Category: 5 star Rating

A Stella Review: Trailer Trash by Marie Sexton

Rating:  5 out of 5 stars     ★★★★★

Trailer TrashIt’s 1986, and what should have been the greatest summer of Nate Bradford’s life goes sour when his parents suddenly divorce. Now, instead of spending his senior year in his hometown of Austin, Texas, he’s living with his father in Warren, Wyoming, population 2,833 (and Nate thinks that might be a generous estimate). There’s no swimming pool, no tennis team, no mall—not even any MTV. The entire school’s smaller than his graduating class back home, and in a town where the top teen pastimes are sex and drugs, Nate just doesn’t fit in.

Then Nate meets Cody Lawrence. Cody’s dirt-poor, from a broken family, and definitely lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Nate’s dad says Cody’s bad news. The other kids say he’s trash. But Nate knows Cody’s a good kid who’s been dealt a lousy hand. In fact, he’s beginning to think his feelings for Cody go beyond friendship.

Admitting he might be gay is hard enough, but between small-town prejudices and the growing AIDS epidemic dominating the headlines, a town like Warren, Wyoming, is no place for two young men to fall in love.

I have a weakness for Marie Sexton, she is the one who wrote one of my all time favorite characters in the mm genre (Cole from the Coda series). She’s awesome at communicating emotions and a master at writing and plotting activities. She’s left me speechless more than once.

This time around too I have no words to say how much her new release, Trailer Trash, sucked me into its world, leaving me breathless and sleepless. The characters she created were all (unsurprisingly) someone I could soon relate with and love ’till the end and more. Someone I could easily become best friends with.

The story took place in the 1986 in the middle of nowhere.

It’s August, Cody and Nate meet outside a gas station where Nate tries to buy a pack of cigarettes although not eighteen yet and then gives one to Cody. It’s the start of a new relationship. An ostensibly impossible and not recommended friendship between two young men so different from each other but with a beautiful future to share.

Nate’s parents just divorced, he would have preferred to stay in Austin with his mum but he had to follow his dad to a new town. He is planning to stay here only one year, graduate and then leave. School starts in three weeks and he’s looking for someone to hang with. He is frustrated, there is nothing to do in this town, apart from Cody.

Cody grew up in the wrong side of the town. He lives in a trailer with his mum who works as a waitress, they struggle with money a lot. He has nothing in common with the new boy and he already knows he’s going to lose Nate as soon as school starts and Nate will meet the cool guys. What he doesn’t know is that Nate doesn’t like these cool kids, they are surely similar to him than Cody but  there is too much sex, alcohol and drugs and Nate doesn’t fit in all of this.

Nate and Cody are socially the opposite. But they fit amazingly together and the strength of unknown and unexpected feelings will bring them together again after a tragedy wrecked Cody’s life.

I connected with these great MCs from the start, I felt all their emotions in my soul. It wasn’t a surprise, because I already knew the author’s qualities, but I shared a deep care and respect for some of the secondary characters too, especially with their parents and the lovely Logan. He is the only one who had never avoided Cody, on the contrary he offers him to work for his family as a dishwasher. Logan is the first to support Cody whether he is gay or not. He is the best friend anyone would want.

The story hurt a little in some moments, seeing Cody so lonely, Nate’s struggle with his newly discovered sexuality to the point of forcing himself to like girls, the name calling from the other kids, and so much more, tragedy not excluded. All of these gave me a perfect ending. I couldn’t ask for something more. Of course being greedy, I’d love to have a sequel, something set in the present, thirty years later.

I think it’s clear I loved Trailer Trash, it’s emotional, deep and well written, it felt very realistic to me and I want to highly recommend it to everyone.

The cover art by Jay Aheer is marvelous and I’m appreciating this artist style more with every cover I see.

Sales Links:   Riptide Publishing | ARe | Amazon  those links to follow

Book Details:

ebook, 340 pages
Expected publication: March 21st 2016 by Riptide Publishing
ISBN 1626493952 (ISBN13: 9781626493957)
Edition LanguageEnglish

A Free Dreamer Review: Lima Oscar Victor Echo and The Truth About Everything by Suki Fleet

Rating: 5 stars out of 5         ★★★★★

Lima Oscar Victor EchoGrowing up in a small village in Wales with a domineering homophobic father, Oscar has always believed he has to hide his real feelings.


He’s hidden his heart from everyone, but most of all from his best friend, Jamie–who also happens to be the boy he’s in love with. 
But when a film Oscar makes about love and acceptance is chosen to be in the finals of a national competition, everything he’s hidden about himself threatens to be revealed.


Now Oscar thinks he must make the choice between the life he knows and the people he loves, and the life he wishes he had. 
But life holds far more secrets and promises than Oscar expects.

I probably shouldn’t have loved this story as much as I did. There’s the gay guy falling for the straight guy trope, which I usually hate, it’s rather fluffy, when I’m a fluff-hater, and it’s a short story, when I prefer novels with 250+ pages. But this is Suki Fleet, and it’s free, so I figured I’d give it a shot. And it was so worth it.

Now, this isn’t your typical Suki Fleet story. It’s a lot less bitter and a lot sweeter than the usual things she writes and yet I still found myself in tears by the end.

This wasn’t the typical GFY trope, where the straight guy remains straight, even once he’s in a relationship with another guy. Jamie has doubted his sexuality for a while now, but with everything that’s happened over the last year or so, he just hasn’t had the emotional capacity to really worry about that. And Oscar isn’t out to the world at all and very much convinced that the love of his love will never return his feelings.

Both MCs were absolutely lovable. They were so different and yet they worked so well with each other. It was beautiful to watch them slowly become more than friends. The romance was breathtakingly beautiful and felt so incredibly real to me.

The little bit of angst that was there, was wonderfully done. Not too much to drag the whole story down, but just enough to counterbalance the otherwise very sweet tone of the rest. There was some homophobia and Oscar’s worries about coming out and I found myself just as worried as Oscar. I just couldn’t really see a satisfying solution for all the problems presented, and yet the ending was simply perfect. It was so incredibly romantic I suddenly found myself tearing up over it.

I loved how both MCs’ passions got so many on-page scenes and how they played an essential role in the whole plot. That was wonderfully done and I could easily relate to the joy they both felt when playing music and creating animations.

Overall, a beautiful little YA adult story about coming out and falling in love. It’s a lot lighter than Suki Fleet’s other works and it’s free, so this is the perfect chance to give her a try.

Cover: The wonderful cover was done by the author herself. It’s unique and works really well with the story.

Sales Links:  Free at Goodreads M/M Romance Group

Book details:

ebook, 83 pages
Published June 7th 2015 by M/M Romance Group @ Goodreads
Edition LanguageEnglish
CharactersOscar Moore, Jamie (Lima Oscar Victor Echo…)
setting Llanitheth, Wales (United Kingdom)
Newport, Wales (United Kingdom)
Llanhilleth, Wales (United Kingdom

A Lila Review: Balls Up (Blowing It #2) by Kate Aaron

Rating: 5 stars out of 5        ★★★★★
Handsome man holding a briefcase in a vintage interior
Handsome man holding a briefcase in a vintage interior

Owen Barnes’s life is finally going the way he wants. He’s making a living as an author, and his relationship with building surveyor Magnus Cassidy is going from strength to strength.

When Owen finds a lump, he buries his head in the sand. He’s too busy for doctor appointments and besides, it’s probably nothing. He pushes concern away and is soon swept up in a whirlwind of distractions. His best friend’s husband is falling apart and Owen needs to be strong for them, not burdening them with his fears.

He says he’ll deal with it when the new book is released, when Ryan and Sameer are more stable, when he’s done writing. Owen has a hundred excuses to hide one simple fact: he’s scared.

Eventually, Magnus drags him to the doctor, and the news isn’t good. Can Owen cope with the unexpected turn events have taken, or is his perfect life about to go balls up?

Eventually, Magnus drags him to the doctor, and the news isn’t good. Can Owen cope with the unexpected turn events have taken, or is his perfect life about to go balls up?

Balls Up is more than a romance, it’s the diary of a cancer patient and his caretaker. Yes, they are a couple, but as the disease progresses, we get to understand the challenges their love faced and how they managed to make it flourish during their darkest time together.

I read this story as a stand-alone but in reality, it is book #2 in the Bring It series. This is not the type of story I usually read, but I’m glad I did. Unless you want to know how Owen and Magnus got together and read more about the secondary characters, there’s no need to read the previous book to enjoy this installment.

Owen’s cancer is the central plot of the story, everything else is secondary. It is a hard book to read. It feels real, and it takes the reader, step by step, through the complete process– from diagnosis to resolution. We live the ups and downs with Owen and take part of his fears, hopes, and treatment.

There are happy moments mixed within the story. Great secondary characters, and perfect scenarios for the events to take place. The pacing flows well, getting us through the hard moments with a little hope to look forward. Owen’s and Magnus’s relationship is the perfect example of a caring love.

The author not only wrote a beautiful story about a real couple with believable problems, but she also gave us a story that everyone can relate to. Like the characters in the story, we all know someone with cancer or had experienced it. Writing about a topic many men are not comfortable to talk about, open the door for their partners to reach to them. It gives us an opening to get more information about a serious issue. And we get to see how the complete medical process works.

Another thing I enjoyed was the characterization. We get outstanding characters, settings, and events from a British perspective. What I liked the most it’s that the author didn’t feel the need to Americanized the story as other do even when they take place outside the United States. The terms, the experiences, and everything surrounding the characters and their stories was believable and perfectly crafted.

The title and the cover go hand in hand with the topics and several scenes in the story. Plus, it matches the cover of the previous book in the series.

Sale Links: Croft House | Amazon | ARe

Book Details:

ebook, 310 pages
Published: June 6, 2016, by Croft House
ISBN: 9781310202261
Edition Language: English

Series:  Blowing It
Book #1: Blowing It
Book #2: Balls Up
Book #3: Dom on the Side

Old Labels, Tagging and This Week at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

Old Labels, Tagging and The Need to Move Forward

 

Something one of our reviewers said  to me this week got me thinking about labels and tagging.  She said that there was a controversy stirring about a current release and the GFY label and bisexuality, blurring/confusion between them.  She wanted to give me a head’s up.  Now I had no idea (still don’t) because I wasn’t paying any attention but it brought to mind things that have been swimming around the brain for some time now…that there are some labels that need to be put to rest.

In the book review world there are certain three letter  or  three character abbreviations we use all the time to quick label  a book.  Among some of the most widely used are M/M, D/s, HEA, HFN, and of course, GFY.   Its the later that I’m going to be blogging about on Saturday.  I think we’ve grown past that label, and now its rolled into hurtful territory.   Why not use the term pansexual (among others) where proper?  And bisexual where the character clearly loves and desires both sexes?

Not getting into it today but look for a much longer and thoughtful post on Saturday.  Join in on the discussion and let me know how you feel about tagging and labels.  I’m really curious.  Haven’t be gone past these old perceptions?  Isn’t it time we laid them to rest?  We’ve enlarged the LGBT to include LGBTQIA, lets bring the book review world along with it.

Now we’ve got a stacked  week at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words, lets get to it.

This Week at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

Sunday, March 13:

  • Old Labels, Tagging and This Week at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

Monday, March 14:

  • Chris T. Kat ‘Mending the Rift’ virtual tour and giveaway
  • ‘At Your Service’ by Ariel Tachna – Author Guest Blog/Release Day
  • Book Spotlight: Bound (Guards of Folsom, Book Five) by Author: SJD Peterson
  • A Barb the Zany Old Lady Review: Bound (Guards of Folsom, Book Five) by Author: SJD Peterson
  • A MelanieM Review: At Your Service by Ariel Tachna
  • A Stella review: Mending the Rift by Chris T Kat

Tuesday, March 15:

  • Between Ghosts by Garrett Leigh – Riptide Publishing Contest
  • Its Release Day for the Riverdance Anthology (excerpts and giveaway)
  • In Our Contemporary Spotlight: Trial by Fire by BA Tortuga DSP tour and guest blog
  • A MelanieM Review: Trial by Fire by BA Tortuga
  • A Lila Review: Ghosts (The Power of Zero, #2) by Jackie Keswick

Wednesday, March 16:

  • Coffee Sip and Book Break with Lioness in Blue by Shira Glassman
  • A Ali Review: Eagle’s Nest by AJ Marcus
  • A Barb the Zany Old Lady Review: Lay It down by Mary Calmes
  • A Jeri Review: Him (Him #1) by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy
  • A Lila Review: Balls Up by Kate Aaron

Thursday, March   17:

  • Dianne Hartsock’s ‘Stuck on Rewind’ virtual tour and giveaway
  • A Barb the Zany Old Lady Audiobook Review: Being True by Jacob Z. Flores
  • A F.D. Review: Lima Oscar Victor Echo and The Truth About Everything by Suki Fleet
  • A Jeri Review: Us By Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy
  • A Lila Review: Beyond the Sea by Keira Andrews

Friday, March 18:

  • Katey Hawthorne’s Blood and Clockwork Tour and Giveaway
  • Love Comes to Light Author: Andrew Grey’s Guest Blog
  • A Stella Review: Spencer Cohen by NR Walker
  • A Barb the Zany Old Lady Review: Two Pet Dicks by John Inman
  • A Paul B Review: Love Comes to Light by Andrew Grey

Saturday, March 19:

  • Melanie M Thoughts On Labeling – Isn’t It Time to Put Away GFY?