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REVIEW: Out in the Field by Kate McMurray

SarahF — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:00:04 +0000

Dear Ms. McMurray.

I picked up your book because of a recommendation by someone whose taste I trust and because I liked the excerpt. The story was cute, but the flaws outweighed the cuteness for me.

This is a book about Being a Gay Athlete. This was NOT a romance. Oh, it had a love story in it and the love story had an HEA, but that HEA was never threatened. There was no barrier, no conflict, no tension integral TO the love story. The barrier/conflict/tension was all located in the Being a Gay Athlete story.

First up: I know nothing about baseball. Nothing. I actively dislike baseball, in fact. So I mostly skimmed details about the games. I’ve invited Sunita to comment on those aspects of the story in particular (but also on whatever else she wants to say).

The story is thus: Matt Blanco is a Hall-of-Fame worthy first baseman with the Brooklyn Eagles in his fourteenth season. His knee hurts, a lot. And he’s very very closeted. Ignacio Rodriguez is the Hot New Thing who has just been traded to the Eagles as their new third baseman. Matt might be fifteen years older than Iggy, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t appreciate precisely how hot Iggy actually is. There’s a little bit of lust for a chapter, then they both figure out the other’s gay in chapter 2. Which seemed a bit quick to me. Then they quickly get together.

The book takes place over four years and includes Matt’s coming out post-retirement and Iggy’s while still playing. Like Sunita (see below), I thought both of those were well done (except in that Matt wrote a book and the day before the book released in stores was when he came out for the first time. I just don’t believe that the secret would have been kept to that point). I like that the book doesn’t try to schmoosh everything into one season. I like that a lot.

However, I was frustrated by many things in this book. The “gee, shucks, little ole me?” stuff from both men got old pretty quickly. Both of them have obscene amounts of money and obscene endorsement contracts, and they just “want to play ball”:

Iggy rubbed his head. “This was easier when the hardest decision I had to make was whether or not I’d pose holding a bat in my baseball card photo.”

“I know, but these are all excellent opportunities. You’ll gain more visibility with fans, which puts more of those fans in the stadium, which gets you more favorable treatment from the Eagles front office. Everything is linked.”

“With money.”

Chris scoffed. “Don’t be like that. It’s part of the game, Ig. You signed your name on that contract knowing that.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m really grateful for all this. It’s just completely overwhelming.” Although, now that he’d said it, he wasn’t sure “grateful” was really the right word. He supposed he was happy enough that people wanted to give him money. And really, if having too much money was his only problem, he was happy to take it.

“You’re kind of a sex symbol, you know,” Chris said. “You could be cultivating your female fans.”

Iggy sighed. “Is it a cliché to say I just want to play baseball?”

Yes, in fact, it really really is. And just seemed utterly disingenuous to me, on the writer’s part, not on Iggy’s. The character has to be sympathetic, so god forbid he actually be money-aware. Just easier to make his aw-shucks-y instead.

The telling, not showing was most frustrating for me, though. At one point, Matt’s knee gives out on him during sex. The next day, he’s thinking about it:

Matt still regretted having to put the brakes on their session the night before, but it couldn’t have been helped. He was embarrassed, too, that Iggy now knew about the knee. He hadn’t wanted Iggy to know, hadn’t wanted to lose face in front of him. He’d wanted to be a whole man for Iggy, a strong man. He wanted to live up to the image Iggy had worshipped for years. But now Iggy had seen his weakness. [ . . . ] Matt dug his sneakers out of his locker and eavesdropped on the conversations around him. A few more players trickled in and roamed around, some idly talking about plans for the evening. Matt mostly wanted to go home and ice his knee. And, he found, he wanted Iggy to come with him. Not even for sex—Matt didn’t think he could make his knee work well enough for that anyway—but just to hang out and talk with. The cat was really out of the bag now. It was kind of a relief not to have to pretend with Iggy that everything was hunky-dory.

Really? This could have been…so much better done. This was rarely hinted at in the lead-up to the scene, and it could have been a site for serious tension between Iggy and Matt until Iggy assured Matt that of course he cared that Matt was injured, but only in so far as he wanted to be able to help and support him…or something similar. Instead, it’s a throwaway couple of paragraphs and then ignored.

And then there’s the fact that the whole thing was about Being a Gay Athlete. EVERYTHING had to do with this. Every scene, every tension, every decision, every discussion, every plot point, almost every sex scene, it seemed. It got tiring and a bit boring. But if readers like that sort of this, then this is the book for them.

If I were to compare this book to anything, it’d be Amy Lane’s The Locker Room (basketball, not baseball), but I think that book did a much better job of making the tension of being closeted into something that almost tears the heroes apart. This book tries to, but doesn’t quite get there.

One thing I will say, boy, you can write great sex scenes. The writing soared during the sex:

Iggy dug his fingers into Matt’s back. Matt thrust his hips forward, and their cocks rubbed together. God. God. Goose bumps broke out everywhere, and Matt groaned, his heart rate and anticipation mounting. He knew sweet release would come disastrously fast, but he didn’t care much. This was so damn good, and Iggy seemed to be right there with him, grunting and biting now.

Except for the unnecessary “sweet” here, I loved this scene. Most of the sex was very well done.

Overall, this book could have been so much better. The characters themselves were great. I really enjoyed watching them have dates together, to be honest, when they were just talking. But the book as a whole never really gelled for me, mainly because I could see the potential there and was frustrated with what was should have been there, rather than with what existed.

Grade: C

Sunita: This book is a great example of how two readers can see entirely different things in a story. My grade is not that different from Sarah’s, but for very different reasons, and I would recommend this book for certain readers.

First, the baseball. I know the author is a big baseball fan (she talks about it in the front matter of this book, among other places), and so I was looking forward to a romance that got the sports right. In some parts she succeeds, but in others, not so much. The camaraderie of professional athletes is really well done. I enjoyed the locker room scenes with the other members of the team, and a later scene in the hospital was just terrific, in part because the author took it in a totally different direction than I expected. But I had two gripes about other aspects, as well as a third I share with Sarah. The shared gripe is that their salaries are barely mentioned. These dudes are really rich. We all know what star athletes get paid, and even the MLB minimum is nothing to sneeze at. So can we please not pretend that they’re anything other than totally loaded? Make it something Iggy is getting used to, but don’t treat it as unimportant.

My big complaint is that the protagonists don’t seem to concentrate very much when they’re in a game, or in the late season and playoffs. They wind up in the ALCS, but they’re thinking about their romance. When they walk up to the plate, they’re thinking about each other or something related. When they’re in the field, they’re making eyes at each other. Really? Once in a while, okay. But it happens over and over again. It really detracted from the verisimilitude of some of the scenes. Pro athletes spend their entire lives preparing to get to the top. That takes a very high level of focus and compartmentalization (for most of them).

My small complaint is that the strategy within the games, which is sometimes important for the plot, sometimes doesn’t make sense. When Matt hurts his knee, it’s when he breaks from third to home. On an infield popup with one out. That kind of boneheaded running play would get you chewed out in Little League, let alone MLB. And there are other descriptions of play that had me shaking my head. It’s tough to satisfy both baseball aficionados and those who don’t care, and mostly the author does a good job. Perhaps because of that, the little things stood out.

OK, the romance. Unlike Sarah, I definitely thought this was a genre romance. Maybe it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been, but I saw both internal and external conflicts. The problems of being a gay athlete are analogous to external conflicts in historical romances, e.g., class, race, religion, and another similarity is the way in which external issues create internal conflicts to be resolved.

One of the reasons sports settings work so well in m/m is that the closet is a requirement, not an option, in most (male) professional team sports. The fear of being discovered, the fear of your teammates turning on you, all that is very real and ever-present. And I thought the age difference and the fact that they were at opposite ends of their careers made for an interesting internal conflict, giving it a Star Is Born quality. The internal conflict wasn’t as well developed as it could have been, and I would have liked to see more of Matt’s post-baseball issues and how they affected the couple. I did think the two big coming-out scenes were really well done. I’ve read two earlier books by this author, I felt these scenes were far better integrated here.

Matt and Iggy were thoroughly appealing characters, which again is a feature of this author’s books (I have liked every one of her main characters). They could have been a little less loveable, to be honest. And a couple of the supporting characters verged on stereotypes (please, authors, middle-aged mothers do not have to be From Hell or From Heaven).

I can see why so many readers loved this book. Once I got over my baseball-related niggles and there were more interactions with the other baseball team members, I quite enjoyed the story.

Grade: B-

~SarahF

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REVIEW: Gold Mountain by Sharon Cullars

Jayne — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:00:55 +0000

Dear Ms. Cullars,

I can’t recall whose blog I was reading when this book was mentioned but I’m glad I found out about it. A Negro heroine and a Chinese hero in 1865? Sign me up.

“In 1865, the hope for gold has spurred many to seek their fortunes in California, the place the Chinese call Gum San or “Gold Mountain.” Amidst this backdrop, Quiang, a new Chinese immigrant, works the dangerous rails hoping to save enough money to send home to his parents. In town, Leah and Clara, two enterprising women from New York, have plans of their own to grow a restaurant and laundry business. However, both plans go awry when Quiang and Leah meet one fateful day. What starts as a budding attraction soon grows into tumultuous desire despite the cultural and language barriers between them.

Initially resistant, Leah succumbs to passion following a tragic loss that leaves her vulnerable and alone. With hopes for a future that now includes Leah, Quiang embarks on a perilous path as he leaves the railroad behind for a more profitable position as a courier for The Tong, henchmen for the dangerous Triad. Quiang soon finds that navigating the secretive life of a courier brings more danger than he has ever faced on the railroad, dangers that not only threaten to tear him and Leah apart, but may cost them their lives as well.”

The book begins in media res with a scene showing the dangerous job Quiang and the other Chinese workers do. It also makes clear how little they were valued and how much less they were paid. Leah and Clara are also outside the mainstream. They have more say in what they do but the work is also hard plus they’re women alone in a town mainly populated by men and have learned to keep a shotgun handy. Though you avoid info dumps about them and flesh out Leah and Quiang slowly over the course of the book, I would still have enjoyed just a little bit more about before they each reached the mining town. As well, the book moves quickly past their escape from the villain and jumps far into their marriage. It’s nice to know how well they’re doing, that the family has grown and to be left with a positive feeling about their future but I would like to have seen just a touch more – their wedding, their initial time in Colorado…a little bit more.

The detailing is nicely done and makes it easy to imagine the rough and tumble town. I like how you didn’t attempt to shoehorn foreign words and phrases into the dialog but instead used plain English for Quiang and the other Chinese characters leaving the reader to assume that they’d be speaking fluently in their own language. Neither Leah nor Quaing are looking for a romance or even merely a friendship with the other. Thank goodness there’s no “one night of love to last a lifetime” jump into the fire used to justify bringing them together too soon. As their relationship progresses though, both Leah and Quaing are also well aware of the societal views and challenges they could face as a couple.

At the halfway point, I was wondering how you’d manage to get these two together in the face of the odds against them. The story is well plotted and the events flow together in a way to lead Leah and Quaing to their destiny together. And yet, I still wanted more. It appears you’ve done plenty of research about life in the mining towns and the challenges which faced Negros and Coolies (your choice of descriptions) but even though these are slipped quietly into the threads of the story, they felt more like a stone skipping across the surface. Sort of a “Here’s something interesting about life then” but these will only briefly be mentioned then little more is said about them or how they affects the main characters again. Generally there are at least a few scenes in any book which seem like merely page padders to me but this is a book which I would have loved to have seen expanded. B-

~Jayne

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REVIEW: Where There’s Smoke by L.A. Witt

SarahF — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:00:56 +0000

Dear Ms. Witt.

I really enjoyed the main characters in this book. I’m…ambivalent enough about the other characters and some of the plot that it affected my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

Jesse is running for Governor of California. He has no experience whatsoever in pretty much anything. He comes from acting royalty but is a semi-reality-show also-ran himself. He has very little life history before his decision to run except for the fact that he’s married to an Oscar-winning actress. So his decision to run was never fully explained to my satisfaction. Yes, the Republican candidate is horrible. Yes, Jesse has name recognition. But he claims throughout the book that he can handle the actual job of governor but doesn’t know how to campaign. But really, he’s never done either. What in his background allows anyone to believe, himself included, that he’d be a good governor?

Anyway, he’s also gay. His wife, Simone, knows about his sexuality and they’ve decided to divorce…right after the election. But until then, part of the campaign strategy, devised by Jesse’s senator uncle, is to play the happy-married, deeply-in-love couple. But Simone has Issues. She’s got a huge history with eating disorders that arises from her inability to access or process emotion. She tends to get vicious when she gets angry and she sublimates all stress into her eating disorder. So, it’s totally a good idea to put their sham marriage front-and-center of Jesse’s campaign, right? Right.

Jesse’s senator uncle’s former campaign manager becomes Jesse’s campaign manager. Anthony is driven, exceedingly competent, as principled as he can be, a smoker, gay, and totally hot for Jesse. Jesse in turn is totally hot for Anthony. Anthony is convinced that Jesse is straight. Jesse can’t tell if Anthony is gay or not. Commence sexual tension. One thing you do well, Ms. Witt, is build sexual tension. The slow bloom of a relationship, the realistic movement from lust to affection to love is something you do brilliantly, and this book is no different. The scene in which Jesse finally FINALLY comes out to Anthony is just perfectly done (I’d quote here, but Loose Id is securing their ARCs and I’m not typing out the whole damn excerpt — trust me, it’s an amazing scene).

The relationship between Jesse and Anthony builds so very slowly. For a long time, they can’t find time together to have sex because of the demands of the campaign, so they really have time to fall in love rather than just fuck like bunnies. I like that. I totally believed that these two guys love each other.

And really, only you would be able to make a smoker sexy because it’s so much a part of his personality. That was fascinating.

The book is long, more than 350 pages. So it’s almost inevitable, perhaps, that it sags badly in the middle. Once Jesse and Anthony have established their relationship as best they can, it’s pages and pages and PAGES of angst over the Catch-22 everyone is in. Simone is losing weight! But we can’t talk to her about it because she’ll just get mad and flounce away! But we’re hurting her! But we can’t help ourselves! And anyway, she pushed us together! But the voters! Over and over and around and around, with no solution until after the inevitable crisis point.

The character of Simone really bugged me. Women in m/m romance is a fraught issue. Usually there aren’t any. Some dedicated m/m readers will actively avoid books with women in them. So any woman who is a main character in m/m is bound to carry a lot on her shoulders. So on the one hand, Simone is an interesting character with her inability to access emotions and her need to exert control through her eating disorder. But on the other, she’s incredibly annoying because she’s so irrational no one can talk to her and it seems that she’s just the figurehead for the Conflict rather than a real character. And the saggy middle harping on that conflict without a solution made it all a bit much for me. It’d be nice to have a female character in m/m who doesn’t have Issues. (Admittedly, Jesse’s personal assistant is female and a wonderful sidekick character.)

So, as much as I loved Jesse and Anthony (and boy, did I!), the pacing issues and Simone’s whole character (and especially her final admission) really pulled this book down for me. The ending, though was a nice twist. I liked the reason for the Conflict and loved Jesse’s solution — even though it seemed a bit too cavalier, it did maintain his integrity. Overall, I couldn’t put this book down, but I did read some of it while squinting a bit.

Grade: B-

Best regards,
-Sarah F.

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REVIEW: Defying the Odds by Kele Moon

Jane — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:00:46 +0000

Dear Ms. Moon:

This book caught my eye on Twitter. KatiD recommended it and I can see why. The story featured two really sweet characters who had never been special in anyone’s lives before and who found, in each other, the perfect companion. As I read the book, I kept thinking of how much potential the story had. It could have been an amazing story but it lacked serious character development. Every time an opportunity arose to engage the reader’s deep emotional connection was bypassed. It was a superficial story that had a ton of potential.

Melody Dylan escaped her abusive husband. Broke, she ended up in Garnet and got a job waiting tables. She may be poor but she’s independent, and most importantly, safe. Melody catches the eye of UFC fighter, Clay Powers. Melody has no clue who Clay is but she bristled when she ran into the sheriff, a former UFC fighter and the best friend of Clay.

The sheriff proceeds to tell Clay that Melody won’t want anything to do with him because of his past. This isn’t true because to Melody it isn’t the size but the attitude of a man that is frightening and while Clay looks like he could break her in two with one hand, he doesn’t give off the the same scary vibe of a man who could be a danger to her.

But Clay, believing that he would only be rebuffed, can only look at Melody with longing each time he comes to the cafe and sits in her section.

“I dunno the details. She seemed to feel like he was a real danger, enough to move here of all places.” Wyatt took another sip of his coffee, his tall frame still hunched low over the booth as he spoke to Clay. “You get why it wouldn’t work out, dontcha? Why a UFC Hall of Fame heavyweight might not be her ideal man?”

Yeah, Clay got it, and he knew Wyatt was right. It wasn’t even a shock to his system. He was too rough around the edges, too mean, too big and intimidating. Nice girls didn’t fuck guys like him—groupies did.

Much of this is told to us in summary fashion and it is too bad because there is nothing more endearing than a tough guy beset with unrequited love. For instance, seeing Clay choke down pumpkin pie that was gifted to him by Melody did more to show me the type of guy that Clay was (willing to suffer rather than hurt her feelings) than all the summary paragraphs that followed. Further, Clay doesn’t love sex. He finds it largely unsatisfying because of the lack of emotional involvement to the point he has become celibate. His attraction, both physical and emotional to Melody was sweet and touching and I wished there was greater development of this. Likewise, Melody’s past abuse and her recovery was glossed over. There was also a very truncated timeline. The romance takes place between Thanksgiving and New Year’s but there are several timing issues that seemed off.

I am not a fan of the use of dialect and it is heavy in this book. I’m not sure why it is used other than to emphasize stereotypes of small southern towns being full of people using incorrect grammar.

As a sports book, the UFC bit is important to the story and not just there as a backdrop. Clay is struggling with the trajectory of his career. He is currently on top but it’s getting tiresome. He hates the showmanship aspect of the position and his lust for winning is diminishing. I’m not very well versed in UFC so I have no idea about the accuracy of the scenes but it did feel right. Clay worked out daily; he was ribbed about his eating habits that might affect his performance; the violence of the sport was emphasized. There was both an appreciation for the sport that was exuded in the book but a cautionary note regarding the possibility of serious injury.

This was a very wweet romance that missed a huge opportunity to build great backstory. It was a bit slow in the beginning but the pace was offset by fun banter between Clay and his best friend Wyatt and fortunately, the story picked up speed toward the end. I loved the characters and felt it could have been so much stronger. Again, this is a very sweet book but I just felt left wanting so much more. C+

Best regards,

Jane

The book is fairly expensive being that it is published by Loose Id but it may be worth putting on your wish list at Fictionwise and buying during one of the 40-60% off sales.

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Digital First Publishers: High Price Points and Limited Availability

Jane — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:00:22 +0000

Intro

Readers dislike Agency pricing a lot complaining that the 7.99 price point for a digital book that has limited sharing options and no resale. I don’t hear a lot of complaints about the digital first publishers and their high prices. I’m not sure if it is because of the following:

Limited audience
Speciality publishing

High Prices

Digital first publishers like Loose Id and Ellora’s Cave, among others, price their stories very high. Loose Id prices novellas at $4.99 and their full length books at $7.99. Ellora’s Cave charges $7.50 for full novels at their own site and $9.99 at third party retailers. The price isn’t deterring many readers from buying Laurann Dohner’s books. Brawn is a pre order and ranked in the top 50 of romances at Kindle with a digital list price of $8.75 and $6.65 discounted. To Command and Collar by Cherise Sinclair published by LooseId is No. 66. The digital list price is $7.99 and the discounted price it $6.39.

Riptide Publishing came out of the gate with high prices arguing that you were getting a superior product and thus you needed to pay a premium price. Sarah Frantz said:

Almost all of the initial offerings so far listed are under 30K words. And honestly, $2.99 for 10K words seems utterly ridiculous to me. $4.99 for under 30K words? $10 for 100K words? I mean, 100K words is a great story, but $10? Really?! While the stories are great and the idea behind the new press is admirable, with price points like that, I can’t see it getting very far.

These prices don’t decline over time either.

I still remember Angela James stating that for Carina Press, a high quality product in terms of editing and production value, that the highest price they can charge is 5.99. For specialty collections such as their holiday anthologies, they charge $8.99. Samhain’s highest priced book appears to be $5.50. Carolyn Crane’s “Head Rush” is a full length novel and priced at $5.50. For their Retro Romance line, the pricing is as follows:

Plus Novel: $4.99
Novel: $3.99
Category Length: $2.99

When Entangled Publishing launched, it’s full length novellas (some of which clocked in under 80,000 words) were priced at $7.99. Since then I’ve seen the prices of those books drop dramatically. When I first read Rosalie Lario’s Blood of the Demon, the book was priced at $7.99. Now it is priced at $2.99 and it’s sequels are listed at $4.99.

Sarah and I discussed backlist pricing in September 14 podcast and we both agreed that 2.99 to 3.99 was our discovery price.

I saw a review for Caught by Cassandra Carr at Romance Novel News. I went looking for the book and the price was $4.99 and only at $4.99. It’s a novella and for an author I’ve never read before. Jennifer Porter, a reviewer at RNN, noted that she couldn’t review Debbie Macomber’s “Family Affair” because it was 112 pages and priced at $16.99.

In this case, I was so bothered by the price that I decided I couldn’t read the book. I figured that my negative reaction would most likely color my reading experience. I didn’t want to deal with the issues, so I chose to avoid it entirely. Admittedly, the fact that Macomber has such a large fan base played a role in my decision to just leave the whole thing alone. And FYI, I absolutely respect the fact that her fans might not find the $16.99 price tag problematic.

As for me, I didn’t want to spend $4.99 on a novella of an author I had never read before. Instead I purchased Talk to Me by the same author at $5.80. (It’s a book that features a creepy sexual harasser but I didn’t realize that until I had read the first three chapters). Interestingly, I went to lend this book to another Kindle reader and I found that it a) was not lendable and b) it was only sold at Amazon and Siren’s Bookstrand Store.

Availability

I noticed that LooseId, Siren, and other digital first publishers don’t have partnerships with a wide range of retailers. Sourcebooks, for example, has this great graphic that shows where all their books are available for purchase.

I tried to find “Caught” at Fictionwise, All Romance eBooks, and Kobo, but it was only available at Loose Id and Amazon. Interestingly, I searched Carr’s other titles. Some were available at Barnes and Noble (Head Games, pubbed by Siren), Fictionwise (Talk to Me, pubbed by Loose Id), Fictionwise (Talk To Me), Kobo (Head Games). Amazon had Caught, Head Games, Talk to Me. Isn’t this a problem? A reader might assume that the one book is all that Carr has published. There appears to be no consistency. Other Loose Id books are available at Barnes & Noble whereas other Siren books are available at Fictionwise.

The Rifter by Ginn Hale was favorably reviewed by Sunita here at DA. The serial was only for sale at Blind Eye books and it cost $3.99 per entry or $29,95 overall. Each entry ran around 10-15,000 words.

Features

It’s hard to say what the features of ebooks are across the board for Loose Id or Siren or other ebook titles. Loose Id and Ellora’s Cave appears to allow lending of its books but Siren does not. They all have Text to Speech enabled and they are available DRM free.

Carina Press does not allow lending of its titles but does have Text to Speech enabled. CP books are available DRM free.

Conclusions

For these digital first publishers that are charging high prices and limiting their retail partners, I’m interested in hearing from readers about whether that has value for them and why? Are there lessons to be extrapolated here? Are these publishing houses offering something unique? I noticed that Loose Id sells primarily M/M stories. Siren is well known for the menage and more titles.

For authors, does it matter where your book is sold or the price point? Perhaps these digital first houses have built up such an audience, limiting its retail partnerships has no adverse affect. I’ve heard that Siren authors are making significant money.

But we often hear readers complaining about the Agency priced books. How about these? Is the discounting sufficient? Do you mind that you have to buy these books from several different retailers? Any insight is welcome.

REVIEW: Room at the Top by Jane Davitt and Alexa Snow

SarahF — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:00:30 +0000

Dear Ms. Davitt and Ms. Snow:

I thoroughly enjoy your books. So I was thrilled when I saw this one and I wasn’t disappointed when I read it. You have such consistently good writing, wonderful characters, and fabulous representations of BDSM.

Austin and Jay are a committed couple, completely, madly, deeply in love with each other…and both submissives. Their sex life is strong and they enjoy each other, but they both crave giving up control to someone else. They can’t dom each other — they’ve tried — so they need a top who’s not going to try to insert himself sexually into their relationship. They had a top who needed the release of BDSM but was still hung up on his partner who had been killed in a car accident. But he moved away. The story opens with them scening with another top who just doesn’t get it and not only forces Jay to safeword, but then tries to ignore the safeword. Things get a little tense with Jay and Austin after this disaster, because they’re both desperate for a good session with a competent top but don’t know where to start. A few days later, in a conversation with their former top, he suggests a straight dom he knows. They meet Liam, get along well, and they start to scene with him once a week. Until they all start to fall in lust and in love (dun dun DUN!).

I ranted recently on Twitter about the Gay For You trope and how annoying and insulting I find it. And technically, I guess, this book was also Gay For You, but it totally didn’t feel that way as I was reading it. I guess for me, Gay For You has the straight guy refusing to admit any sort of sexual preference for men, except for his partner. Liam admits right from the beginning that he prefers to top men, but has only ever had sex with women. So his sexual desire for Jay and Austin freaks him out a bit, it does so more because he promised them both that he would never try to insert himself into their sexual relationship, less because he’s worried about desiring men (although there’s a bit of that too).

Things happen in this book that are not sex (Jay and Austin’s house gets flooded by a broken water heater, so they live with Liam for a few weeks; Austin’s sister has fits of being a ragingly entitled teenager), but most of the book is made up of their scenes with Liam. Not every one, by any means, but important turning points. These scenes are brilliantly crafted, reveal the characters to the extent that they can talk without a speech tag (not that they do) and this reader knew exactly who said what, and delve into the psychology of BDSM. As in some of your other books, dominance/submission and sadism/masochism overlap in their play. They’re very formal D/s situations, but it’s also fabulous to see two such different types of submission and how Liam deals with both of them.

I had two issues: the stuff about Austin’s sister’s teenage melodrama was just utterly pointless. I mean, it wasn’t, I could see how it fit into the character and narrative arcs, but it took up too much space, went on way too long, and could have been replaced with something way less annoying. I’m utterly OCD about reading every word in a book, so I didn’t skip the scenes about Austin’s sister, but I totally wished I could have. I certainly wouldn’t have missed anything at all.

The second issue was a timing thing at the very very end, so I’ll spoiler cover it.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Overall, though, I really loved this book. The sex was hot and entirely UNgratuitous. The relationships were strong and grew over the book. There was no barrier, per se, that the men had to overcome; rather, they had to accept the evolving nature of their relationship without freaking out.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Sarah

Book Link

REVIEW: Dance With Me by Heidi Cullinan

SarahF — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:00:08 +0000

Dear Ms. Cullinan

I’m going to apologize up-front that this review will not do justice to this book. I don’t think anything can do justice to this book except reading it AGAIN. It’s just…brilliant. Not without flaws, but brilliant.

The book starts with two alternating prologues. One is the night Laurence “Laurie” Parker is thrown out of a big (traditional) international ballroom dance competition because he dances in the “follower” role with his male partner (traditional ballroom is, of course, strictly heterosexual). (Now, if we’re going to be picky, I had issues with this. I can’t believe that Laurie and his partner would be able to fool everyone up until that point as they did. Surely they’d have to have qualified even to be allowed into the competition? And is ballroom done like figure skating, one couple at a time? I got the impression that it wasn’t. Anyway…) The other is the night Ed Maurer is injured playing semi-pro football, injured so badly he’ll never play again. These are the two events that haunt the rest of the book and haunt Laurie and Ed in ways they’re still trying to recover from years later.

Ed and Laurie meet (years after their downfalls) as antagonists at a community center. Laurie is playing loud music for his aerobics class that is mistakenly being piped through into the weight room, where Ed is trying to run a class. Ed tells Laurie he’ll do anything if he just stops the music for one night. Laurie agrees and asks Ed to help him during a ballroom dance class he’s running at his dance studio. Much to Laurie’s surprise, Ed agrees. He’s done some ballroom dance as physical therapy for his neck injury and enjoys it. They fall in love over dance.

There’s MUCH more to the book, of course. Laurie dreams up a way to save the community center they both volunteer at, only to realize that he can’t really save it by himself. Laurie deals with his mother, who wants him to recapture the glory of his professional dancing career. Ed deals with the chronic and sometimes acute pain of his neck injury, as well as getting laid off from his crappy office job. But really, the story is about two men falling in love and finding that they work better together than apart. And they do. The love between them is palpable, and that’s one of the things I loved about the book so much: we really see the characters falling in love slowly (the books takes place over about nine months or so) and we really see them as better together than apart.

I’ve been trying to describe this book to people and all I can come up with is that it reads like life. Laurie’s fucked up relationship with dance is never really explained, mostly because it’s just not that simple. He adored performing; his mother pushed him into it. He’s brilliant at it, having captured every accolade and honor out there; he’s terrified to do it now. No, he’s terrified to perform; except he isn’t. His motivation is sometimes a little sketchy but I never get the impression it’s because you don’t have complete control of your characters, but rather because Laurie himself doesn’t know how he feels about dancing and performing and after a while, it doesn’t matter, because all he cares about Ed. Although not in a creepy, obsessive, co-dependent way. Just that Ed is his top priority and everything else pales in comparison.

Ed’s relationship with his pain is better mapped out. And this might come from the fact that YOU have chronic pain (I’ve dithered about mentioning it in this review, but it’s immediately available to anyone who reads your blog, so felt it was relevant). I could feel the authenticity of Ed’s experiences, because I’m sure you’ve gone through similar realizations yourself, even though in the book they were uniquely Ed’s and not you rewriting yourself into Ed. But even that isn’t closed narratively, tied up in a neat little bow at the end. Ed has chronic pain. Ed will always have chronic pain. Part of the point of the book was Ed dealing with that and the significant psychological repercussions. Except you made very obvious that one don’t just deal with it, get over it, and get on with one’s life. Chronic pain is a constant cycle of acceptance/rejection, dealing with it/avoiding it. So even Ed’s big realization at the end…isn’t. Is something that he (and Laurie) will have to renew again and again.

But anyway, the book feels like life. Stuff happens and we deal with it. It’s connected with what comes before and with what comes after, because sometimes it just is, because life is like that. But it’s not necessarily immediately obvious how it connects. No one is cured at the end of the book: Laurie still refuses to perform…except when he agrees. Ed’s still in pain and accepts it…except when he’s angry about it. And that’s…life, rather than bad writing. I’ve read other reviewers and readers saying that this read instead like episodic writing and bad pacing. I get why people might feel that, but I think it’s part of the atmosphere of the story itself.

One problem I did have that felt more like bad writing than life: Laurie tells Ed about his Toronto experience when Ed’s so drunk that he doesn’t remember. We’re never told one way or another whether Laurie ever tells Ed again and that bothers me. It’s a loose end, and I could understand Laurie’s decision one way or another whether to tell Ed again, but I would like to have known. (Another loose end: the ending felt rushed. I loved the emotion of it, but still can’t quite get a handle on Ed’s specific motivations going into the proposal scene.)

But, more than anything else, I fell in love with Ed and Laurie. They’re amazingly full and real characters. They’ve got quirks that felt like…real people, not like characters with quirks to make them cute and lovable.

And I fell in love with the sheer beauty of the writing:

Ed watches Laurie dance in the local performance of The Nutcracker:

At first, Ed didn’t recognize him. He came out on the arm of a ballerina who was wearing a seriously intense tutu, but Laurie had his hair slicked back and something around his eyes — liner, but glitter too. He wore all silver, and his costume was much simpler than his partner’s, but he glistened in the stage lights. And oh, yeah, he was wearing tights. His muscular legs were defined by the smooth white silk, and the bulge in his crotch was like a magnet to Ed’s eye. God.

God.

And then Laurie was gone again. Ed sat through parade after parade of other people’s kids dancing to all different kinds of music in a rainbow array of costumes, and each time they came out, he was disappointed they weren’t Laurie. But just when he was about to give up hope, there Laurie was with the tutu lady again. He mostly, to Ed’s disappointment, propped her up while she did all manner of tricky dances. It was nice, but he wanted to see Laurie move. He supposed this was it, and he tried to enjoy it to its fullest, but mostly he just felt disappointed.

But then the tutu lady left, and Laurie remained. And he danced.

He was beautiful.

Ed couldn’t describe what Laurie was doing — he barely understood. Leaping. Arcing. He’d move his arms, and slide his leg up his other leg, and he’d kick and leap again. Ed didn’t know what it was. He just knew it was…beautiful. It was like watching light. It was like… God, he kept stuttering over it, and it made him stare all the harder, trying to figure it out. It was like Laurie was finding something inside Ed and pulling it out. And it wasn’t all, or even much, that it was Laurie and that Ed was attracted to him. It was a lot more than that. He’d have been moved by this even if he’d never met the man. As Laurie leaped and turned and kicked kind of all at once, and the audience gasped in wonder, something in Ed opened like a lotus, and he knew.

It was that Laurie was beautiful. It was that Laurie was male, and he was beautiful, and when he danced, he made male beauty come alive. Watching him dance was moving Ed because he’d never really seen anybody do that, and he hadn’t known it was something he yearned for until he saw it. Laurie wasn’t just good. Laurie was a fucking artist. As far as Ed was concerned, he was a legend.

And I’ve kissed him. A soft, startled thrill rushed through Ed, the kind he hadn’t had since he was twelve.

I’ve kissed him, and I might just kiss him again.

Soon.

And then, without warning, Laurie fell.

This scene just…eviscerated me. I can’t stop thinking about it. Ed is a gay man who’s perfectly comfortable being gay and this seems to me the essence of his sexuality, right there. He just finds men…beautiful. And he sees it in Laurie when he dances. And there’s scene after scene after SCENE of this beautiful, perfect, truthful, honest writing. I can’t begin to quote them all, but I was blown away by each and every one: gorgeous because of the writing, but also because of how deeply each one gets into both characters.

This book is also so very honest. This is the “it’s like life” thing coming back again. Nothing’s romanticized. The sex is SO fucking hot because it’s REAL. Here’s Laurie after he and Ed have sex the first time (and despite the excerpt here, it’s so wonderful to see a gay couple for whom anal sex is not the apotheosis of sex):

Laurie lay there, feeling the relief and the loss at the same time as Ed pulled out, lay with his palms pressed to the quilt, to Ed’s quilt, lay in the sticky mess of his own semen as the hot fire of his backside, swollen and still open, leaked lube. This was the part he had resented, he remembered now. The mess. The slight squickiness of sex, the sometimes serious squickiness. The awkward part where everyone cleaned up, where he’d stand and find himself involuntarily expelling the air that had gone in with his partner’s cock and then, inevitably, had to come back out. His first time with anal sex had seen him padding across the plush carpet of another dancer’s bedroom floor, face flaming as he farted his way to the toilet. This was the messy part of sex, and it was, he admitted, the reason he’d worked to avoid it.

Except he didn’t care about it so much as he lay there now. He felt the pressure inside him, but he barely glanced to see where Ed was before he let the air out with a soft pop. His face still flamed, but he was so sated he couldn’t do much else.

I mean, yes, that’s gross, but it’s real, it’s true, and it’s a far cry from the romanticized, fantasy anal sex in m/m romance we usually see. In another scene, Ed rims Laurie, and Laurie doesn’t want to kiss him after — yes, utterly illogical, maybe, but so fucking REAL, I just loved it.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch the dance imagery used throughout this book. Laurie and Ed dance the tango together and it’s just utterly beautiful:

He was still nervous, though, and he held Ed’s hand all the way out to the studio. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, he was doing this. He thought it might be to show up his father, to make him watch his big burly football player dance. He thought he might be thumbing his nose at his mother as well. He was too scared to be bragging, but he felt some of that too, all the same.

When the others settled along the far wall and he and Ed went out onto the floor together, however, he realized that mostly he was simply out of sorts and wanted, right now, to dance with his partner.

He’d cued up a tango, and after a whispered suggestion to Ed, he simply let go and followed. He heard their audience’s gasps—he’d urged a very showy start—but after that, all he heard was the music. All he felt was the beating of his heart and the heat of Ed’s body, the power behind his embrace.

All he knew was the dance.

Only four people watched, but Laurie was glad. When he’d gone down in flames in Toronto, it had been such a mighty, incredible fall, but somehow he knew even a slight tumble now would bruise him to the bone. He had no ego left to cage him, no grit or anger at the world, no arrogance to blind him, not anymore. Even this, dancing for his parents, for Oliver and for Christopher, felt too much, too loud, too dangerous, and the fear pushed on him with every step.

But with every step Ed was there to catch him. Ed led him, Ed bore him up, and no matter how quick the turn or steep the slide, Ed always brought him home.

When the song finished, for a second there was only silence, and Laurie clung to Ed, who clung right back. Then Oliver started to clap, and then Christopher, and then they all were. “Amazing,” Oliver said, and Laurie dared to look at them. They were all wide-eyed. They were all moved. Even his mother.

He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or not.

The natural partnering of dance obviously works well in romance, but you make it more than that, different, bigger, and so much a part of Laurie’s way of thinking it makes him utterly real.

Part of the reason I apologized at the beginning of this review is because I knew I’d never be able to cover everything in this review. The book is just…too big. Not long (although at 240 pages, it is that, too), but just…wide-ranging. Like life (she repeats). Another review might give the book a B-/C+ and mention utterly different things and I would actually probably agree with everything it said. But because there’s so much MORE to the book, the good stuff far outweighed the potential bad stuff for me.

I *will* say, though, that for me Dance With Me has improved on rereads. First read through, I felt the book was a solid B. Second read through, it was a B+, pushing into A-. Third read through (and this is FULL read throughs, not just hopping back and forth), I want to give it an A, but know I can’t because what about the first impression B? I recently said on Twitter that it’s a book I’d take with me to a year’s deployment in Iraq if I could only take five books with me, because it just gets better every time I reread it (which is not usual for me — usually books get more annoying, not more sublime). Every time I reread it, I wasn’t just able to relive the good parts, I was getting MORE out of it. There’s one major realization scene that totally worked for me on the first read, made no sense on the second read (seriously? HOW did it do that?), and fit well but not amazingly on the third read. But I think that’s just the marker of a great book. Or, at least, it is for me.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Sarah

Loose ID

REVIEW: Moonlight Becomes You by Piper Vaughn and M.J. O’Shea

SarahF — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:00:32 +0000

Dear Ms. Vaughn and Ms. O’Shea:

I have a soft spot for rock star heroes. I don’t know why, but I do. (Someone needs to write an ex-con rock star hero who now hooks or strips, or an ex-con, ex-stripper rock star, or something, and I’ll be ALL set.) So TWO rockstar heroes utterly intrigued me and the excerpt at Loose Id looked fantastic. This book had almost everything I like: angst and trauma and deep longing…and then the main hero turned into a whiny, blaming jerk at the end and I hated him.

Shane Ventura is in a band with his brother and two other guys and they’re rock stars. Their band Luck is touring with a British band Moonlight because the bands mesh well and both have albums coming out around the same time. But when Shane meets Kayden Berlin, the lead of Moonlight, Kayden insults and then ignores him. Shane’s pissed because Kayden is the hottest thing to walk the earth and Shane wants him to fill in the void his life has become.

The back story, though, is that Shane’s life is pointless and horrible — too much sex, drugs, alcohol, all in an attempt to drag Shane through the pointless days ::whinewhinewhine:: — because back when the band first signed with a record label, the label made them kick off their lead singer and song writer Jesse, because he was ugly and dumpy and didn’t look like a rock star. Shane and Jesse were in love, but not only did Shane agree to this betrayal, he was the one who had to tell Jesse. And Shane’s regretted it ever since because he misses Jesse so much and he’s never felt that connection with anyone since. Except Kayden. And Kayden hates him except when he kisses him…

So, spoilerificness here:

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Look, I like angst. I love that swirly hot feeling in my stomach from reading well-written mental anguish and suffering in a relationship. And Shane was properly guilt-ridden and yearning throughout the book up until the big reveal. But then Shane was just pure whiny, self-indulgent, selfish, blind asshole at the end of the book, so much so that I wanted Kayden to say “Fuck you too” and walk away and find himself some groupie who would appreciate him. Even the rainbows and fluffy bunnies of mutual adoration in the epilogue wasn’t enough for me, because Shane never said he was sorry, never said he understood the devastation he’d wrought. It was all about him.

So…yeah. Great writing, characters I was invested in, and then the wrong guy ends up groveling, which just destroyed everything. But I’d be interested in reading more of your work, hoping for less assholishness.

Grade: C

Best regards,
-Sarah

Goodreads

JOINT REVIEW: Paper Planes, by M. Jules Aedin

Sunita — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:49:42 +0000

Dear Ms. Aedin,

Sunita: I wasn’t familiar with your work when I read the synopsis and excerpt of this book, but it grabbed my attention immediately. How does a man deal with a tragic event that not only robs him of his partner, but turns him into a spokesman for the gay community? How does he move on when his public role, which he considers important to fulfill, keeps the tragedy at the forefront of his daily life? Given this setup, I expected an angst-filled ride, but there is much more than that. Paper Planes is by turns sad, funny, and surprising.

Sarah: I was interested in how this story would compare with K.A. Mitchell’s Regularly Scheduled Life, which has a similar plot about a victim of a tragedy becoming a spokesman for the gay community. So Sunita and I had similar interests. But I also really loved the teaser excerpt.

Sunita: The book opens with a bang: On his way to yet another speaking engagement, Stuart Grange recalls his last telephone call with his longtime partner, Brennan. Brennan’s role in foiling a terrorist attack made Brennan a hero and Stuart his posthumous spokesman. When he misses his flight home he is helped out by Dustin McDonough, the Korean-American airline pilot with whom he had exchanged a few words on his inbound flight. There is clearly an attraction there, but neither acts on it (they play a vintage videogame instead) and Stuart goes home to North Carolina the next day. But he keeps thinking about Dustin, and when he is offered the chance to photograph a national LGBT rally in Washington, DC, he accepts it, hoping for the one-in-a-million possibility that Dustin will be there. And he is, although they don’t actually meet face to face. Stuart and Dustin then begin an email relationship that turns into a long-distance romance, and the rest of the book charts the development of this romance as well as Stuart’s journey from grieving LGBT symbol to a new life.

The novel is structured differently from your average romance, which presents both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, the slow pace of Stuart and Dustin’s relationship results in a more convincing arc than the meet-&-fall-into-bed speed of many stories. By the time Stuart and Dustin get together, Stuart has taken a number of steps to change his life and leave the past behind.

On the negative side, readers who like the main couple to get together fairly early may become impatient. After their initial meeting, months (and chapters) pass before the protagonists are together again. And then, given the long-distance nature of the relationship, they spend considerable time apart. The book is written in the first person POV of Stuart, so we spend a lot of time in his world. I liked that aspect, but it does reduce the romance focus.

The emphasis on Stuart’s development reflects the care and skill with which you depict your characters. Dustin, despite his name, is ethnically Korean-American, which leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the book:

“So,” I said, turning the attention away from my background, which usually earned me either good-natured ribbing or negative assumptions about my intelligence, education, and/or lineage. “You’re from Korea?”

“Well, no. I’m from San Diego. My mom was from Korea, though. My dad was U.S. Air Force, stationed over there in the fifties.”

I was trying to figure out how to ask why his mother hadn’t named him something more Korean sounding than “Dustin” without living up to the “ignorant Southern racist” stereotype that I was pretty sure I still fit purely by accident sometimes, when he grinned and solved my dilemma for me.

“You want to ask about my name, don’t you?” he prodded.

“Um.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Those are the two things everyone always asks about—my name and my leg.”

Dustin has a prosthetic leg, the ramifications of which you also depict with sensitivity and insight. Stuart’s initial reaction is amusing and one with which the reader can identify, and the way it factors into their intimate relationship felt authentic. It’s something that is ever-present but does not comprise the sum total of who Dustin is. There are so few books in which these topics are handled well that Paper Planes really stands out for me as an exemplar of how to do it right. I also very much appreciated that Dustin and Stuart are both grownups, and Dustin is well into his forties. Thanks for recognizing that people in that age category can make sexy, interesting heroes!

The leisurely pace of the book occasionally made me impatient, but the high quality of the writing carried me through, and overall I found this to be a satisfying read. I will definitely be on the lookout for the other books you are writing in this world.

Grade: B

Sarah: I would agree with most of what Sunita says here. I very much enjoyed the slow build to the relationship, I liked both characters, I loved how you dealt with Dustin’s ethnicity, disability, and career. The emotional arc for both characters was wonderful, too.

What I didn’t like was the strange suspense aspects that seemed tacked on to the story. Stuart’s PowerPoint presentation for his advocacy speech is sabotaged, but it has very little effect on the story and is never discussed or explained. And the fact that it takes the FBI a full year and a half to figure out who was responsible for the hijacking that killed Stuart’s partner is utterly unbelievable to me, especially considering the result. Maybe I just have more faith in our law enforcement than you do, but still, it seemed odd and strangely out of place in the story. Those two points dragged the narrative down for me from a solid B.

Grade: B-

Best regards,
-Sunita and Sarah

REVIEW: “Bound…” trilogy by Ava March

SarahF — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:00:57 +0000

Dear Ms. March.

I really really REALLY thought I’d reviewed this series already but I can’t find it anywhere. SUCH a hardship it was to reread it so I could review it. Or…not. ;) It’s totally worth a reread. And what better recommendation is there than that?

This series is three novellas: “Bound by Deception,” “Bound to Him,” and “Bound Forever.” Regency-set, they tell the story of the building relationship between Lord Oliver Marsden and Lord Vincent Prescott. “Bound by Deception” ends with an HFN, and “Bound Forever” ends with a full-on HEA — as close as they can get to a proposal and a wedding-type commitment for two men in 1823 — while the middle book ends with something sort of in the middle of an HFN and an HEA. The characters are strong and consistent, the sex is hot and fun and (mostly) integral to the story, and the building of the relationship through the three stories is logical and affecting.

In “Bound by Deception,” we find Oliver negotiating with the madam of a whorehouse. He’s found out that his friend Vincent gets it on once a month with a male prostitute, mainly because the male prostitute he (Oliver) sees regularly boasted about it often enough for Oliver to figure out who the prostitute was boasting about (really? so much for professional discretion). Anyway, he is utterly unrequited in his love for Vincent, didn’t even know that Vincent liked men, and wants this one opportunity to be with Vincent. He agrees to the madam’s outrageous price and gets his chance.

Now here we have incredible suspension of disbelief. We have to believe that a dark room, a bad accent, and some stubble are enough of a disguise that Vincent doesn’t recognize Oliver, despite knowing him since they were teenagers. On my re-read, I found this too much for me. I mean, really?!

Anyway, the sex is unexpected because Vincent’s into pretty heavy BDSM. Oliver, shocked out of his skull that Vincent likes men, is even more shocked that Vincent likes whipping men, but enjoys it anyway (Oliver does, that is. Both of them did, in fact). Really enjoys it. It’s the best sex either of them has ever had, of course. After the amazing evening, Oliver then angsts his way around London. Once with Vincent was supposed to be enough, but it’s not. He wants Vincent to know who he fucked. He wants Vincent again. Vincent does some angsting too: he’s worried about “Jake” the prostitute and wants to make sure he’s okay. Eventually Oliver reveals all to Vincent at a ball, causing a showdown where he forces Vincent to realize he actually prefers men as sexual partners. Vincent had his monthly appointment, of course, but refused to label himself a “sodomite,” refused to admit that he could be that different (he’s got some issues around fatherly approval):

“Other than us both being frequently overlooked second sons to marquises, I used to believe we had very little in common,” Marsden said, calm and composed when Vincent felt like the floor was tilting underneath him. “You succeed at everything you do. You’re damn near perfect. Whereas I’m, well…” He waved a hand, indicating himself and the shabby room in one gesture. “You have responsibilities, property to oversee, and I have absolutely no prospects. Never even attended university. But we aren’t so different after all. You know what it feels like to wonder why you’re this way. Why you aren’t like every other man who lusts after women and wants a wife to call his own. And you can understand the difficulty and the need to keep it hidden.”

Vincent’s eyes widened, cold panic gripping his spine. “I’m not like you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“The hell I’m not! I don’t bend over and take it like a woman.”

Marsden flinched, as though Vincent had punched him in the gut. “Is that what you tell yourself?” he asked, hurt and anger warring in his narrowed eyes. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“Yes, it does! I’m not a…a –”

“A what?” Marsden shot back, hands fisted at his sides, advancing swiftly until he stood chest to chest with Vincent. “Go on, say it. But calling me a sod or a molly isn’t going to change the fact you fucked me. Hell, you did more than that. A fuck is just a fuck. But you kissed me!” Marsden threw the truth violently at Vincent.

This excerpt shows the one niggle I had about this whole series besides the suspension of disbelief in this first story: there’s a very fine thread of misogyny running through it. I’m still not sure if it’s really there, or if I’m just looking for trouble, but every now and then the men expressed themselves about women in ways that made me uncomfortable. It might have been historically appropriate and/or appropriate for their sexual orientation and/or their feelings for each other, but it was just very slightly off-putting.

But! The angst was wonderful, the sex was hot, the characters were fully realized, even in a short story.

Grade #1: B-

“Bound to Him” starts six months later. Oliver and Vincent have been hot and heavy for that time, but Oliver feels like he’s Vincent’s bit on the side. He doesn’t go out to parties or to his clubs, because Vincent tends to ignore him there. All he does it wait in his apartments for Vincent to show up. Vincent, on the other hand, is absolutely terrified that someone will figure out that he’s a sodomite. And to top it all, Vincent’s father summons him to inform him that he will marry a woman in order to forward his father’s own political ambitions. Vincent agrees, because he’s been trying to gain his father’s attention, if not approval, his entire life. This summons makes him late to an appointment with Oliver, which is the last straw for Oliver, who breaks things off with Vincent because he feels like Vincent doesn’t respect him at all and won’t admit to loving him.

There’s even more angst in this one, if possible. Oliver feels unloved and unloveable, but grows a pair and actually kicks Vincent to the curb, setting off a spasm of regret and emotion in both of them. Vincent has to get over himself and grow a pair of his own. It’s all brilliantly done. And the sex is hot. I also really love being inside Vincent’s head and see him unconsciously switch from calling Oliver his “friend” to “lover.”

Grade #2: B+

“Bound Forever” starts one year after “Bound to Him” ends and the plot is set in motion because Vincent’s brother has produced an heir, freeing Vincent from the prospect of ever having to marry. This allows Oliver to finally believe that Vincent will be his forever and they switch for the first time. This sets Vincent spinning mentally, but not because he’s worried that he liked being the sexual bottom. Rather, this final act of commitment sets him to worrying about what would happen to Oliver if something happened to him, so he gets all paternalistic about “taking care” of Oliver. They work it out with requisite angst (although slightly less) and sex (wonderful as always). And as much of a commitment as two men in the early 19thC could legally have to each other.

Grade #3: B

All together, these three stories were wonderful. It was interesting to me that the sex got less kinky during the series. But I also loved how you could see the two men committing to each other, see them learning from their mistakes, see them trying not to make them again. You don’t see that in one story with an HEA so much. But three free-standing stories, each with their own culmination, it really worked. I would heartily recommend these three stories individually, but recommend them MORE together.

Best regards,
-Sarah

REVIEW: Cherry Pie by Samantha Kane

Sunita — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 17:00:08 +0000

Dear Ms. Kane,

I’ve been seeking out contemporary romance in the m/m genre and when I read the synopsis for your book it fit the bill. This is a romance about two men who are not exactly ordinary, but who want the same things out of life that most of us do, and who aren’t sure they’re ever going to be able to achieve them. Given the backstories of the two protagonists, this could have been a much more angst-filled book than it was. I would categorize it as a relatively upbeat, almost sweet romance (except that as an m/m it will never be categorized as sweet even if there were no sex scenes, and there are, so never mind).

The book is set in the (fictional) small town of Mercury, North Carolina, which is within driving distance of the Atlantic Ocean. John Ford, who is in his mid-thirties, has moved to Mercury from Los Angeles after a long-term relationship ends traumatically. He doesn’t have to work for a living, and he spends much of his time restoring an old house he’s recently purchased. When we meet him, his most in-depth conversations appear to be with his coffee machine. Connor Meecham is a native of Mercury who has been away for nearly a decade. He returns at the age of twenty-five and plants himself across the street from his old house, the “Meecham Mansion,” which John now owns. John is initially skeptical of this excessively thin, excessively quiet man, but he eventually invites him in and the story and their growing romance take off from there.

Connor was a star high-school quarterback and went off to Georgia Tech on a football scholarship, but a college injury ended both his NFL dreams and his scholarship and sent him into a downward spiral. He returns to Meecham with nothing to his name and the desire to start over. John gives him room and board in exchanging for help rehabbing the house and garden. As Connor reconnects with old friends (and enemies), John is slowly incorporated into Mercury’s community. The titular cherry pie represents the bonds that link Mercury’s residents as well as Connor’s aspirations for a new life:

“What do you think, Evan? Is heaven cherry pie?” John asked with a smile in his voice.

“I think heaven is eating cherry pie if you want it to be.” There was a pause. “What about you, Conn?”

He blew out a breath. “I don?t believe in heaven.”

“What?” Cheryl sounded scandalized.

“Why?” That was John, and he just sounded curious.

Conn turned on the step and leaned his back against the post so he was facing them all. “Because heaven is right now. I want to eat my cherry pie right now. I want to live the way I want right now. If I wait, well, what for?” He shook his head. “No, I’m not waiting on a heaven I can’t see or feel or touch.” He gestured to the house and the street. “I’m just gonna make this heaven.”

This book reminds me of a small-town category romance. The romantic relationship is front and center, and it is embedded in Mercury’s southern small-town context. Connor runs into old friends, including his best friend from high school and the town matriarch, Miss Priscilla Jones. With the exception of the sheriff, no one in town seems to have any trouble with Connor and John’s sexual orientation or relationship. Even the church they attend immediately accepts them as a couple. I found this a bit hard to believe, but the book seems to fit into a subgenre within m/m that corresponds to sweet romances in mainstream category romance. There are a number of sex scenes, but they don’t dominate the narrative, and the conflict between the protagonists arises from issues within the relationship rather than contextual or other social factors.

Here, conflict stems from two sources: Connor’s fear that John is simply replicating his previous relationship and not thinking about Connor as an individual, and the intrusion of Kristine, the sister of John’s former lover. But these issues are resolved fairly easily, and there is little to impede the story’s steady progress toward an HEA. Connor’s past might have created difficulties, but again, no one really seems to mind except for the obviously villainous sheriff, and he is routed by Miss Priscilla (in this southern small town, one of its most powerful families in the pre-Civil Rights era was apparently African-American). By the end of the book John has become fully incorporated into Mercury and is using his wealth to provide local jobs, Connor has regained his sense of self and his optimism in the future, and their HEA is assured.

I enjoyed reading the book, but it felt rather slight. One of the reasons I read m/m is because the external and internal conflicts can combine to create a rich, multi-layered journey to the couple’s HEA. Here, the absence of much of either made it pleasant but unmemorable, and the unquestioning acceptance of homosexuality by Mercury’s varied residents required a very strong suspension of disbelief. The writing is assured and the characters are quite well realized. I can recommend this to readers who enjoy these types of stories, but for those who prefer more drama and conflict, it will probably not be as satisfactory. Grade: C+

~ Sunita

REVIEW: Goldilocks and His Three Bears by A.M. Riley

SarahF — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:00:12 +0000

Dear Ms. Riley.

I requested this book by saying, “I’ll trust A.M. Riley to take me anywhere.” I was not blown away by the blurb and the excerpt looked flippant so if it had been anyone else, I would not have requested it. But you? I trust your writing (despite not being able to finish Immortality is the Suck). And wow, am I glad I did.

Brian wakes up in bed with Scott, with former lovers Paul and Jim staring down at him. Paul, Jim, and Scott are all roommates. The first part of the story tells how Brian slept with them all, leading up to the wake-up. He’s new to LA and rather lost and lonely. He’s a regular at a leather bar, where he meets Paul:

He was enjoying the Faultline’s traditional Tuesday night happy hour when a hand appeared on the bar a couple of customers down.

The hand was like one that might have been seen on the Roman god Vulcan: calloused, muscled and thick across the middle. It slid money across the bar and received a longneck in return. Brian?s eyes fixated on that hand, then traveled past a three-inch-wide studded wristband to follow a complicated nest of snakes twining and winding their way up a muscular arm, over shoulders as thick and succulent as a roast ham, to an inked neck.

Trying to get a closer look, Brian squeezed his way past two guys who reeked of new leather, looked up, and saw a tattoo ad spray painted over a bodybuilding commercial.

Six feet three at least. Bald as an egg and inked on practically every inch of exposed skin. His Roman god stood out from the crowd, even in a room full of big burly men.

The man took a long drag on the bottle of beer, and thick throat muscles worked. There was a black adder tat that started at the back of his shaved head and circled his thick neck until it ended close below his earlobe, venom-dripping fangs gaping wide.

The man twisted his torso away from the bar, and Brian saw the tat that undulated over the man’s six-pack. D.A.D.D.Y. it proclaimed in letters four inches high.

Brian and Paul establish a relationship, but then Paul leaves for business for a few months, without establishing any expectations. So Brian starts fucking Jim without realizing that he’s Paul’s roommate. When Jim goes away, he asks Brian to take care of his marijuana plants, so Brian starts fucking Scott, their other roommate. At which point, Paul and Jim come home.

Paul is Brian’s Daddy — yes, this is Daddy kink and it’s very well done. Jim is very hairy and very maternal and his knickname is, yes, “Momma Bear.” Scott is bisexual and a cock-slut, bottoming to everyone, including Brian. So there you have the “three bears” part. Brian is, of course, blond, so he’s Goldilocks.

So the first third of the book, then, is this rather flippant memory of Brian’s past sexual escapades. Once these escapades become known to all three of the roommates, however, the story gets really interesting. Because Brian’s still mainly drawn to Paul and doesn’t want to lose him. When he’s discovered, they take their relationship to a different level. It’s always been leather and slightly kinky, but Paul spanks Brian and they enter a power exchange relationship. Jim understands it, but Scott’s pretty freaked out having to listen to Brian’s cries and screams when they’re scening. And then Jim and Scott establish their own primary relationship, above and beyond the sex they have with Brian and Paul:

“Jesus.” Scott stopped dropping cookie dough onto the sheet and looked sideways at Jim, his ears bright red. “Are you sure that?s okay?”

Jim blithely kept beating dough. “Haven’t you ever known anyone involved in a Dom/sub relationship?:

“I’m a simple boy from Georgia, Jim,” said Scott, shaking his head. “Man lays a hand on another man there, and we call it something else.”

“I am absolutely positive that Brian wants what’s happening in there. As a matter of fact, I believe he instigated it,” said Jim calmly.

A particularly loud wailing cry echoed through the house. Scott paled. “I don’t know, Jim.”

“Listen…” And Jim wrapped a big comforting arm around Scott. “You talk to him about it, okay? He’ll tell you. Brian is running that relationship, Scott. He really is. Paul is completely under his control.”

“You sure?”

“You’ve been with us, Scott. You’ve seen how much Paul cares for him. How careful he is with him.”

Scott poked at the cookie dough with one finger. “Brian’s my friend, Jim.”

“I know,” said Jim, and he kissed Scott on the top of his head. “Mine too.”

Scott turned into his arms, let himself be held. It was very quiet in the house.

“It’s stopped.” Scott?s voice was muffled against Jim?s chest. Jim ran his hand up and down Scott?s back, into his hair. He kissed him on the head again. Scott tipped his head back to look at him, and Jim kissed his nose…his mouth. Scott’s mouth opened under his, like a hungry baby bird’s, and Jim folded the shorter man up in his arms and bent into the kiss.

“Man.” Scott’s voice was breathy when they separated. “Want you.”

“C’mon,” hummed Jim.

Most of the rest of the book actually depicts Jim and Scott’s relationship and their interactions with Brian and Paul. And although Brian is the linchpin of the relationships, that’s not the heart of the book anymore. It sounds complicated and it’s difficult to explain, but what I loved about this book is how organically these relationships grow together and apart and together again. And it all ends up being much more profound than the book looked at first glance. It’s a safe gentle examination of a power exchange relationship told from both the inside and the outside, which makes it a great book for people who are interested in learning more about BDSM without being utterly freaked out.

All in all, I’m glad I trusted you to take me there, because this book is really great.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Sarah

This is a Loose Id book thus it isn’t available on third party sites until next month or so? The story is also originally 94 pages according to goodreads.

REVIEW: Fourth and Goal by Jami Davenport

Jane — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 09:00:34 +0000

Dear Ms. Davenport:

Thank you for sending me your football book. I must say that your review pitch was one of the best I have read. You pointed to my long and public quest for more romance books about sports. Fourth and Goal displayed a deep and comfortable knowledge of football but strangely enough it wasn’t the on field shenanigans that I enjoyed the most, but the off the field relationships that the characters developed.

Rachel McCormick and Derek Ramsey used to be good friends until they slept together five years ago. Until Rachel’s father was involved in a point shaving scandal. Until Derek’s once promising pro football career was about to be extinguished and Rachel was let go from her job. When the two reunite five years later, they are both looking for redemption only not with each other. Derek’s been traded to the Seattle Lumberjacks and this is his last chance to make a go of a pro career. Rachel McCormick is looking for any job, but would love one in football, a sport that she knows inside and out.

Derek and Rachel inevitably fall into bed with one another as Rachel agrees to watch Derek’s recent property purchase while he is in training camp and over the season. She needs the money, for one thing, but she also has an ulterior motive. She never believed her father was involved in the point shaving scandal but that he was covering for someone, perhaps his two star high school athletes, Derek Ramsey and his cousin, Tyler. Rachel plans to find out if Derek really was involved.

There are a number of things going on in the story. There is the reunited lovers theme. The deception and betrayal theme. The redemption theme. There is the story of the girl trying to break into a man’s sport. The struggle of dealing with family members and where one’s allegiance falls. The strongest storylines were the redemption theme

The multiplicity of plot elements combined with secondary character plotlines that didn’t fit in well with the main story but served mostly as sequel bait served to hamper the flow. Time was spent watching Tyler seemingly nail everything that had girl parts and then make up and break up with his girlfriend Cass. I never understood what their storyline contributed to Derek and Rachel’s. Their relationship conflicts were quite different and unresolved at the end. Sequel, was the only thing I could come up with.

The part of the story that had the most emotional power were the connections that Rachel and Derek made and the one that Derek makes with a young kid who was terminally ill. I also enjoyed seeing Rachel finally understand her skill set (management) and how to marry that with the sport she loved. The book starts off slow, introducing what I thought were unimportant plot elements. However, about half way through, the pace of the story and the romance picked up and I was captivated for the last half.

I did wonder, though, whether the on the field scenes would be as interesting to non fans as they were to fans. I am guessing no. I wished that there were more team moments. I love the inside the locker room feel and I didn’t get that here. I also questioned whether the quarterback for a team could be seen boozing it up every night before the big game. I kept thinking that these players need their rest!

The biggest problem that I had, though, was with the constant metaphors. Holy, metaphorpalooza. January commented on the many varied uses of the metaphor in this review, but I think Fourth and Goal has Ellen Connor’s book beat.

Five years ago, his one-weekend affair with Rachel McCormick had tackled him for an emotional loss.
“Do you think there’s a chance we could be friends again?” Derek leaned forward. His chocolate eyes, earnest and bright, searched hers. Rachel looked away and forced all expression from her face. “Let’s not run that play yet.” It might be the one play that’d drop them both for a loss.
He’d dropped another perfect pass and added one more nail in the coffin of his pro-football career.
It sounded cocky, but a football player who didn’t believe in himself wasn’t worth the turf he played on.
Rachel buried her fingers in his hair. “Take it down the field, big guy. It’d be a shame if you had to punt.”
“So, Dare, what are you waiting for? You’re in the red zone; time to score.”
His cock grew harder than a goalpost.
Never mess with a woman ready to call a trick play when the game was on the line.

I honestly didn’t realize how many sports metaphors could be made. C

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Rhapsody for Piano and Ghost by Z.A. Maxfield

SarahF — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 17:00:44 +0000

Dear Ms. Maxfield:

This was a fascinating novel. I’m still not sure what to make of it, but I couldn’t put it down and enjoyed reading it.

Fitz is a musical prodigy — a pianist since he was six. But he’s been utterly sheltered his whole life. His mother marries Husband #8 and goes to England for a year, agreeing to let Fitz go to a private arts school before college. There he meets Garrett. From the excerpt, I expected Garrett to be the love interest, but turns out that on their first date, he peer pressures Fitz into take Ecstasy, attempts to date rape him in the club bathroom, and then leaves Fitz in a dumpster, where he is found by a pair of World War Two-era, European, gay ghosts. After going home with them, watching them have sex, and stealing a cassole pot when the real owners of the house come home, Fitz has to call Ari, his divorced step-brother, to come rescue him.

Confused yet?

It wasn’t as confusing when I was reading it. You have a gift for writing that makes me just dive into and float with the current of the narrative. It works in the story itself and makes me want to keep reading.

Fitz is the center of the story. He’s lonely, shy, and trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be. He’s got his music but he doesn’t believe he has anything else. He’s experimenting with Goth while his mother’s away, and, ironically, also experimenting with trying to be normal. He doesn’t quite manage to pull off either. He’s nineteen and awkward and starved for attention, starved even for touch, and trying to find someone who values him.

Garrett is an asshole. He out for what he can get and he sees Fitz as an easy mark. He’s not a point of view character and it says more about Fitz than about Garrett when Fitz makes excuses for him.

Ari…was strange. When I was reading, I had no idea Ari was going to exist, so when Fitz called him to save him, I thought he was much older and had no idea he was the second hero. I had to flip to the end to figure out who Fitz was going to end up with before I could continue reading. Ari is at least 25, but probably 27 or so, to Fitz’s 19, which was slightly disturbing. They’d been step-brothers for a few months and, like in Clueless (“You divorce wives, not children”), they’d stayed in touch enough that Fitz’s mother asked Ari to watch out for Fitz while she was in Europe.

Fitz and Ari’s prior relationship was confusing. I couldn’t figure it out completely because the timing didn’t seem to work out. Ari had a thing for Fitz, but hadn’t really talked with him since Fitz was in eighth grade, but had been to all his concerts and performances, but Fitz didn’t know that. Fitz has a bad case of hero-worship for Ari because Ari is perfect and wonderful and older and everything he touches turns to gold (but when did they see each other?). They have to find their way to each other and watching them do it — haltingly, through the interference of Garrett and the ghosts — IS very sweet.

The ghosts are…fascinating. It was very different for me to tell the difference between them. I eventually figured it out, but they’re so much a unit, a couple, that separating their personalities when they had no emotional arc, no relationship tension, no narrative reason for being except that ghosts are cool and they were there to help Fitz figure life out, there was little reason to separate them. It’s wonderful to see a happy couple in a romance, together for ever — literally — and their story is touching. But the narrative itself has to get pretty ridiculous (drug money, kidnapping, and extortion) in order to give Serge and Julian a point for being IN the story and that was almost a shame. It would have been nice to see Fitz and Ari figure things out without needing the threat of death to get there.

So, things were confusing in the beginning and unnecessary at the end. But watching Fitz figure out what he needs and watching Ari figure out how much he wants Fitz is fun. And watching both of them fall in love because they’re perfect for each other but still be able to contemplate sex and relationships with other men was realistic and much appreciated (be warned, readers: there’s almost more sex between Fitz and Garrett than there is between Fitz and Ari. Almost).

But I love your voice and I always have. You’re able to make the characters real and I appreciate that more than anything else. In this excerpt Fitz is trying to get Ari to pay attention to him. He goes to the restaurant where Ari is celebrating a case win with two lawyer colleagues, one gay, one straight (although, really, chosing “Alex” as the name for a minor character when “Ari” is one of your heroes seems a little…odd):

“Are you kidding?” They watched as Fitz shot his second drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and relaxed visibly in his chair. He raked his hair out of his eyes, and Ari could almost feel its texture, how soft it would be beneath his fingers. The waiter approached Fitz, and the little monster had the nerve to shoot him a radiant smile. The waiter soaked it up like sunshine, damn him, taking a minute to chat Fitz up before moving on. Fitz very visibly checked out the man‘s ass as he left.

“Shit, Ari.” Caleb aimed a frustrated kick to Ari‘s ankle. “What more do you need?”

“Stop it, Caleb,” said Alex.

“What is wrong with you, Alex? I don‘t need another conscience.”

“You do if you don‘t have one of your own.”

Fitz shot his third tequila. Ari wanted to kill him. At least he wouldn‘t be driving. As soon as he got Fitz alone, Ari was going to raid his wallet and rid him of whatever fake ID he was using. This is how you get yourself into trouble, Flitz.

“Oh fuck me, is he coming this way?”

Ari looked up just in time to see Fitz walking toward their table. Ari braced himself.

Fitz glanced Ari‘s way and did a double take. “Hey. I know you. Weren‘t you in that boy band a billion years ago? What was it…? Gonad?”

“N0mad,” Ari ground out. “It was N0mad.”

Fitz nodded. “Right. With a zero instead of an o.”

Caleb never took his eyes off Fitz. “How hilarious. I‘m afraid I won‘t be responsible if that gets back to the office, Ari.”

“Sorry, man.” Fitz shrugged. Dark brown eyes twinkled when they met Ari‘s and oh holy hell. Fitz was looking for trouble in the worst way. He said, “You weren‘t the cute one back then, but you grew up hot.”

Then Fitz looked straight at Ari while he leaned over to cup Caleb‘s cheek—right there in the middle of the restaurant—and kissed him, hard. Caleb responded with enthusiasm, deploying hands and a pretty inquisitive tongue. Ari could tell it had gone further than either of them intended when Fitz pulled back, flushed and loopy looking. His eyelids hung at a sexy half-mast, and he smiled like a debauched angel. It had only lasted a bare few seconds, but Fitz had every eye in the place on him.

Ari snorted. Caleb wouldn‘t have pushed Fitz away. No red-blooded gay man would push Fitz away. But he could have at least put up a token struggle. As it was, he sat there with a stupid expression on his face long after Fitz backed off and sauntered past their table.

“You fucking hound dog.” Alex watched Fitz go.

Caleb smirked. “Tell me you wouldn‘t hit that.”

“I would not hit that,” Alex said amiably.

I *love* that Fitz and Caleb both enjoy the kiss so much, even though Fitz is only doing it to piss off Ari. I love that while one person can be a better fit with someone, that doesn’t mean that you don’t find other people attractive. Overall, I enjoyed Ari and Fitz and, when I finally separated them, Serge and Julian. But the narrative need for the paranormal elements seemed slim and the prior relationship between Fitz and Ari seemed underdeveloped. I couldn’t put it down, admittedly, but in retrospect, the holes and confusion almost outweigh my enjoyment in the text.

Grade: B-

Best regards,
-Sarah

Although, $7.99 for 185 pages in only one format?! Really?! What are you thinking, Loose Id?

Book Link | Loose Id | Amazon (book is not yet for sale at Amazon)

REVIEW: Trust in Me by Lori Toland

Sunita — Thu, 26 May 2011 19:00:08 +0000

Dear Ms. Toland,

When I read the blurb for your novella I was intrigued. I am a sucker for storylines where a long-ago one-night stand resurfaces in the present, and unlike straight romances, in an m/m story it’s highly unlikely there’s a child in tow. This is a straightforward m/m contemporary romance, where the focus of the story is on the couple and there’s not a lot of extraneous material. The good part of this type of novel or novella is that the romance is foregrounded. The bad part is that there’s not much else to catch the reader’s attention, so the romance and the central couple have to win her over for the story to succeed. I’m sorry to say that for this reader, you didn’t manage to pull it off.

Tristan Winter is the co-owner of a company which provides technical equipment and support for conventions. When he has to sub for an employee at the last minute, it brings him back into contact with Jamie Hunter. They went to high school together, and during one unforgettable weekend Tristan had his first sexual encounter with Jamie, after which Jamie disappeared and Tristan never heard from him again. Nevertheless, for ten years, Tristan has been dreaming of him, and no wonder. Jamie is the embodiment of every man and woman’s dreams, from 18-year-old Tristan to the old lady he helps with her groceries. But, he did walk out on Tristan without a word, so Tristan is very angry along with being very smitten.

Jamie quickly overcomes Tristan’s hurt and resentment, and by the end of the weekend convention they are together once more and planning their future. In the second half of the novella, Tristan and Jamie go back to their hometown, where Jamie is welcomed by Tristan’s family and reconciles with his estranged parents. The only other conflict arises when Jamie is offered a new position further from Tristan, but that hurdle is resolved in the epilogue.

With such a thin plot, the characters really have to carry the freight, and neither Tristan nor Jamie is up to it. Since the novella is written in first person POV, we are inside Tristan’s head the entire time. I had to continually remind myself that he is in his late twenties and the owner of a successful business, because it’s easy to forget. Tristan appears to have had no personal life over the ten years; he was just waiting for Jamie. He talks more like one of my undergraduates than a mature adult: everything is “awesome,” from 21-year-old Jamie’s willingness to play video games to Tristan’s grandmother’s sage advice about his new relationship.

While Tristan feels somewhat unformed, Jamie is so wonderful that if he were the heroine he’d be a Mary Sue. Tristan’s inner monologues are full of flowery phrases and emotional gushing, which I could take if it were intentionally conceived as part of the character, but the whole book is written this way:

Leaning against the kitchen counter, barely aware of the knob from the drawer digging into my hip, I found a piece of heaven right there with him. It was only us in our little world, and nothing could take us away from here.

I lost myself in our kiss, and for a second, I was amazed he was with me too. Everything that had happened over the course of the last few days left me breathless with wonder. “Do you not know how stunning you are?” I didn’t want to speak loudly and risk breaking the mood.He was silent for a moment, and then he smiled. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I’m that good-looking. I’ve always loved your eyes. They’re so warm,” he said softly.

Maybe there are men who talk like this and think like this, and I just haven’t met them. Maybe if the whole setting for over the top, this kind of portrayal would work. There are several perfectly acceptable sex scenes, but they are written in the same style, and they skate the line between overly gushing and workmanlike.

I just couldn’t buy the premise that these two attractive, successful men, both of whom live in metropolitan areas, have basically pined for each other for a decade without doing anything about it. If they had other relationships, even friendships, in the interim, there’s no hint of it in the narrative. Similarly, their immediate and total commitment to each other is hard to believe. Jamie is so perfect and Tristan is so worshipful that I think the reader is supposed to see them as Meant For Each Other, but I needed more fully realized characters to buy it. So regretfully, I cannot recommend this book. Grade: D+

~ Sunita

Book Link | |
| Sony | Loose Id

REVIEW: Trifecta by Kate Sherwood

SarahF — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:59:28 +0000

Dear Ms. Sherwood.

I didn’t really expect to like this book. I love menage stories, especially m/m/m menage. So I read the book because of that, not because I was blown away by the excerpt. I thought the excerpt was too thinky, didn’t have enough dialogue, and the characters looked a bit flat. But I’m VERY glad to have been very wrong about that. I really enjoyed this story, I’m very glad I read it, and I’m very happy to recommend it to DA’s readership.

Mark is a pilot, only recently out of the closet and out of a marriage. He’s living with and in love with Alistair, the man he finally came out of the closet for. But Mark and Alistair have an open relationship: they’re free to fuck around when so moved, especially when Mark’s out of town on one of his long flights. But Mark is grounded at the moment with an ear infection and it’s Alistair who’s out of town at a conference. So Mark picks up Tyler at the local club, has amazing sex with him at the condo…and Alistair walks in.

The next day, of course, Alistair, a vet, meets Tyler at his practice. Tyler is in with a horse with a broken pelvis. One thing leads to another, Tyler buys the horse to avoid it getting euthanized, and then spends a lot of time at the practice. Eventually Alistair and Tyler start an affair, without Mark knowing, Mark and Alistair fight, Mark and Tyler have another night together…and it all gets a little confusing.

The fascinating thing about this book is that the tension keeps switching, but it all seems organic. It is a confusing book when summarized in three sentences, but that confusion doesn’t extend to the reading experience. It’s a menage in which Mark and Alistair are having relationship issues, Mark is trying to rebuild his life after having left his wife of 15 years because he finally came out, and Alistair and Tyler are slowly falling in love. There’s a lot happening, but the book is neither episodic nor overwhelming. It all kind of fits together.

Tyler is a bit of an enigma. He lies very well, he’s got some issues in his past, he’s only 23 (to Mark and Alistair’s 30-something), he’s aimless and ambitionless, but he falls for Alistair and Mark. The reader’s sympathy (or at least mine) is very much with Tyler, because he’s a nice, sweet guy, but I think he would frustrate me in real life. There’s an economic and educational imbalance between him and the other two men that isn’t dealt with at the start of the relationship but that I could see becoming a problem *during* the relationship and that’s not dealt with because, well, the book’s about the start of the relationship. Tyler’s emotional investment in the other two men, while he think they think he’s just a piece of ass, is a little heartbreaking and makes the story totally worth it. Especially since part of what *they* have to realize and fix is that they ARE treating him like a piece of ass:

"Mark?" The voice was uncertain, but Mark recognized it right away. His mind spun into overdrive. What was Tyler doing here?
"Tyler?" There was a pause. Mark could almost feel the man choosing between truth and lie. Mark couldn’t wait for the decision. "Are you here for Alistair?"

He had no idea how Tyler could have found the place, but he must have let something drop in conversation, or maybe Tyler had seen something with the clinic’s name on it when he had been at the apartment. Something, somehow. Tyler was here, so it was a little late to worry about how.

They were almost next to each other now. The barn door had shut out the bright light, making Mark able to see Tyler’s beautiful, conflicted face. "I need him, Tyler. You and me-’that was one thing. Please don’t get in the way of me and Alistair." Mark knew he was begging. If it was anyone else, he might have been ashamed. But this was Tyler. As inexplicable as it was that the man was here, in Alistair’s barn, Mark still trusted him. Still trusted his intent wasn’t vindictive, no matter how damning the circumstances might seem.

"I don’t-’I'm n-not-" Tyler stuttered to a halt.

Mark couldn’t begin to understand how Tyler had tracked Alistair down, or what he hoped to accomplish by being here. It seemed absurd to imagine Tyler would think he could tear Mark and Alistair apart; Mark wasn’t sure of the details of the night before, but he was sure they hadn’t talked much, hadn’t said anything that would make Tyler think Mark’s relationship was fragile. Well, nothing other than the fact that Mark had spent the night cuddled with Tyler instead of with Alistair. Mark couldn’t make himself believe Tyler meant to do him harm. There’d been no hint of anything possessive, nothing about Tyler’s behavior to suggest he was likely to become a stalker, or someone who had trouble with boundaries. Still, the evidence was clear; Tyler was in Alistair’s barn.

"I love him, Tyler." It was all Mark had. The only argument he could advance.

Tyler looked startled, then nodded. "Yeah. Okay. That’s important. I shouldn’t get in the way of that." He smiled at Mark, and the expression was such a pure mix of sad and sweet that Mark almost wanted to cry. "You guys-’you take care of each other, okay?"

I know things work like this in real life sometimes, but things are all solved a little too quickly and a little too easily. Mark’s ex-wife is being a complete bitch, especially when it comes to their daughters…and then she’s not. For good reason, and with the help of Tyler, but still, it felt like it was time to wrap the book up, so the problem needed to get solved. Mark and Alistair have a terrible fight, where they say some awful things to each other…and then they’re fine, united in their search for Tyler after he leaves both of them. And again, when two rational men get together and actually act rationally, rather than like fainting, hysterical 18 year old girls, that’s what happens, but…well, it seemed too perfect.

But that didn’t stop me from investing in the ending. The tension of will-they-or-won’t-they find Tyler at the end of the story was great and the reconciliation was well-done. Despite Mark and Alistair being very alike (in fact, this is why they have an open relationship — they’re both tops), they are still very different characters and it didn’t feel like they were interchangeable when Tyler was interacting with them separately. I loved how the jobs and life situations for all three of the men were an integral part of the story, rather than something they did off-screen. They felt like real people. And while the writing might not have been sparkling — there was a lot of exposition, almost info-dumping amounts of it, and it WAS a very thinky book, to the point of redundancy now and then — it was certainly up to the job of making me care about these men.

Grade: B

Best regards,

-Joan/Sarah F.

Book Link | Loose Id

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REVIEW: Bayou Dreams by Lynn Lorenz

SarahF — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:38:39 +0000

Dear Ms. Lorenz.

I don’t read werewolf books. I just don’t. If I see a m/m shifter book, I usually just move right along. But one line in the excerpt sold me on this book:

"Don't give me any back talk, son." She waved her spatula at him as she talked around a cigarette dangling from her lips. "You're getting old. You're the alpha. Time to take a mate, settle down, and give me a grandchild."

Same song, same verse, same spatula.

I just loved that extra little zing on the same old line. So I stayed up until 3am reading this book. I just couldn’t stop. And while the protracted (but necessary) ending took away a little of the Romance Novel Sigh (TM SBTB) when I shut my phone down, I still really enjoyed these two characters, even if I was aware of the flaws of the book as I was reading.

Scott is a werewolf, the alpha of his small pack in the bayou country of Louisiana, and the town sheriff. He’s 35, which is late for mating (werewolves usually mate around 30, apparently), but he’s put it off and put it off and now his need to find his One True Mate is spilling over into the rest of the pack and making them all a little nuts. His mother, a good Catholic, has cast spells for four months, trying to draw his mate to him. The problem is, she doesn’t specify the sex of the mate, so when Ted, a gay man, shows up and they both feel the instant connection, Scott–who is straight, dammit!–freaks out.

Ted is in town on a painting retreat which is really cover for his investigation of another of the painters. He’s a Private Investigator and the woman’s husband has paid Ted to figure out who she’s cheating on him with. Ted himself used to paint but he gave it up when he became a cop. But three years ago, his partner was killed when he walked in on someone robbing an convenience store. Turns out, though, that the partner was AT the convenience store to collect illegal protection money. Ted, who loved his straight partner, takes the fall to save his widow the grief of knowing her husband was actually a crooked cop, and is kicked off the force. Ted refuses to fall in love with a straight guy again, so he’s almost as freaked out as Scott.

So this story turns into a refusal of the Fated Mate Syndrome. Both men do NOT want to love each other, do NOT want to be attracted to each other. Scott thinks if his mother reverses the spells she’s set, the connection will be broken and he can go back to being straight again and Ted can go home. They fight it every step of the way, which actually gives them a little time (although not enough) to fall in love with each other. I really liked this storyline. Fated Mate stories usually make me nuts, but I loved the reversal of it here.

And the angst! OMG, the angst! “I want you, OMG why do I want you, you’re so hot, no go away, I can’t, I must, you kiss so well but leave me alone.” It was brilliantly done:

"Sheriff!" A deep voice called, and Scott’s cock stiffened.

He kept walking. He didn’t want to do this. Whatever this was going to be, Scott knew it wouldn’t be good.

Scott made the cruiser when a strong hand landed on his shoulder. A shudder ripped through him, and he nearly staggered.

The other man groaned, and the grip tightened, almost bringing Scott to his knees. But not in pain. Oh hell, what he felt couldn’t be called pain at all, but damn if he’d name it.

Scott spun around, staggering a little. "You! Leave me alone." He shrugged off the guy’s hand.

"My name is Ted Canedo."

"I don’t want to know your name." Scott shook his head.

"Sure you do. You want to say it when you’re jerking off, don’t you?" He growled, his brows laced together.

"Merde. I don’t know what you’re-’" The guy cut Scott off by stepping forward, catching his arm by the wrist and holding on. "Let me go."

"Not until you explain this." Ted stared into his eyes. Scott lost himself there, deep in those dark pools.

"I can’t. I don’t know what the fuck is happening."

"That’s a lie. I can smell it on you." Ted leaned closer and inhaled. "Shit. I can smell you in my dreams. Smell you when I touch myself."

Despite himself, Scott inhaled. Ted. His mate. The scent overpowered him, sent him reeling. His wolf howled to break free, to claim this man.

I like that both Ted and Scott were strong men, used to going out and getting what they wanted, and this translated into their actions. But every now and then they turned into guys with vaginas: “Do you know how that makes me feel?” Ted asks Scott at one point and then provides a detailed list of his emotions. And that’s fine if that’s how they’re constructed otherwise, but it’s not, so it was very jarring.

REVIEW: Nowhere Ranch by Heidi Cullinan

SarahF — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:00:59 +0000

Dear Ms. Cullinan.

I adored this book. It’s utterly and completely over the top. It’s exuberant. It’s angry — no, it’s furious. It’s totally steeped in dirty nasty sex. It’s leaking angst all over the place. It’s political and powerful and brilliant. And I think most people will either love it or despise it with the fiery burning hate of 10,000 suns. I — obviously — adored it. But then I’m a Big-R Romantic as well as little-r romantic. Passion and angst and anger are what it’s all about.

Monroe Davis is 25 and a drifter. He ends up drifting to a 3000 acre ranch in Nebraska. He lives on property in a shitty little apartment, but he’s happy with his lot (except his kitchen sucks). One day he goes to Rapid City for a fuck and finds himself hitting on his boss, Travis. After they both get over their terror at seeing the other, they do indeed fuck, because they’re perfect for each other. They have hot dirty kinky sex and then Roe insists on going back to a strictly working relationship. Until four months later, when he gets a letter from his cousin trying to get him to see the light about his homosexuality, trying to bring him back to his family by telling him how wrong he is because of who he is. He’s pretty emotionally fucked up about it and Travis takes him to the rodeo to make him feel better. Of course, they end up fucking again, but Roe runs again at the hint of emotional connection and the possibility of a relationship. Lather, rinse, repeat with more intensity.

This book is about Roe’s inability to access his emotions. It’s told in Roe’s first person point of view, so the reader suffers right along with him as he tries to figure out how to label or understand any of what he’s feeling. And he does, eventually. He gets his head on right, with the help of Travis and Haley, the ranch manager’s daughter. But it takes a while. And his maturation and emotional discovery are like a slow blooming flower. So much potential and so beautiful in the unfolding, as well as in the final product. It’s a love story in that we watch Roe fall in love, recognizing it even when he is blind to it.

And despite it being a first person book, we can see Travis fall in love, too:

I felt fluttery and strange when he stroked my face. I shut my eyes, swimming in the feeling. It went on a long time, though, and when I opened my eyes again, he had the damnedest look on his face. You would have thought I had used the crop on him well past "no."

"If you need, now or ever, to go back home, I don't want to be in your way." His fingers fell on my lips. "But outside of that, I'd really rather you didn't leave." His thumb stroked my chin and he added, "Ever."

He looked like he was going to be sick now. I frowned at him, but that only made him  worse. "You okay, Travis?" I asked.

"I don't know," he whispered. "Are you going to run?"

I tried to prop up on my elbow to get a better look at him, because he made no fucking  sense at all, but he reached up and grabbed my arm so tight it hurt, and I figured it out. And yeah,  for a second, I panicked. But I was getting used to these two parts of me, the fluttery top part that  felt guilty and wanted to get away from Travis, and the part underneath that seemed to have a  better handle on everything. And it was getting stronger, because it held me in place until I  calmed down enough to speak.

"So you're telling me you're getting serious on me?" I said at last. "That this is more than  fucking after all?"

He really, really looked scared, but now he was angry too. "Roe, you sleep in your own  bed at best once a week. Your toothbrush is here. You get dressed in your apartment, and  occasionally you shower or go over there to "get some space.' This has been more than fucking  for months now." He held on to my arm like he was afraid that now as he'd pointed it out, the  bubble would burst.

Well, he had a valid fear.

Roe is a complete emotional mess and Travis isn’t much better, but watching them limp toward a relationship is addictive.

And let’s talk about the sex. There’s sex. There’s a lot of it. And it’s dirty. I don’t mean dirty in a negative way — I mean it in the hot way. But it’s nasty and dirty and wonderful:

"I like rough," I said, my voice shaky at first, but it got stronger as I went on. "And I like it when I'm told what to do. If you want me ass-up on the bed, you say so. Trash talking is good. You want to tell me I'm your pony or your dog you're fucking, I can do that. I think hotel carpets are gross, so I'd rather not do puppy play on the floor. But in bed's okay. You can tie me up or gag me, but I don't care for both at once. I don't do shower blowjobs because it makes me feel like I'm drowning. I have done watersports, but I don't mind skipping that. But slapping is fine. So is biting so long as you don't draw blood. Pinching is good. Especially my nipples and my ass. Hickeys are okay, but I like to keep them where I can hide them."

I had started talking really fast by the end, and when all of it was out, I let out a breath and waited. After a few seconds, Loving's hand cupped my cock.

"Public exposure?"

His fingers were already on my zipper. I shuddered and pushed my hips forward into his grip. "So long as I don't get arrested."

"Fair enough." He pinched my ass hard enough to make me jump. "Unbutton your fly and put your hands on the table."

There’s puppy play and pony play. There’s bondage and very large dildo(e)s. There’s fisting — hot and extremely well done. At one point Roe says of Travis, “He went around to the back of me and had a little party in my ass.” And the scene that follows is precisely as hot and dirty and nasty as that sounds, in the good way. But readers need to be prepared and appreciative of that kind of sex to enjoy this book, because there’s no enjoying it without the sex.

The rage in this book is partly Roe’s and, to a much smaller extent, Travis’, but mostly, it’s…yours, Ms. Cullinan. You do not make any secret of your political affiliations, but one character has this rant:

She hugged me tight, then sat up wearily. "I don't know that I want to. I mean, there are a lot of nice people who want to adopt, and babies are hard to find. Just look at your brother. Well — I mean, no offense, but I'm not giving my baby to somebody who thinks your orientation needs to be healed. I might not give it to anybody. I don't know. What I do know is that I want to think about it." Her eyes teared up again. "I just — no matter what I do, everything is ruined. Even if I do get an abortion, it's not like I can just go on and forget about it. Which is what pisses me off. What do they think, that I'm some dipshit bitch who can go get an abortion like it's a manicure? And even if there is somebody that nasty, why do I have to suffer because of them? I bet you my student loan check the same "good Christians' who would call me a baby killer would rather turn and shout at you for being gay before they'd take ten minutes to help me through this. That's the way they are. They don't give a shit about anybody but themselves. If I keep my baby and ask for their help, the next thing they'll do is find something wrong with me. And everybody I love. Fuck them and their "pro-life.'" She had stopped crying in the middle of her rant, and now she glared across the room at the wall. "If I keep this baby, I'm going to make damn sure it grows up to kick their bigoted, hateful asses."

You are furious and that righteous fury drives this book, drives the narrative, drives the ending of the story maybe further than it needs to go, for the characters. Roe goes back home with Travis and Haley (no, this book is NOT a menage) and the family get their comeuppance. Roe and Travis get their happy ending — and then some — but it’s written as a big Fuck You! to all the hateful, destructive homophobia out there. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate that. So much. It’s like a dirty X-rated love letter that I will read again and again. But it’s something readers need to be aware of.

So, dirty nasty sex, strong political slant, and brilliantly written emotional journeys. As I said, I adored this book. I will be quoting this book if/when I get into political discussions about whether people with alternate sexualities are going to hell or not (“You can’t pick and choose!”). But it’s not an easy book. It’s easy to fall into and and devour it. But it’s not an easy read.

Grade: B+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

Book Link | Loose Id

REVIEW: His Client by Ava March

SarahF — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 20:00:34 +0000

Dear Ms. March.

I loved the excerpt for this book: prostitution! angst! unrequited love! m/m romance! It hit many of my not-so-sekrit Buttons of Hottness and Readerly Pleasure. And I very much enjoyed the book, even if I wanted to beat one of the heroes and not in a fun, sexy way.

Jasper Reed, a bastard from the slums, has been working as a (sort of secret) male prostitute at a high-class (mostly heterosexual) brothel for 10 years, since he was 17:

Delacroix insisted the women dress in fine gowns to project the proper image for the house. But as the men never graced the receiving room, the only requirement when they moved about the main areas of the house was that they were dressed just enough so any guests they came upon would mistake them for another patron wandering the corridor on their way to another of the bedchambers. Delacroix’s was well-known for its beautiful women, but its handful of accommodating men like himself were only known to those who had need of them.

Jasper has been hoarding his money so he can retire to the country, never to be beholden to anyone again. But he’s in love with one of his clients, Nathaniel Travers, who has been coming to see him for five years. Nate, in turn, is in love with his best friend, Peter Edmonton. We meet both Jasper and Nate on the eve of Edmonton’s marriage and Nate is devastated. Jasper listens, commiserates, and eventually distracts Nate with a (long, very hot) game of “Seduce the Shy, Innocent Virgin,” with Jasper playing the part of the virgin.

Nate is…a lot pathetic in his love for his friend, who is completely and utterly straight. Except for one early school incident, Edmonton has never given Nate any hope for any sort of relationship besides that of friendship, so his pining and hope and deep unrequitedness is mostly just annoying. Jasper’s unrequited longing is less annoying, because at least he knows Nate is…well, the word “gay” never comes up, of course, because it’s a historical romance set in 1822, but Jasper at least knows that Nate prefers men. In fact, Jasper’s longing is just the type of angst I enjoy. Nate’s angst made me want to slap him and yell “Snap out of it!”

Jasper tells Nate he has to get over Edmonton, but in telling Nate that, he realizes he needs to do the same. Nate will never see Jasper’s love, will never return it, despite the fantastic sex. So Jasper takes a week off (first time evah!) and goes to find and buy his house in the country. When he comes back, Nate is desperate for him, but it takes Jasper finally retiring and really leaving for Nate to realize what he’s lost and to go and hunt him down and get him back.

I’m fascinated with how m/m historical romance uses the homosexuality of the men to overcome class barriers. Class barriers become much less important in m/m historicals than the shared sexual identity. I’m going to write a paper about that one day. That aside, I don’t know where Nate got off thinking he had the right to go find Jasper and why he assumed Jasper would just fall into his arms. I also don’t like how Jasper threw up a final barrier of “I’m a durty durty hoar!!! How could you love MEEEEE?” when he’d never really worried about that before. I also wonder how a lower class character who has never left London has a perfect accent and knows how to ride a horse.

Writing/editing niggles: “But Jasper didn’t want a dominate Nate tonight.” AARGH!!! Really?! WHAT is it about the adjective “dominant” that people write it as the verb “dominate”? And why didn’t any number of editors and copy-editors catch this? And Ms. March, you overuse the word “flick”: “A flick of his wrist,” “the golden light flickering across his face,” “a flick of his fingers,” “a flick of his head,” “Flicked his tongue,” “flicking it to the floor” and, according to my search feature, twenty other instances of the word. It became noticeable.

Plot holes, motivations, and word usage aside, I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick little read. It was fun with a short chapter of plot and then a longer chapter of really hot, dirty, role-playing sex, then another chapter of plot, then another of hot, dirty sex. It had angst and prostitutes and unrequited love eventually requited. What more could a girl want?

Grade: B-

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

REVIEW: The Nobleman and the Spy by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon

SarahF — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:36:33 +0000

Dear Ms. Dee and Ms. Devon:

This was a December Recommended Read for me. I enjoyed the characters, I liked the plot, I liked the historical feel. Just in general this was a good solid historical romance.

The year is 1866. Jonathan Reese is a spy, a former soldier who didn’t know how to re-enter civilian life after the Crimean War so he just stayed in the shadows, occasionally acting as assassin, more often just as spy. He is given a new assignment to follow Karl von Binder, Erb-Pfalzgraf von und zu Neuschlosswold-Binder. He is the son and heir of a count of one of the Germanic territories. Jonathan is vaguely troubled by his assignment, in that Karl spared his life during a moment out of time during the battle at Sevastapol during the Crimean War, but as he has worked hard at being forgettably ordinary, he figures he can avoid Karl’s notice enough to follow him.

He is wrong, of course. Karl not only works out he’s being followed, but immediately recognizes Jonathan from their encounter in the Crimea. He invites Jonathan to tea, they talk, and Karl makes a pass at Jonathan, which infuriates Jonathan, but turns, nonetheless, into a torrid encounter, from which Jonathan runs when it’s over, only to rescue Karl from a runaway carriage that could have killed them. They then band together to figure out who is trying to kill Karl, giving them opportunities to explore their attraction for each other.

The mystery and the relationship are nicely balanced. I didn’t figure out who was trying to kill Karl until just before he did, but I’m not very good at mysteries, so I’m not sure how much that’s worth. The relationship is well-done, though. These men have a connection forged in war and another forged through the danger they’re in. They have to trust each other and trust their own instincts, which brings them together quickly.

I enjoyed both characters. They were strongly drawn. Jonathan is lost in his anonymity, desperate for the comforts of love, but convinced he doesn’t deserve them and they’re unattainable anyway. Karl is larger than life, convinced that life is to be enjoyed, but haunted by his horrendous family and his time at war. They come together and teach each other how to love, how to have a relationship, how to be at peace. That’s what I liked most about this book was how these two men were so obviously so much better together than they were apart. And I very much enjoyed that they both acted like adults with brains at the denouement, rather than running on pure emotion and stupidity.

There’s a very weak point in the plot where Karl and Jonathan go away to Karl’s uncle’s country estate, then are quickly brought back to London. This seems the weakest point in the plot, reacting without thought, rather than acting with deliberation. This might be appropriate to the situation, but doesn’t seem appropriate to the characters.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed the voice of this story, loved the characters, enjoyed the historical setting, and the unusual German nationality of one of the characters. It’s not a brilliant read, but it’s very enjoyable. While I enjoyed your previous two historical collaborations, this one was by far and away the best of them.

Grade: B

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

Book Link | Sony| Loose Id