Chord — Chelsea M. Cameron

TITLE: Chord
AUTHOR: Chelsea M. Cameron
RELEASED: January 28th, 2018; self-published
GENRE: Contemporary
AGE RANGE: NA
SYNOPSIS: Chase Hillier has plans, and nothing will cause her to deviate from them. So far, they’re pretty simple: Get through her first year of college with good grades, read a lot of books, and hopefully find a cute boyfriend who could turn into her husband someday. She’s got it all mapped out. No one is going to stand in her way. Not even her roommate, Cordelia Scott.
Cordelia Scott has her own plans: Get through her freshman year without too many panic attacks, figure out what the hell she wants to major in, and meet a guy who finally makes her heart flutter.
Fate has other plans for the two when they end up as roommates and neither of them can stop thinking about the other. They’re both absolutely sure that they like boys and not girls. But their sparks can’t be extinguished and they realize there is a lot more to their connection with each other than either of them thought. How will they navigate a path that neither of them planned on taking?

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“I didn’t want to tell you this originally, but coming out isn’t a one-time thing. It happens over and over. It happens to me every time I talk about Eli with someone new. It happens every time someone asks if I’m single. It happens hundreds of times. I’ve skirted around it, I’ve lied, I’ve changed the subject, I’ve done everything. Sometimes you don’t want to and that’s okay. It’s shitty that you have to keep doing it, but that’s the way things are right now. I hope it will change.”

I waited way too long to write this review, so I’ll keep this pretty brief. I had been wanting to start reading a bit more NA contemporary work, so when I saw a tweet promoting Chelsea Cameron’s work, I decided to glance at her bio. As soon as I realized that she specialized in own-voice f/f love stories, I was hooked, and when I saw that this book was super cheap on the kindle store, I snatched it up and read it right away!

Chord isn’t perfect, and I’ll be up front about that. There are quite a few spelling and grammatical errors – which is not a deal-breaker by any means for me, but I know it is for many readers – and the dialogue, at times, feels overly casual and a little bit over-simplified. The plot is, if I had to average it out, probably 70% romance and 30% a queer coming-of-age story, with little excitement outside of that realm, so if you don’t enjoy books that are primarily about love and embracing one’s queerness, I would probably not recommend this one for you.

That said, if you do enjoy a good, cutesy, sexy f/f story, I highly suggest giving Chord a try! There is representation from so many different segments of the LGBTQIA+ community here, as well as the fact that one of our protagonists is plus size, which, hello, yes please! She’s super sexy and her love interest absolutely adores her curves and describes her in such a way that is never, everdemeaning or fat-shaming, so I was living for that portrayal.

There’s also a ton of super cute banter, some really heartfelt discussions about sexuality and mental health, and a lot of romance that never shies away from showing the authentic sides to relationships, like the awkwardness that can come with a couple’s first time, or the experimentation and questioning that accompanies any individual exploring their sexuality in a new light.

All in all, like I said, this book does have some minor flaws, but I thought it was such a delightfully fun read and I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up way too late and finished this one in one sitting, and will happily be reading more of Chelsea’s writing in the future!

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