Category: M/M Book Reviews

Riptide Publishing’s Tour and Giveaway: Looking for Group by Alexis Hall

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Looking for Group by Alexis Hall
Riptide Publishing
Cover by Simoné

Read an Excerpt/Buy It Here

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Riptide Publishing’s tour and giveaway for Alexis Hall’s Looking for Group.  Check it out below and don’t forget to leave a comment and be entered in the giveaway.

About Looking for Group

So, yeah, I play Heroes of Legend, y’know, the MMO. I’m not like obsessed or addicted or anything. It’s just a game. Anyway, there was this girl in my guild who I really liked because she was funny and nerdy and a great healer. Of course, my mates thought it was hilarious I was into someone I’d met online. And they thought it was even more hilarious when she turned out to be a boy IRL. But the joke’s on them because I still really like him.

And now that we’re together, it’s going pretty well. Except sometimes I think Kit—that’s his name, sorry I didn’t mention that—spends way too much time in HoL.  I know he has friends in the guild, but he has me now, and my friends, and everyone knows people you meet online aren’t real. I mean. Not Kit. Kit’s real. Obviously.

Oh, I’m Drew, by the way. This is sort of my story. About how I messed up some stuff and figured out some stuff. And fell in love and stuff.

About Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the 21st century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.

He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.

He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a 17th century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.

He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.

Connect with Alexis:

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Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Looking for Group, one lucky winner will receive their choice of 3 ebooks from Alexis Hall’s backlist. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 3, 2016. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

An Alisa Review: Hunger (Chicken Ranch #1) by Amanda Young

Rating:  4 stars out of 5

 

Hunger- chicken Ranch kindleDisowned and cast out of his home, eighteen year old Declan Mayo turns to the only thing he can think of to help him get back on his feet. Working at Chicken Ranch, a rural brothel that caters to gay men, seems like the perfect solution. He isn’t about to let a lack of sexual experience stop him from taking what he sees as his only way off the streets.

Falling in love with one of his clients wasn’t in the game plan, but Declan can’t seem to help himself. Killian Hamilton is sweet and kind, with a stutter Declan can’t help but find adorable. Surely, if anyone could overlook Declan’s choice of employment, it would be a kindhearted man like Killian.

What Declan doesn’t count on is Killian’s connection to one of the brothel’s regular clients, or the way his love life is about to blow up in his face.

 

Amanda Young did a nice job with this story.  Declan is forced to find a way to support himself when he is kicked out of his home for being gay and when he sees no other choice he goes to Chicken Ranch for a job.  Killian goes to Chicken Ranch hoping to get off without the awkwardness of trying to pick someone up, but finds something much better.

 

I loved both of these characters.  Both were innocent in their own way, Declan by age and experience and Killian by his shyness and lack of social experience.  It was easy to connect with these characters and see their relationship slowly start to build after they see each other months after Killian visited the ranch.

 

The cover art is nice and caught my eye.

 

Sales Link

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 Amazon

 

Book Details:

ebook, 104 pages
Published: 2nd Edition, August 16, 2016 by Amanda Young
ISBN: 9781596329577
Edition Language: English

Series: Chicken Ranch Gentleman’s Club #1

A Caryn Review: The Hearts of Yesteryear by Vivian Dean

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
 

The Hearts of YesteryearI really enjoyed reading a book where the MC is actually elderly, so unusual in the world of romances!  The theme of coming full circle, of finding what you really want out of life and finding the courage to pursue it even at that age, was truly compelling for me.  

 
John Paravati is a now 77 year old man who left his home in the small town of Shakersville, Illinois, for the bright lights of Hollywood in 1956.  We meet him when his movie career is essentially over, but he is still acting in commercials for cruise lines, and he and his costar are thankful they aren’t shilling adult diapers — now that is some realism, people!  He gets a letter from a developer in Shakersville who has renovated the old Crown Theater, site of his happiest and most painful memories from childhood, asking him to attend a grand reopening.  His initial response is seemingly irrational anger, because he’s never told anyone about his life in Shakersville, why he left, or the boy he left behind.  He’s afraid of going back to face old demons, but his assistant eventually convinces him to accept the offer because it will be good for his career.
 
Thus begins his adventure to confront his past, and the reason why he left home over 50 years ago and never looked back.  There are a few brief flashbacks, where we are introduced to his best friend and love of his life, Frank Henson.  And this is when I started taking points off my review, for several reasons.  Mainly, there was too little detail about John’s life, both in Shakersville, and the intervening 50 years.  The Crown is supposedly integral to why he became an actor, and why he fell in love with Frank, but there are only 2 brief scenes about that, and they certainly don’t justify his strong connection to the place.  And what happened to him after he left that continued to shape his feelings about his hometown and The Crown?  He’s out now, but was closeted for at least part of his career.  When?  Why?  All we are told is that he’s never been in love.  So I never did get a good feel for who John is now, and who he was as a teenager, though I feel it is to the author’s credit that I really wanted to know him better.
 
Frank is necessarily a much more minor character, but I still felt there was a lot more I needed to know about him to understand why his life turned out as it did.  His initial motivations for leaving John were very understandable, what with McCarthyism and homophobia so rampant at that time.  But why did he wait so long — even when changes in his life made it possible — to contact John if his feelings remained so strong for all those years?  I loved the idea of a man deciding to pursue his true feelings and coming out for the first time when he’s in his 70s, but I feel there was so much more that could have been said about that.  Keeping Frank somewhat peripheral was really a missed opportunity for the book.
 
And that is my rant about what I didn’t like about the book.  Increase the length, provide more detail and feeling, and this would have been a 5 star read for me.  But bottom line, this was a well written, sweet story, with a lot of self-deprecating humor about age and ageism, and likable primary and secondary characters that I want to know even more about.  Definitely worth the read!
Cover art is terrific and unusual for this genre.
Sales Links
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Book Details:
ebook, 2nd Edition
Published August 6th 2016 by JMS Books (first published September 22nd 2013)
ISBN139781634861854
Edition LanguageEnglish

A MelanieM Review: Magnified (Magnified #1) by Mell Eight

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Magnified by Mell EightOn her deathbed, Yani’s Great Grandmother reveals she has one last story from her past to tell: that of his Great Uncle Yakov, who helped her survive the Nazis. It’s a story of vampires and werewolves he can scarcely believe—and in the wake of his Great Grandmother’s death, Yani realizes the story is far from over.

The world of vampires and werewolves isn’t a safe place for a human, even one with Yani’s unusual family history. With danger at his door, the smart thing would be to run, but much like his Great Grandmother Yani has never been very good at running away—especially with his loved ones and the whole world at stake.

Magnified is the first in a new series by Mell Eight and a most unusual series its starting out to be.  A supernatural tale, it has all the typical elements one expects to find such as vampires, werewolves, succubi and more but one of its main characters and an important secondary character are Eastern European Jews, one of whom barely escaped the trains and gas chambers of WWII.  How they did it and their Jewish traditions they carry with them always as part of who they are is a central element to this story and I expect of this series.

I found this whole aspect of the story a wonderful layer not often found in my stories (see Astrid Amara’s Carol of the Bellskis (Bellskis, #1) among others). Not only does Mell Eight use Yani’s contemporary family’s religious celebrations as part of her important need for us to understand how strong this family is and their ties to each other and their faith but later on starts to pull in other threads that deepens the religious element when a mage with links to Kabbalah appears.

We start off the story as Yani’s great grandmother is telling the story of her childhood. Its the 1940’s and the swift move by the Nazis is occurring as they round up Jews and move them to the internments camps and the ovens.  We are propelled into these awful times and a heartrending if sometimes confusing narrative, one that quickly becomes clearer by the page.

The timeline moves along quickly as Yani ages from a young boy to a young man of college age.  The jumps in time are handled easily and are necessary to get to the action required by the meat of the story.

That’s the introduction of the world of vampires, werewolves etc to our young student.  Its an explosive one and one that was my only main issue here.  I would have expected a much larger reaction from Yani.  His reaction felt almost anti-climatic after all he went through. And it continued to bother me throughout the rest of the story.

There is a lot that the author is packing in here.  There are two main couples that are intended to flow into the next story and carry on the series.  It was almost too much for this book to handle.  We really didn’t get a background on the secondary couple, perhaps that’s coming in the next book.  But they had such an important part to play here that they came off less substantial without that background.

There is a very scary villain here, a true monster. One I can’t wait to see taken down.  I wonder how many books its going to take?  I will be there for every one.

Mell Eight packed a lot into this first story.  Religion, family, romance, mystery, horror…its a writer’s cornucopia and it almost exploded the seams of the story on element overload.  So much here to absorb that it got confusing at times. But in the end, Mell Eight pulled it off…sort of as there is a HFN ending.   I recommend this unusual story, its quite a ride even though I’m not quite sure where we’re going yet.

Cover by Aisha Akeju‘s cover contains relevant objects to the story.  I’m just not a fan of these simplified covers, just they don’t draw me in.

Sales Links   – Pre Order (others will follow)

Less Than Three Press

Book Details:

ebook
Expected publication: September 7th 2016 by Less Than Three Press
ISBN13 9781620048535
Edition Language English

A Lila Review: Tracefinder: Changes (Tracefinder #2) by Kaje Harper

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Tracefinder- changesBrian Kerr is now free of his dangerous boss and his domineering brother. He’s eager to start using his psychic Finding talent to help people, if he can figure out how to do that safely. His dyslexia, and his tendency to act simpleminded under stress, make building his new life a daunting challenge. And while his not-quite-boyfriend, Nick, is willing to support him, in bed and out of it, Brian doesn’t want to lean on Nick. If their relationship is going anywhere, he has to be a full partner and handle his own problems.

Nick Rugo’s walking a tightrope instead of settling into the ordinary cop’s life he’d hoped for. He’s hiding too many things from too many people. He has told professional and unprofessional lies that will come back to haunt him. Now, with Brian determined to start Finding again, he’s not sure he can protect the man he cares for. If all that wasn’t enough to make him start punching walls, he also has a suspicion that Brian’s brother Damon and sister Lori may be out there, lurking, ready to complicate their lives.

Tracefinder: Changes is all about discoveries and relationships. The story starts months after the end of book #1. Brian and Nick have an established routine and are comfortable living in the same house as some sort of roommates. From there, we dive directly into action.

The events in the first Finding set the frame for the rest of the story. We see, not only how much Nick’s invested in Brian’s care, but how far Brian has evolved away from Bry. They still have a complicated relationship at this point, but with every day they spent together, they discovered something new about themselves and the other.

Brian’s dyslexia is front and center in this installment. The reader gets to experience it from Brian’s point of view, but also from other characters’ perspectives. We see how it affects him and what he’s doing to work through it. At the same time, we see Nick’s struggle with his job and his judgment. And how much, taking care of Brian and falling for him changes the way he sees and feels about his job as a cop. Nick’s also caught in police politics and chains of command.

As one of the changes, we get to see more of the effects the Findings have on Brian. This time, he’s the one relaying the information instead of Bry. We get a better understanding of his struggles and the effort he has to put to become more independent. Is almost as if the Bry veil covering starts to move away, letting the reader see the real Brian– the one only Nick saw in the first book.

The cases they worked on were simple but relevant to the story. The author brought back characters we met in the first book and added some other great ones.  The settings were pertinent and easy to visualized; as well as the weather. Other than Brian’s Finding abilities everything in this story is part of a contemporary setting very well meshed with the paranormal element.

A lot is happening in this story, and that’s one of the reasons I didn’t give it a perfect five. The beginning is a bit repetitive. I got lost following the action thread during a crucial scene, and the resolution seemed too fast and too perfect. But overall, that was not enough to make a significant impact on my rating. I enjoyed this volume better than the first, and can’t wait for the next one.

Sidney Lowell of Creative Minds helped the author find the perfect picture of Brian. He looks exactly as described in the story, and even his gaze seems up to par. Also, the setup follows the previous book in the series.

Sale Links: Smashwords | Amazon | ARe

Book Details:

ebook, 469 pages
Published: August 4, 2016, Self-Published
ISBN: 9781370526369
Edition Language: English

Series: Tracefinder
Book #1: Tracefinder: Contact
Book #2: Tracefinder: Changes

A Stella Review: Not a Game (Friends #1) by Cardeno C.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Not a Game by Cardeno CAn accidental meeting and a misunderstanding lead to a life-altering connection.

A new job, a new city, and hopefully a new life. When chubby gamer Oliver Barnaby receives a job offer from the best boutique game developer in the country, he leaves his family and his less than spectacular existence in Oklahoma without a second’s hesitation. Determined to change more than his career and his geography, Oliver implements a plan to finally land a boyfriend. Step one is improving his skills in the bedroom.

A life that looks perfect on paper, but feels empty in reality. Attractive, successful, charismatic Jaime Snow has a life other people envy. His already booming business is growing. He isn’t lacking in friends. And he has no trouble finding a date. But there’s an emptiness in Jaime’s heart and a hole in his life that only the right man can fill.

An accidental meeting, a misunderstanding, and falling in love. When Oliver and Jaime end up at the same bar at the same time, they each see something they want in the other. Going to bed together that first night is easy. Building the lifetime relationship they both desperately crave will require trust, time, and a little misunderstanding.

The beginning of a new series by Cardeno. How could I have resisted? I’m a huge fan, some of her stories are among my favorites and she was one of the first mm author I read. She never disappointed me, because honestly? Cardeno C can comfort me in my shitty days like no other author can do. That’s the reason why I often come back to read one of her books.

Not A Game was a pleasure to read, sweet, very hot. The story is exactly what I love to read. It has everything I love. I have to re read it now. I’m so enthusiastic about it, can you feel my joy?

I met Oliver, geeky, chubby gamer developer and Jaime, beautiful and rich, so sure of himself like Oliver is not and I fell in love with them at first reading, just how at first sight Jaime knew he needed Oliver in his pointless life.

They were perfect for each other, opposites attract has never worked so well in another story. Cardeno nailed all my soft spots, age gap included. Yep the misunderstanding is clear to the reader from the start but who cares? I cared about how they worked so well together, how Oliver found himself in an unexpected relationship, how they fell in lust and love so easily, and when Jaime reveled the truth, they were both so into each other, there were no space for useless drama scenes. For once the HEA was unavoidable and what the MCs and the reader deserve.

Easy and light and hot and sweet and tender and real and… ok I’ll stop but I could give you all the positive adjectives I can think of to describe Not A Game. Another big winner from Cardeno C. Don’t miss it.

The cover art by A.J. Corza fits the story, I like it.

Sales Links

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Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 220 pages
Published July 15th 2016 by The Romance Authors, LLC
ASINB01IC2BGB4
Edition LanguageEnglish
Series Friends #1