Series of 23 M/M Romance Novels

[dutchal]

I am just finishing up the 23rd in a series of related male-male (M/M) romance novels.

Author Sarina Bowen started out with a M/F romance series set in Vermont called True North (published 2016-2021), and then wrote a 2021 M/M spinoff, "Roommate": 

Roommate — Sarina Bowen

SARINABOWEN.COM

---

Roommate by Sarina Bowen is a USA Today bestseller. It was named and Editor’s Pick / Best Romance by Amazon’s editorial team. It is an LGBTQ / MM romance.

At the end of "Roommate", the novel in passing mentions the founding in downtown Burlington of an "inclusive" bookstore/wine bar named "Vino & Veritas" (it's two separate but next-door places on Church Street, which is the pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown Burlington, with a common main entrance and common ownership) ("Vino" for the wine bar and "Veritas" for the book store, in case you missed the allusion).  This then became the basis of two multi-author mostly M/M series (which can fairly be regarded as one series), Vino & Veritas (published in 2021) and In Vino Veritas (published in 2022).

World of True North — HeartEyes Press LLC

HEARTEYESPRESS.COM

World of True North — HeartEyes Press LLC

HEARTEYESPRESS.COM

The first of these two series consists of sixteen M/M and two F/F (which I didn't read) novels, and the second consists of six more all M/M novels.  The wine bar cum bookstore is at least mentioned in all of them and is a major setting in many.  There are lots of characters and settings that appear in mutiple novels from the series, anywhere from nearly all to only a few of the books, but there are also plenty of settings and characters that are unique to each novel.  Each novel has a different set of main characters, most of which are minor characters in one or two or several of the other books (up to nineteen if my count is correct for the one character who's nearly ubiquitous).  In addition, some of the characters and settings connect with other M/M or M/F books or series by one of the many different authors who contributed.  The authors are all published romance novelists, and while I didn't research them all at least most have other M/M books to their names.

All the books have many reviews at Goodreads and Amazon and a good number are reviewed on a few of the zillion available romance novel blogs and podcasts.  The reviews are a pretty good guide to the individual stories' strengths and weaknesses and give you good introductions to the main characters of each novel.  The books are relatively easy reading.  The paperbacks range from the low 200s to low 300s of pages.  (They are all also available as audio books and for Kindle.)  No editors are named, and the quality of editing varies widely, which was a disappointing distraction for some of the books.  You would think an author or editor of a book set in Burlington would know that Plattsburgh is spelled with a terminal "h", and that same book puts a very specifically named bridge on the entirely wrong Vermont river!  In another, the two main characters enter a cafe and at first one is noticing the reaction to them of all the people, and a page later it turns out there is only one other couple there!  One of the main characters early in the book is described as a veteran of the Air Force, while later in the book he is an Army veteran.  And over and over in the series you find the misused nominative pronoun when it should be objective, in other words, something like "between you and I", which is grotesquely incorrect.  One of the books even has the converse error, when one of the characters says "between you and him" (which is entirely correct) and another character then describes the phrase in his mind as grammatically incorrect!  The series needed a bit heavier guiding hand.  There are two pairs of main characters with the same last name who are utterly unrelated, which is utterly unnecessary in a group of forty-six, and more than one set of characters with the same first name (often lacking a last name), again, an unnecessary source of at least momentary confusion.  These easily avoided errors can be intrusive.  It is worth noting that Vermont is the whitest state in the union (95.6%), and the series lives up to this and then some.  Of the forty-six main characters, forty-five are Caucasian and the forty-sixth is majority Caucasian and partly indigenous.  Of the hundreds of other characters in the twenty-three books, there is, literally, less than a handful (three is my count) who are described as being of color, although in fairness, beyond the natural assumption that family members of Caucasian main characters are all also Caucasian, the race or ethnicity of most of the rest of the characters is not discernible.

Among the twenty-three novels you'll find almost all if not every M/M trope and archetype known to man or woman (many M/M authors and the majority of M/M readers are women).  Even a die-hard urbanite like yours truly fell a little bit in love with life in Vermont, and it would be hard not to end up sorely wishing that there were a real Vino & Veritas which, by itself, would make a trip to Burlington worthwhile (maybe not in winter).  This particular reader considers Crown Royal's "retirement" of its Maple Finished Whisky to have been a Class A felony, and reading about all the maple flavored foods and drink featured in the novels was torture (a cafe called the Maple Factory appears in about a third of the books), including maple cream, described as the product of butter and maple syrup getting together and having a baby (which would for me put paradise within sight).  And, yes, more than one of these maple products is used for something other than eating/drinking.

Depending on your personality and theirs, you'll also fall a little bit in love with a at least some of the main characters.  There is apparently a very large supply of very good-looking and available single men in Burlington who are either gay or bi or ready to discover that they are, all of whom are awesome in bed, including the virgins.  Their ages range from 20 to the early 40s, education levels range from GED to doctoral/professional degrees, and their romantic status ranges from never even yet having had a date or a kiss to one who could be fairly described as a slut (he preferred the term "rake") to others divorced or widowed with child.  Several play or have played hockey, and other sports barely get a mention.  There is some very sensitive treatment of PTSD (for multiple main characters) and a few other difficult, delicate issues, including homelessness, ED, and partial amputation.  As between the main characters, there is a phenomenal amount of kissing (according to how often kisses made the earth move, the series should have registered on the Richter Scale), and plenty of sex (all of it more or less vanilla--or maple, yes, seriously--and nothing really kinky), some slow burn, some explosive, all steamy and satisfying (usually described as far more than that--the books seem to compete with each other in how to describe the best sex of one's life), with plenty of evidence of consent present, especially if it might be novel or even the slightest bit painful.  And, of course, all the stories end in HEA or at least HFN.  Most of the books have a bonus epilogue or one to multiple bonus scenes available through either Sarina Bowen's website or the website of the book's actual author.

All the kids are adorable, as are all the animals (except maybe the chickens), ranging from rabbits to cats to dogs to ducklings to dairy cows (and one bull), horses, a goat, and even a pet tortoise.  Most events take place in Vermont (I counted over thirty different cities, towns, villages and other locations, most real, a few fictional), although there are scenes set all over the rest of the Northeast (all the New England states along with New York and Pennsylvania), and in Quebec, California, West Virginia, and even Paris and New Zealand.  The cast of supporting and minor characters in each book ranges from a low of twelve to a high of about sixty (that one includes a barbershop quartet).  Ex-boyfriends, girlfriends and wives vary from empathetic and/or sympathetic to overtly obnoxious, and there is an even greater range of characters among the many different families and family members portrayed, from dogmatic Mormons who heartlessly threw a gay son entirely out of their family's life to a loving, accepting set of parents so at ease with a gay son that his father tries to be his wingman (much to the son's exasperation and the amusement of his prospective dates), and everything in between, including a set of gay brothers.  There is a large collection of BFFs who are wise beyond their years and know exactly what to say and when to say it, although there are also a couple who break this mold and manage to muck things up temporarily.  There is a sprinkling of laugh-out-loud moments, but most of the humor is low-key and found in the banter between lovers or friends or family members.  The books, as you might expect, spill most of their ink on development of the personalities of the main characters, the romance plot line, i.e., relationship development, including one or more crisis/crises in the relationship or at least an angst-ridden episode or two, sex, and the happy ending (a few of which are amazingly abrupt).  All the books have a least a second, subsidiary plot line, and many have more than one, which vary somewhat in their quality but none so bad as to seriously distract from the main story, at least not for me, and some of these provide the armature on which the romance line is hung.

As a random closing thought, if I had a dollar for every time a character is described as wearing a flannel shirt, it would have paid for the twenty-three books and then some, but that's what makes the series authentic Vermont.

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by dutchal

[+ FrankR]

On 5/3/2023 at 5:27 PM, dutchal said:

I am just finishing up the 23rd in a series of related male-male (M/M) romance novels.

Author Sarina Bowen started out with a M/F romance series set in Vermont called True North (published 2016-2021), and then wrote a 2021 M/M spinoff, "Roommate": 

Roommate — Sarina Bowen

SARINABOWEN.COM

---

Roommate by Sarina Bowen is a USA Today bestseller. It was named and Editor’s Pick / Best Romance by Amazon’s editorial team. It is an LGBTQ / MM romance.

At the end of "Roommate", the novel in passing mentions the founding in downtown Burlington of an "inclusive" bookstore/wine bar named "Vino & Veritas" (it's two separate but next-door places on Church Street, which is the pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown Burlington, with a common main entrance and common ownership) ("Vino" for the wine bar and "Veritas" for the book store, in case you missed the allusion).  This then became the basis of two multi-author mostly M/M series (which can fairly be regarded as one series), Vino & Veritas (published in 2021) and In Vino Veritas (published in 2022).

World of True North — HeartEyes Press LLC

HEARTEYESPRESS.COM

World of True North — HeartEyes Press LLC

HEARTEYESPRESS.COM

The first of these two series consists of sixteen M/M and two F/F (which I didn't read) novels, and the second consists of six more all M/M novels.  The wine bar cum bookstore is at least mentioned in all of them and is a major setting in many.  There are lots of characters and settings that appear in mutiple novels from the series, anywhere from nearly all to only a few of the books, but there are also plenty of settings and characters that are unique to each novel.  Each novel has a different set of main characters, most of which are minor characters in one or two or several of the other books (up to nineteen if my count is correct for the one character who's nearly ubiquitous).  In addition, some of the characters and settings connect with other M/M or M/F books or series by one of the many different authors who contributed.  The authors are all published romance novelists, and while I didn't research them all at least most have other M/M books to their names.

All the books have many reviews at Goodreads and Amazon and a good number are reviewed on a few of the zillion available romance novel blogs and podcasts.  The reviews are a pretty good guide to the individual stories' strengths and weaknesses and give you good introductions to the main characters of each novel.  The books are relatively easy reading.  The paperbacks range from the low 200s to low 300s of pages.  (They are all also available as audio books and for Kindle.)  No editors are named, and the quality of editing varies widely, which was a disappointing distraction for some of the books.  You would think an author or editor of a book set in Burlington would know that Plattsburgh is spelled with a terminal "h", and that same book puts a very specifically named bridge on the entirely wrong Vermont river!  In another, the two main characters enter a cafe and at first one is noticing the reaction to them of all the people, and a page later it turns out there is only one other couple there!  One of the main characters early in the book is described as a veteran of the Air Force, while later in the book he is an Army veteran.  And over and over in the series you find the misused nominative pronoun when it should be objective, in other words, something like "between you and I", which is grotesquely incorrect.  One of the books even has the converse error, when one of the characters says "between you and him" (which is entirely correct) and another character then describes the phrase in his mind as grammatically incorrect!  The series needed a bit heavier guiding hand.  There are two pairs of main characters with the same last name who are utterly unrelated, which is utterly unnecessary in a group of forty-six, and more than one set of characters with the same first name (often lacking a last name), again, an unnecessary source of at least momentary confusion.  These easily avoided errors can be intrusive.  It is worth noting that Vermont is the whitest state in the union (95.6%), and the series lives up to this and then some.  Of the forty-six main characters, forty-five are Caucasian and the forty-sixth is majority Caucasian and partly indigenous.  Of the hundreds of other characters in the twenty-three books, there is, literally, less than a handful (three is my count) who are described as being of color, although in fairness, beyond the natural assumption that family members of Caucasian main characters are all also Caucasian, the race or ethnicity of most of the rest of the characters is not discernible.

Among the twenty-three novels you'll find almost all if not every M/M trope and archetype known to man or woman (many M/M authors and the majority of M/M readers are women).  Even a die-hard urbanite like yours truly fell a little bit in love with life in Vermont, and it would be hard not to end up sorely wishing that there were a real Vino & Veritas which, by itself, would make a trip to Burlington worthwhile (maybe not in winter).  This particular reader considers Crown Royal's "retirement" of its Maple Finished Whisky to have been a Class A felony, and reading about all the maple flavored foods and drink featured in the novels was torture (a cafe called the Maple Factory appears in about a third of the books), including maple cream, described as the product of butter and maple syrup getting together and having a baby (which would for me put paradise within sight).  And, yes, more than one of these maple products is used for something other than eating/drinking.

Depending on your personality and theirs, you'll also fall a little bit in love with a at least some of the main characters.  There is apparently a very large supply of very good-looking and available single men in Burlington who are either gay or bi or ready to discover that they are, all of whom are awesome in bed, including the virgins.  Their ages range from 20 to the early 40s, education levels range from GED to doctoral/professional degrees, and their romantic status ranges from never even yet having had a date or a kiss to one who could be fairly described as a slut (he preferred the term "rake") to others divorced or widowed with child.  Several play or have played hockey, and other sports barely get a mention.  There is some very sensitive treatment of PTSD (for multiple main characters) and a few other difficult, delicate issues, including homelessness, ED, and partial amputation.  As between the main characters, there is a phenomenal amount of kissing (according to how often kisses made the earth move, the series should have registered on the Richter Scale), and plenty of sex (all of it more or less vanilla--or maple, yes, seriously--and nothing really kinky), some slow burn, some explosive, all steamy and satisfying (usually described as far more than that--the books seem to compete with each other in how to describe the best sex of one's life), with plenty of evidence of consent present, especially if it might be novel or even the slightest bit painful.  And, of course, all the stories end in HEA or at least HFN.  Most of the books have a bonus epilogue or one to multiple bonus scenes available through either Sarina Bowen's website or the website of the book's actual author.

All the kids are adorable, as are all the animals (except maybe the chickens), ranging from rabbits to cats to dogs to ducklings to dairy cows (and one bull), horses, a goat, and even a pet tortoise.  Most events take place in Vermont (I counted over thirty different cities, towns, villages and other locations, most real, a few fictional), although there are scenes set all over the rest of the Northeast (all the New England states along with New York and Pennsylvania), and in Quebec, California, West Virginia, and even Paris and New Zealand.  The cast of supporting and minor characters in each book ranges from a low of twelve to a high of about sixty (that one includes a barbershop quartet).  Ex-boyfriends, girlfriends and wives vary from empathetic and/or sympathetic to overtly obnoxious, and there is an even greater range of characters among the many different families and family members portrayed, from dogmatic Mormons who heartlessly threw a gay son entirely out of their family's life to a loving, accepting set of parents so at ease with a gay son that his father tries to be his wingman (much to the son's exasperation and the amusement of his prospective dates), and everything in between, including a set of gay brothers.  There is a large collection of BFFs who are wise beyond their years and know exactly what to say and when to say it, although there are also a couple who break this mold and manage to muck things up temporarily.  There is a sprinkling of laugh-out-loud moments, but most of the humor is low-key and found in the banter between lovers or friends or family members.  The books, as you might expect, spill most of their ink on development of the personalities of the main characters, the romance plot line, i.e., relationship development, including one or more crisis/crises in the relationship or at least an angst-ridden episode or two, sex, and the happy ending (a few of which are amazingly abrupt).  All the books have a least a second, subsidiary plot line, and many have more than one, which vary somewhat in their quality but none so bad as to seriously distract from the main story, at least not for me, and some of these provide the armature on which the romance line is hung.

As a random closing thought, if I had a dollar for every time a character is described as wearing a flannel shirt, it would have paid for the twenty-three books and then some, but that's what makes the series authentic Vermont.

 

I am enjoying the first book in the Roommate series. You may want to check out Amy Lane and Carol Lynne. Carol Lynne’s Cattle Valley series and Men in Love series are good (available on the Libby app if you have a New York Public Library card)

[dutchal]

On 5/5/2023 at 11:03 PM, FrankR said:

I am enjoying the first book in the Roommate series. You may want to check out Amy Lane and Carol Lynne. Carol Lynne’s Cattle Valley series and Men in Love series are good (available on the Libby app if you have a New York Public Library card)

Amy Lane has 176 books and Carol Lynne has 296--how do you know where even to begin?!

[+ FrankR]

5 hours ago, dutchal said:

Amy Lane has 176 books and Carol Lynne has 296--how do you know where even to begin?!

Haha! Pick a series that appeals to you. Read the first book in the series and decide if you want to keep going.  There are helpful summaries of the various series available online and you have all summer!! 😋

[dutchal]

On 5/5/2023 at 11:03 PM, FrankR said:

I am enjoying the first book in the Roommate series. You may want to check out Amy Lane and Carol Lynne. Carol Lynne’s Cattle Valley series and Men in Love series are good (available on the Libby app if you have a New York Public Library card)

Did you get past Roommate?

[+ FrankR]

4 minutes ago, dutchal said:

Did you get past Roommate?

I enjoyed the first two books in the series. Now reading Amy Lane’s Johnnies series. 😁