. Little does he know, he is reviewing Sam, our other main character.

Sam ends up losing his job at the fancy shmancy restaurant because of the bad review, even though he got screwed over by the wrong ingredients being delivered and having to cover for the actual head chef (I think).

But in the end its serendipitous. Sam ends up working at Harry Dick's, a local gay bar where Griff happens to be doing a little experiment of sorts for an article he's writing. He uses all kinds of crazy pet names on completely strangers and sees whether or not they want to bring him home. He's pretty successful, though he never ACTUALLY goes home with the guys. But Sam doesn't know that. So he sees this guy using ridiculous names and getting laid like crazy.

They become not quite friends and things go from there. They do the whole "we're hooking up, but it's not serious" stuff that all of the Marian's seem to do.

There are some bumps along the way, but our guys find their happy ending.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: September 18, 2025

Review: This book continues the Made Marian series with Jude, the famous brother.

Jude is a hugely famous country star. He is also super in the closet. Even to most of his family. Because he knows that the more people who know, the more points of failure, so to speak. He doesn't want to be out because he's worried that being gay will effect his career in country music, which is honestly still a bit homophobic.

Our other main character is Derek Wolfe, his body guard. He is former military and his family is super homophobic, so the combo of the two has kept Derek in the closet his whole life. Derek has been working with Jude for quite a while and they are sort of friends? But they are both 100% gay and 100% each others types.

I don't remember the inciting incident of them finally hooking up, if I'm being honest. But they each find out the other is gay and hook up. They do the whole "friends with benefits" to "no really, it's just friends with benefits (but actually we are in love)" sort of thing that is SUPER common in MM romance books. It is getting a little tired, to be honest. But that could just be me reading too many books in the last few years.

Some drama gets injected into the story with Ari, Jude's lame ex. He basically tries to get in contact with Jude to a: become his money manager and b: to hook up with him again. Even though Ari is married to a woman. He's vaguely stalker-y in the book, but he, himself, ends up being kind of pointless. His wife has her moments though.

Jude also ends up with another stalker, a super fan who is obsessed and tries to kiss him at a meet and greet type of deal. He does end up being a legit stalker, so I added a content warning in the tags.

Overall a pretty good read. I enjoyed the way that Jude and Derek interacted. It sort of felt like the whole Ari thing and the other random super fan were sort of pointless, even with the whole situation near the end. Like, I get that the idea was to create drama and to push Jude toward coming out. But I dunno. It felt like there was foreshadowing that just... dissipated by the end.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: September 12, 2025

Review: So this one has an enemies to lovers vibe to it. But it's more like man and his pest to lovers.

This book is Jamie Marian's story. He is a wildlife whisperer. Aka he is a wild life vet who has worked all over the world, generally at national parks, helping them to protect their animals, basically? I don't really know how else to phrase it.

But Jamie is pretty jaded. He was left at the alter by his ex. And I mean AT the alter. Turns out his ex had a whole ass wife. So Jame is just over love. And because he's kind of bad at them, hooking up is pretty much out of the question, too.

Teddy is a wildlife photographer. And he has been on a MISSION to photograph Jamie with animals after a photo of him with a bear cub went viral. But Jamie is not down with that. Those kinds of photos put people at risk. But Teddy won't let up. He keeps calling and texting and emailing. And eventually, he just shows up in Denali, where Jamie has been living, with no real plan other than to photograph Jamie.

This book is full of miscommunication and men lying to themselves about what they want. They have an almost on again off again sort of deal for a little bit. And side characters definitely interfere at a couple of points. It was a little frustrating at points, but overall the book was quite enjoyable.

This book DOES stretch out longer, timeline-wise, than most of Lucy's books I've read so far because they have a bit of a long distance sorta thing going on. There is a lot of Teddy flying for a million hours just to see Jamie.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: September 8, 2025

Review: This was one hell of a fast burn. I'm pretty sure the entire book (except the last 2 chapters and epilogue) takes place in about a week.

So this book follows Blue, a graphic designer (not super relevant, tbh) and Tristan, who owns a vineyard/winery/resort. Blue is staying at the resort for his sister's wedding. The pair meet at the bar at the resort when Blue's ex-boyfriend walks in with a man who looks like a younger version of Blue. He was invited to Blue's sister's wedding because he was a long time family friend.

In that moment, Blue needed some assistance, and Tristan agreed to kiss him and convince everyone around that they were dating. To throw a wrench in that, Tristan is "straight" and, Blue's sister is marrying Tristan's brother. Awkward.

Basically, this pair spends the wedding week together in a bit of a fake relationship and very quickly fall for each other. Bonus wrench? After the wedding, Blue is moving to London for a promotion. What are these two going to do?

This was a very smut heavy book. I genuinely wasn't expecting THAT many sex scenes in a book that spans a week of time, but here we are! I was pretty prepared for how quickly they fell in love, though, because that seems to be a bit of a trend in Lucy Lennox's books that I've read.

Author: Beth Bolden

Rating: 4.5/5

Date Finished: September 4, 2025

Review: So this book is related to the Portland Evergreens series by Beth Bolden. It can absolutely be read as a stand alone, but it's way better if you've read the series, in my opinion. There are a lot of characters from previous books in this one.

This book is about Morgan Reynolds and Hayes Montgomery.

Morgan Reynolds is a retired hockey player. He was a first pick draft and considered one of the best hockey players. He is also the dad of Finn, from book 3 of the Portland Evergreens series, On Thin Ice. I will say, because of how he acted in that book, it was hard to like Morgan at first. He was definitely not the best father to Finn, but he was definitely working on it by the end of Finn's book.

Hayes Montgomery is the captain of the Tampa Sentinels, aka the team that Finn now plays on as a goalie. It's a (fictional) NFL hockey team. Hayes was also a first draft pick and considered the next best thing since Morgan.

The pair initially met 6 years before half of this book took place. They were on a national team at the Olympics? Or something like that. I don't remember, exactly. But basically they met and had a super passionate fling while they were in the tournament. This is the whole first half of the book, essentially. Their meeting and how they started to fall for each other.

But then Morgan fucked up. Sort of. He basically just ghosted Hayes at the end of the tournament. He did it because he knew it would been near impossible for them to date while being on totally different teams on totally different coasts. I think he was also panicking a little bit about falling for a man.

Flash forward 6 years and suddenly Morgan and Hayes are in the same social bubble because Finn is on Hayes' team. It takes them a hot minute, but they find their way back to each other.

I really loved this book. I really enjoyed the fact that the main characters were whole ass adults again. Hayes is 31 and Morgan is in his early 40s (I can't quite remember just how old he is tbh). It can be tiring reading stories about college kids or even people in their 20s when you're 35 lmao.

Author: Eden Finley

Rating: 5/5

Date Finished: August 29, 2025

Review: Huge fan of this book, but was anyone truly surprised? It's a Sadenverse book. Of course I'm going to love it. Even though the enemies to lover trope is not really one of my favorite tropes. (Though I seem to have read a lot in that vein so far this year, interestingly enough.)

This continues the King Sports series, following up Thad's book. This one is a workplace romance for the ages. We have a pair of rival sports agents at King Sports, Damon's agency. Damon's book (Fake Out by Eden Finley, a fabulous fake relationship book that I 100% recommend) was one of the founding books off the Sadenverse, for anyone not in the know.

So yeah, our rival agents. We have Fox, a pretty successful agent with a decent number of big name clients. He was never an athlete himself, but he always loved sports. He chose to take that love and make a career out of it.

Then we have Fox's enemy, Archer. Archer "stole" one of Fox's potential clients pretty early on in his career by sniping him, essentially. He managed to get a meeting with and sign a client right before Fox's planned meeting with that client (Jeremiah Castleberry, who I am relatively sure we will get a book about one day, tbh). From that day forward, Fox hated Archer.

Archer has a successful career of his own. Except he works with way more clients who bring in less money. He tends to rep people in less profitable sports like swimming. Mostly because of his family. His father was an Olympic swimmer, as are his siblings. He is the black sheep of the family by choosing to be an agent instead of a swimmer. But coming from that family gave him a different perspective on how to represent smaller clients. He is great at finding brand deals and turning the athletes into "influencers."

This book follows this pair as they both try to woo the same clients (two of the Dalton brothers, as Damon is taking a step back from being an agent and focusing on running the whole agency, and is letting go of some of his bigger clients and not taking on new ones).

It's a book full of silly moments and some serious ones. But their rivalry is also the focus of an office bet, as the title suggests. Everyone in the office has money on when their sexual tension will come to a head. A bet that shocks Fox, who stays away from fraternizing with his coworkers.

Who wins the bet in the end? You should definitely read to find out!

Author: K.M. Neuhold

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: August 23, 2025

Review: Definitely a typical K.M. Neuhold book. Exactly what I expect from them at this point, which is a good thing, in my opinion. When I want a quick, lighthearted read, I know where to go.

This book is about Felix and Saxon. They are best friends and roommates. They met just after college, I believe, and have been friends for over a decade.

Their first meeting was definitely a meet cute, it just didn't lead to romance, even if they both wanted it.

Felix is the owner and CEO of a pretty successful business that is about to go public. He has a pretty busy and stressful life. And all he wants is a Daddy to take care of him.

Saxon is a personal trainer. He went to school to become a sports physical therapist (I think), but he never got around to getting his certification in it. He also happens to have a VERY successful Daddy Cam on the side. He makes videos of himself getting off while Daddy-ing, basically.

These guys are 100% into each other from day one, but Saxon has some commitment issues (thanks, Saxon's mom!) and has chosen to never make that jump. Felix has been drooling over Saxon forever, but was never gutsy enough to make the first move.

Then Felix finds Saxon's Daddy Cam channel. And that changes some things. Things get a bit (a lot) awkward for a while until a case of accidental voyeurism changes EVERYTHING for these guys. There are some bumps along the way, but they get there in the end.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4/5

Date Finished: August 15, 2025

Review: The final Wilde story in the series. I think all that's left is a holiday novella and a handful of short stories. (I could be wrong though lol.)

This is Cal's story. He is the youngest of the boys, I believe. He's a little baby compared to most at 23 years old. After a... questionable one night stand, he finds himself stuck on a boat in the Caribbean. A boat (okay, a SHIP, according to Cal) owned by Worth, a much older, very, very rich man.

It turns out that Cal had a one night stand with the fiance of Worth's younger brother. Cal had thought the fiance was the owner of the ship. Not so much. Instead, Worth ask Cal to keep seducing the cheating cheater that his brother is engaged to. But then Cal ends up getting himself into a fake relationship with Worth along the way.

Worth, on the other hand, is still a bit messed up after his last relationship, where a much younger man had essentially seduced him for his money. And after that, he's never dating a young guy again. Or is he?

During the week or so stuck on the ship together, we get to watch Cal and Worth start to fall for each other pretty quickly.

A little bit of angst near the end, but overall a pretty fun little story. I love me a fake relationship combined with only one bed, so this was right up my alley.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4.5/5

Date Finished: August 11, 2025

Review: This was a super fun book. This was definitely less of a typical romance novel and more of an... art heist novel. And it was an absolute joy to read.

So in this book, we get King's story. At the end of the Grandpa and Doc book, King was essentially chased out of their family vacation/vow renewal by Falcon. We knew pretty much none of the details, and it was VERY intriguing.

It turns out that King is actually a famous art thief. Like, one of the most notorious art thieves in the world. Le Chaton. Falcon is an FBI agent who specializes in art theft. He has been after Le Chaton since he managed to manipulate Falcon and escape after a major art theft.

King was sort of proud of that escape, but only because he was set up by his ex, Elek, the man truly behind all the thefts. He had manipulated King for years into helping him with thefts and with creating forgeries of famous paintings. After he was betrayed, King went out of his way to steal back the stolen paintings and return them to their rightful owners. He also would break in and leave notes pointing out security flaws in places that he knew Elek would attempt to steal from in the future.

King was actually planning to retire when Falcon finally went in to capture him. But he wasn't planning to arrest King, no. He needed King's help to get back the one item he couldn't protect from Elek. A royal crown from Hungary, Elek's home country.

Author: Eden Finley and Saxon James

Rating: 4.5/5

Date Finished: August 7, 2025

Review: Taking a break from the Wilde family for a bit because a new Puckboys book dropped!

As usual, I absolutely loved this book. Not a full 5/5, but pretty close.

This book gives us the story of Novi, a seemingly homophobic hockey player originally from Russia. Turns out he is very deeply closeted, and as much as he wants to be able to support the LGBTQ+ community, he fears for the safety and freedom of his family. He got most of them to move to Canada, but his sister is stubbornly staying in Russia to raise her family. And while she knows he is gay and supports him, and would do so publicly, she doesn't realize she is what's holding him back. Because if she supports him publicly, she could lose her own career or even be arrested for spreading propaganda.

Our other main guy is Colby, who wanted to be a hockey player himself, but after he was originally drafted, he ended up not being as good of a player as he always thought he was. He eventually gave up on the idea of being in the NHL for a new dream: eventually being a coach in the NHL. And he is achieving that goal in this book. He's not a head coach yet, just an assistant video coach, but he gets a job on the LA team. The same team Novi is on.

To add to this, way back when Colby and Novi were first drafted, they were on the same team and became fast friends. Until one night, while rooming together, they got a little tipsy and Colby almost made a move on Novi. Nothing actually happened, but it almost did. After that moment, Novi requested a new roommate. Colby thought it was because Novi was a homophobe, because, you know, born and raised in Russia and all that. But in reality, Novi was just protecting himself.

Back to the present, 17 years later. Both of them are getting close to 40, both of them are in the same place and working for the same team. I'm gonna be honest, I don't 100% remember how they end up getting together in this book. Life has been a lot lately. But they do end up together, and I think the Queer Collective was involved? Like maybe Novi was out to dinner with Oskar and Lane? Not 100% sure. But they start a secret relationship.

And it's so cute to see. Because they have both been holding onto those feelings from when they were young.

This was a very low angst story, which I love, to be honest. This pair is also pretty decent at communication after a bit. It also had a very sweet ending, where both were absolutely willing to give up their career for the other. I won't give it away, but it was very cute.

Novi is an absolute character and I love him so much. He's so funny and over the top, even when for years people have thought he was this super serious angry Russian. He's actually a snarky bitch who is constantly fucking with everyone around him.

We also get cameos from a bunch of Queer Collective members, and the epilogue is HILARIOUS and so very in character for all of the boys.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4.5/5

Date Finished: August 3, 2025

Review: And so we get Doc and Grandpas story, and boy what a story it is.

In this book our main characters are Doc (Liam) Wilde and Major (Weston, Grandpa) Marian. These two men originally meet when they are serving in the military (army I think?) in Vietnam. They got assigned to the same air team, with Doc as a medic and Major as a soldier. After that first mission, Major requested that they always be on the same team because they worked so well together.

They became fast friends after that. But from day one Major was attracted to Doc. But Doc, as far as anyone knew, was both straight and married with children. And very much in love with his wife.

The story follow their friendship over the years, including them both going back to the states and Major making Texas his home. Doc's family welcomed Major with open arms in the beginning, when they first visited during leave from the military and things like that. And Major became fast friends with Doc's wife Betsy.

There were so many things that happened in their friendship, but basically Major became part of the family, all while very much in love with Doc, and Doc's wonderful wife Betsey knew it. And she was pretty cool with it. Honestly, it gave kind of poly vibes sometimes, with Doc and Major's friendship giving queer platonic vibes, but it was never stated to be that.

But after Betsey died, Major stuck by Doc's side, even when Doc was angry as hell at him for keeping Betsey's cancer diagnosis from him while he finished med school. Major was there every step of the way, helping at the Wilde and Hobart ranches and helping to raise Doc and Betsey's kids.

It wasn't until a couple of years after Betsey's death that their romance truly started to bloom, and it was beautiful to read about.

The book ends with their 45th anniversary and vow renewal, plus meeting Tilly, Major's estranged sister. I definitely would have gotten more out of the epilogue if I had read another series by the author, but that just gives me another series to look forward to!

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 4.5/5

Date Finished: July 29, 2025

Review: I really loved this book. It was much more plot heavy than a lot of the other MM romance books I've read, but that works for me right now, mentally.

So in the book we get Saint Wilde's story. He's a former Navy Seal who works in private security. After yelling at his charge, a spoiled brat of a celeb, he gets benched, basically, and is sent back to his home town to teach self defense to a relatively new transplant to the town.

That transplant is someone we met in Hudson's book, Augie, the owner of the antique shop that Charlie's dog used to sneak off to. I was hoping we'd get Augie in a story because he seemed very sweet in it. But Augie is not just an antique shop owner. He's also a man who comes from a very rich family that funds all kinds of right wing bullshit, so he's pretty much been shoved into the closet since he was a teenager. Weirdly not all that relevant to this story, though it does get mentioned a few times.

But when Augie's house gets broken into, his sister hires Saint (through the company he works for) to teach Augie self defense. The pair are immediately attracted to each other, but I don't think they immediately jump into bed together, but honestly, the last week is a blur to me, so I don't remember the early details from the book.

There is a whole huge plot around the break in and why it happened and who did it. It's a little bit of a mystery which really helped keep the book interesting and fun. Some parts of the book were a little smut heavy, and that wasn't my vibe lately (life stuff), so it was a bit of a slog, but overall I really did love the book.

Oh, we also sort of got one of the Wilde sister's stories in this book, though it was primarily in the background. I thought it was a really cute little addition to the story.

Author: Lucy Lennox

Rating: 3.5/5

Date Finished: July 25, 2025

Review: So I really thought I was going to like this more than I did. It had such a great set up in the previous book. I even went out of my way to read it now because of how excited I was for it. (Initially I was going to read it at the end of the series, in the book that has all the related short stories/novellas from the series.)

So this was Stevie and Chief Evan Paige's story. We've seen both of these characters quite a bit in the rest of the Forever Wilde series. Neither of them is a Wilde, which is why it's just a related novella and not an actual part of the series.

Stevie works at the bakery, Sugar Britches from book 1. He also works a coffee cart at the hospital and gets a (very short term) job as dancer in this book. He comes from a bit of a troubled family, especially since his brother went to jail for dealing drugs.

Evan is the local fire chief that we met in Otto's book, book 3. He's a bit of a silver fox and is definitely old enough to be Stevie's dad. Like... He's quite literally older than Stevie's mom. I don't actually normally have any issue with massive age gaps in fiction. In fact, they can ad a lot of interesting conflict to a story. But in this one? It just felt a little weird. Mostly because when this pair first met, Stevie was like... under 10 years old and Evan was working as a coach at the high school (or something like that). They kept running into each other over the years, though never really one on one, so there was no grooming or anything. But something about it gave me the ick.

I don't really know why this book rubbed me the wrong way. I think part of it was just how over the top Stevie was. I understand that it was part of his personality, but it just felt like too much. It made him come off as very immature, even for his age (he's like... 21). Stevie pretty much refuses to communicate at all through the entire book and Evan just... lets him?

It also felt like there was no real build up in their relationship. They went from acquaintances to being in love in what felt like no time at all.