Trigger warning: pretty intense bullying and a corrupt, abusive father. 

What I'm Currently Reading: So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Fun read. Nilly is a stable and well balance boy. He is also very smart and very small.

He takes things like a child, face value and mindful. 

If adult could be more like him. 

Example for him keeping his cool. 

It is silly. When he become the side kick, he do test for the fart powder and its power. And the fart is not stinky but strong enough to lift him up off the ground. 

Yes, it is that kind of a book. 

It has turned into a movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uQp6oNIdrU

Phil is a grumpy restaurant owner who spends his free time playing first-person shooters and going on unsuccessful dates. He's playing his newest favorite FPS one night when he meets an enthusiastic newbie player, BisonFalls, and agrees to give him a few tips. He figures that's the end of it, but then Bison sends him a friend request and the two men eventually start talking about more personal stuff. It turns out that Bison's real name is Tyson, he's bisexual, and he's currently single. Phil finds himself arranging time to play with Tyson, texting him, calling him, and just generally thinking about him a lot. But the guy's just a gaming buddy. A young gaming buddy, 28 to Phil's 55. Surely there's no way he'd ever be interested in someone like Phil.

This was pretty sweet. For the most part, Phil and Tyson's romance was light and fluffy. The main things keeping them apart were distance and Phil's own doubts about his attractiveness to Tyson and worries about the difference between their ages. 

Tyson was like a friendly Golden Retriever in human form. Phil had a tendency to jump to conclusions and be a bit judgmental, but he was willing to listen, reevaluate his ideas, and apologize if necessary. Watching Tyson slowly turn Phil into putty was adorable, and I loved the encouragement Phil got from his friends and staff (even as I raised an eyebrow a bit at the hypocrisy of Phil texting Tyson during work hours while telling his staff they shouldn't be on their phones at work).

As I believe I've mentioned in the past, I'm not generally a fan of first-person present tense. It mostly worked okay here, other than a few moments that gave me fan fic vibes. And the sex scenes - first-person present tense sex scenes are weird.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Now that I've finally finished A Rational Arrangement, I can choose a new book to read on my e-reader. I went with this one, in the hope that its romance would work better for me than the romance in A Rational Arrangement. May-December - a grumpy older gamer who owns a restaurant, and a younger gamer who works as a server. So far it's cute. Phil, the older guy (and POV character), is a bit judgy but not totally unwilling to revise his opinions, and Tyson, the young gamer, is as friendly as a Golden Retriever.

U.S. prime members get one free arc from the Amazon publishing imprints shown.  (Not a borrow, just like buying the kindle edition.)