Two Series Installments

The Man Who Died Twice (by Richard Osman) 

Second book in the Thursday Murder Club series; another charming and delightful installment.  I finished this a while back so my memory of this book is that I enjoyed the mystery more than in the first one, and overall I continued to adore the characters and the general cozy vibe of the story.  Will definitely stick with this series.

Openly Straight (by Bill Konigsberg)

Spoilers below; if you're on desktop you can highlight to read!

I'm looking forward to Destination Unknown and decided to try another of Konigsberg's books in the meantime.  Rafe, our main character, is a gay kid who transfers to an all-boys school and decides to don't ask, don't tell his sexuality. This is complicated when, of course, he falls in love.

This is part of a series and when the ending was unresolved, I did a little investigating into the subsequent books. I decided not to keep going with the series because of at least one scene of extremely dubious consent that made it impossible to forgive the main character. Rafe sleeps with someone under these circumstances: 1) the guy is drunk, and Rafe is sober. 2) the guy does not know Rafe is gay and thinks they are on the same page as questioning guys experimenting. This is unethical AT BEST and it is not presented as such in the novel.  Like, the character can maybe make this horrible mistake but the author needs to know it's like, unforgiveably awful.  The fact that in subsequent books 1) there is a happy ending for these characters, and 2) bisexuality IS APPARENTLY COMPLETELY ERASED IN THE PROCESS makes this all a non-starter for me. 

All that said, I am still going to read Destination Unknown and hope in the past decade, Konigsberg has learned bisexual people exist and that, like, consent is important? I will report back.