REVIEW: Take the Edge Off by TA Moore
Book Reviews / C Reviewsm/m romance / SuspenseNo Comments
You don’t end up an ex-car thief and ex-con because you’re good at resisting temptation… and Cal Tate’s rich new boss is very tempting.
Cal has always been the bad boy lovers don’t bring home to Mom, but now he’d like someone other than a debt collector waiting for him at home. He has a legit job as a driver with his brother’s company, he’s got a doctor on the hook, and he still can’t help crawling into bed with Joseph Bailey.
Joe has never met anyone as easy in their own skin as his new driver. Or as ridiculously beautiful. He’s in London to downsize the family business… and to investigate the abusive emails that imply a dark secret around his mother’s death. But unpicking the lies he’s been told makes Joe realize he isn’t sure who is without them.
When his life falls apart, the only person he can be himself with is Cal. But with the anonymous stalker’s threats increasing, Joe worries that someone will finish the job they started over two decades ago—and end any chance for a happy future between him and Cal.
Review:
Dear T.A. Moore,
I think I have read most of the books you published (in fact I think the only one I have not read was the duology about shifters) and usually your style works quite well for me. I love your flawed characters and usually really enjoy the chemistry between them and in that regard this book was no exception.
I liked both Joe and Cal almost from the very beginning. Of course I also had to roll my eyes and forget about any kind of proper working relationship between them because Joe was attracted to him and the attraction was mutual.
“So much for old and wrinkly. Joseph Bailey looked like he was in his twenties, and Cal could see enough of that lean, wiry body to tell there were no wrinkles there. It wasn’t such a good idea to look. All of a sudden, Cal’s collar wasn’t the only thing that felt too tight. He should have read the client file, he supposed, because this wasn’t one of the usual perma-tanned, gold-chained old gangsters who usually rocked up.”
While Cal does do his driving duties for the duration of the book, they also have sex during the story and more than once. I thought the sex was incredibly hot although opinions of course differ. I even could buy the emotional connection between them. However I really didn’t see “being in lust” and having the emotional connection transformed into being in love on the pages of the story. Frankly I would have been perfectly happy with that – in my head the whole story classifies as the beginning of their romance, however that is an incomplete description . To me the story was suspense mixed with a lot of sex and the beginning of their romance.
And boy oh boy I had problems with the suspense storyline, not with the whole storyline, but with one incredible coincidence which helped Cal to finally figure out things and with the end of the whole story. See as the blurb tells you, Joe came to London not only to deal with selling his father’s company holdings, but also to try to figure out how his mother died and who the heck had been stalking him. All of this investigating brings up buried family secrets and puts Joe’s life in a very real danger.
Of course at the end the villain is revealed . I am going to put the next part of my review which is going to be a rant really under another spoiler tags because I will be talking about the ending – not about who the villain is but about what happens to that person. I guess to an extent I will talk about the villain’s identity too. I usually hate to comment on significant spoilers, but the ending is the main reason why I dropped the grade so much because I found it unsatisfying to that degree. The guys have HFN ending which worked for me, so don’t worry about that part.
Spoiler (Spoiler): Show
Grade: C
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