Status Updates From Citywide (Five Boroughs, #6)

Only really wanted to read Rerouted (the Chris, Jace and Aiden story). Marking this read till I decided if I'm reafing the rest.
Rerouted was beautiful btw. 5/5 will read again.

Derailed - 4 stars, my fave of the bunch. This had the emotional depth and humor I’ve come to expect from SH. I loved the moments that Steph and Angel had with their squad, the fake relationship game, the very relatable reason Steph didn’t want to be in a relationship, even when she knew she loved Angel. I may not reread all of the stories in this collection in the future, but I’d happily return to this one

“”We’ve got this, Angelito,” I said softly. “I promise. And if we fuck up, we have a whole bunch of pain-in-the-ass friends who will try to help us fix it.” Angel snorted out a fond laugh. “I can hear them now.”“Me too. And I can’t wait to tell them.” This time the smile that crossed Angel’s face was broad and proud.”

🖤🖤🖤

“Raymond: Move away? Dude this ain’t eat pray love, calm down”

😂 Ray 🖤

Oh my god I was not prepared for the feels that Steph’s and Angel’s story is giving me

“Across from us, Oli was also turning red from an obvious effort not to laugh. Caleb looked like he wanted to die from secondhand embarrassment.”

Angel and Steph are lovely but this may end up being my favorite novella in this collection solely due to these moments with Oli and Caleb. They’re giving me life

“Put it on your registry,” Oli advised. “If you two ever decide to make shit get rea—”
Caleb’s eyes widened. He laughed awkwardly and abruptly enough for Oli to catch on and clam up. Caleb was definitely my dude. The quiet ones were always the most observant.
“I was joking,” Oli said quickly. “I just like teasing them about being together because they’re very aesthetically pleasing.”

“I’m not sure I appreciate how many devastatingly sexy couples there are at my engagement party.”
I opened my mouth to correct him, but Oli kept talking “Soon-to-be husband, we need uglier friends.” Caleb flushed a little at the title & smoothed the lapels of his jacket down. “There’s no such thing as ugly, darling” he said to Oli “People just look differently.” Oli gave him a dull look, but I couldn’t help a smile.

“And go say congratulations to Oli and Caleb before you get drunk.”
“Good point.” I hopped off the barstool and smoothed down my white dress. “How do I look?” Raymond flashed a thumbs-up without looking, Tonya nodded her approval, and Chris said, “Would look better if you’d said it was Versace.”

“Chris, this is from Express.”
He snorted. “Well, all right, you guys see me out here trying to elevate my homie, and she wants to stay at the mall, but it’s cool. Good to be true to yourself.”

Omg I adore Chris, he’s adorable 😂

“Chris, what the fuck are you doing?” Raymond asked wearily. “Vlogging. Obviously. As QFindr’s newest, and breeziest, IT master, I’ve assigned myself the role of chronicling all-important QF events. But anyway, let me introduce the faces of last summer’s QF promo campaign.” Chris aimed the camera at me. “This is my girl Stephanie, looking quite entrancing in some Versace—” “Chris, this is from Express.”

“What can I say?” Tonya shrugged. “She prefers Queens to the Upper West.”
Raymond made an impressed noise, as if this somehow made Meredith cool in his book all of a sudden.

Ray 😂

My heart is already going out for Victor 😭

Caleb and Oli are engaged 🖤🖤🖤 honestly living for the happy moments for those two, their book is still my favorite in the series

Gridlocked - 3 stars. I enjoyed Tonya and Mere’s story, but still felt like I lacked emotional investment in their relationship. As with the first story, I think this is more an issue of the abbreviated length of the novella versus a full length story.

See, this is why I want a full length book about Jace, Aiden, and Chris. How the hell does Jace get along perfectly well with Kenneth Stone (Father of Aiden, Mere, and Caleb) when no one else does?

Now as I looked around the kitchen after they went right back to making fun of each other (Michael threatening to cut off Raymond’s ridiculously long hair & David glaring at him; Stephanie pointedly ignoring Angel, who was poking her; & Chris grinning into his phone as Nunzio peered over his shoulder), I wondered if we’d all gravitated to each other & had instantly felt so close to each other because of our queerness

““What should I have done? Lied to her? Told her I was going to give up a job opportunity for a girl I’d spent one night with?” Each word caused the cringes to spread across the room except for Raymond and Michael, who were the best people in Queens. Clearly. “Fine,” I growled. “What should I have said?””

I love that Raymond and Michael and Tonya are alike, but everyone else is like “woah harsh” 😂

I’m living for the small glimpses/cameos in these novellas. It’s lovely to see Caleb, Michael, Raymond, etc, from the outside — relatively angst free and happy

“Rerouted” - 3 stars. This needed to be a longer story — the difficulty with poly romances is that sometimes the development is missing for all 3 characters. In this case Jace and Chris hashed things our so close to the end that Aiden was kind of left out in a way that felt uneven and forced the ending to tie up a little too neatly. Plus this whole story happened over the course of 1-2 days — very rushed

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked, cocking his head. “‘With’?”
Oli looked at his lover with exasperation. “Darling. Really? Really?”
Caleb blushed again. “Oh. I get it.”

LOVE THEM 🖤