Tag: contemporary romance

Review of Shelton’s Homecoming (Shelton #4) by Dianne Hartsock

Rating: 4 stars

Shelton has just flown home after receiving a phone call telling him his lover, Nevil, was injured and in the hospital.  Nevil is going to be fine but the accident has made it clear that something needs to change in his life, and change now. When Shelton took the promotion and transferred to another city, he never realized the full impact of a long distance relationship would be to him and Nevil.  After 6 months, he has had enough and the accident just clarified that.  In fact, Shelton realizes he wants even more from Nevil.  He wants permanence in the form of marriage, something Nevil has been very clear about not wanting.  When an ex boyfriend of Nevil’s invites them to his marriage, all the old jumbled up feelings come out and Shelton wonders if Nevil will ever come around to a future as husband and husband.

Shelton’s Homecoming is the fourth in the Shelton series but the first I have read by Dianne Hartsock.  The books plot the romance of Shelton and Nevil whose last names are never given in this book.  By Shelton’s Homecoming, their romance is an established one that has undergone an upheaval in Shelton’s Choice (Shelton #3).  The upheaval is obviously Shelton’s promotion in his bank job which necessitated a move to another city.  Now Shelton is only home on the weekends and the constant travel and loneliness is taking its tole on both men. Dianne Hartsock does a wonderful job of giving us two men deeply in love but still making adjustments to their relationship.  Shelton is someone you can easily identify with.  He took a promotion that he knew he deserved and wanted but the reality of that choice on their relationship is something far different then he had imagined.  Shelton is tired and stressed.  And then gets the phone call to say Nevil has been injured while he is out of town and guilt is added to the pain of their separation.  There are many couples today who have a similar arrangement whether by choice or economics so all the emotions on display here ring true.  Nevil is a little more conservative in his approach to their relationship but clearly he relishes the fact that  Shelton has come home and he has missed him dearly. I don’t have enough of their history on hand but it seems that he might be older than Shelton, at least he comes across that way.  At any rate, Nevil is another complete character with complex feelings about gay marriage equating with permanence as he feels they already have that.

Much time is spent having sex, lots of hot sex, but as the men have been separated  essentially for 6 months and love each other deeply, I can buy the “jump his bones at every possible moment” action as the author keeps remembering to bring the plot in as well.  There is really one issue for the couple to deal with as Shelton decides in the beginning to return home and that is one of marriage.  They live in a state where they can register as domestic partners but marriage is not legal.  So Nevil doesn’t think having a piece of paper, one not even backed by their state’s laws, is necessary to their relationship.  He feels they are committed to one another so nothing more is needed.  Shelton, on the other hand, looks at that piece of paper as evidence of a long term commitment visible by wedding rings to all around them and he wants it badly.  Hartsock makes us understand both Shelton and Nevil’s position on the matter which makes the resolution even more satisfying.

This is a heartwarming story and a quick read. I loved watching Nevil’s change of heart and watching Shelton and Nevil take their relationship to a deeper level of commitment.  Very well done.  I might go back to the beginning to see how it all started but really don’t feel that I have to in order to understand both men and their love for each other.  I anticipate that Dianne Hartsock will continue the series and that a wedding is on the horizon.  Count me in as I plan to be there when it happens.

Cover: Cover art by Mina Carter.  I love the colors and the simplicity of the clasped hands is lovely.

Shelton stories in the order they are written:

Shelton In Love (Shelton #1)

Shelton’s Promise (Shelton #2)

Shelton’s Decision (Shelton #3)

Shelton’s Homecoming (Shelton #4)

Review of Inertia (Impulse #1) by Amelia C. Gormley

Rating: 4 stars

Detroit handyman, Derrick Chance, has life just the way he wants it after recovering from period of excruciating loss and emotional turmoil brought on by the deaths of his grandparents and brother.  Safe, unexciting, normal. some would say routine even and they would be right.  Everything in its place, everything in order. and especially no unwelcome surprises lurking to throw up his hard won equanimity.  It has taken Derrick 10 years to get to this point in his life where he feels balanced and safe and he doesn’t want anything to change.  Just look at his home and furnishings.  The house is much the same as when his grandparents had lived there, nothing updated, even the appliances.  Heck, he didn’t even have texting on his phone.

Then Derrick gets a phone call from Gavin Hayes, an accountant who needs his home office outfitted with some shelves.  One look at Gavin, a quick handshake and all Derrick’s comfortable and predictable life is shaken up. Derrick gave up trying to date and all personal relationships when trying to recover from the loss of his family at a young age.  He just didn’t have anything left over to give so why bother? Now Derrick doesn’t know how to handle the emotions Gavin is bringing back to the surface after a long absence.

Gavin too is fighting the impulse to get to know his skittish handyman better.  Gavin has just removed himself from an abusive relationship and the thought of trusting another at this time leaves him uncertain and more than a little afraid, given a secret he is hiding.  It is going to take more than time and an attraction for Derrick and Gavin to decide to risk it all on a chance at love.

Inertia is the first book in the Impulse series that looks to follow the course of a relationship between two men, Derrick Chance and Gavin Hayes. The title of the book is an accurate description of the state of Derrick’s life.  Derrick has remained unchanged, and happily so since the trauma of his grandparents death. Then his brother died as well leaving him so emotionally empty that he was unable to do more than react as his life changed forever.  From that time on, Derrick froze himself into a lifestyle of emotional stasis that comes complete with a house full of relics from his grandparents time, a business based on fixing things from the past, and an isolation so complete that his only friends are his dog, his elderly neighbor and his friend, Devon.  When a work order leads to a meeting with Gavin Hayes, their mild flirting shakes him up, to the point of  Derrick reevaluating his choice of a solitary life.

Gormley does a really nice job of conveying Derrick’s uncertainty about the future and making changes to his life.  From Derrick’s perspective, the future has never held anything but heartache and pain causing him to withdraw from an active social life.  She paints the portrait of a man so hurt, so afraid of emotional pain that he does nothing to move himself forward for fear of being hurt once more.  Derrick has also frozen his sexuality as he has been abstinent for years, remaining a virgin into his thirties. This gives his character a certain innocence that plays off nicely against the character of Gavin Hayes.

The character of Gavin Hayes has also some interesting layers to him.  He is just come from an abusive relationship with a man whose ideas on HIV and AIDS are not only frighteningly self delusional but dangerous.  He too is full of fear for the future and hesitant to start a new relationship. So when the men find they are attracted to each other, each advances forward with all the hesitancy and indecisiveness of ants at a tap dance rehearsal.  For each uncertain foot forward, then is an almost immediate step back, sometimes several so that they find themselves back at the starting point.  But instead of this being a frustrating element, Gormley makes us understand these men and their actions.

Then there is the sex.  There are some very hot scenes here as Derrick discovers that his sexuality didn’t die along with his family but has just been dormant, awaiting a spark to come back to life.  Gavin is more than happy to be that spark.  But this is not a teacher/student relationship as Gavin’s former lover has left him with mental scars where their sex life was concerned.  There is a very realistic give and take here between the men as Derrick discovers he has a slight submissive kink and Gavin explores the idea of reciprocity in sex play.

There is no real angst here although from the sound of Gavin’s former lover, it might appear in the sequel Acceleration, Impulse #2. Inertia is simply the story of the beginnings of a relationship.  It may go on longer than necessary. In fact, the entire book could be tightened up with respect to editing errors and repetitive sections.  This is the second edition of this story after all. All of this might be due to the fact that Inertia is a self published book that could benefit from the efforts of a good editor.  That said, Gormley has done a wonderful job with her story and I look forward to the next installment in the relationship of Derrick and Gavin.

Cover:  Interesting cover by Kerry.  Compelling in its own way but also a little rustic in feel.

Review of Synchronous Seductions Trilogy by Havan Fellows

Rating: 4.25 points for each book and the series overall

Synchronous Seductions is a trilogy of stories about three men,their group of friends and co workers.  In the first story, Harlan’s Ryde, one man wants desperately to regain the lover he cast away years ago. The second, Emery’s Ritches,  one man finds his love staring back from a photograph on a co workers mantel, and finally in Geoff’s Teddy, just when the one man has given up his dream of finding the perfect bear to love,it  he finds him, supposedly straight and working for his boss’s boyfriend.

Harlan’s Ryde Synchronous Seductions #1) found in Word Play anthology:  Seven years ago, Ryder Holloway walked away from Harlan Mychals, making the most momentus mistake of his life.  He told Harlan he didn’t love him, that he cheated on him and with that threw away the only man he would ever love, threw away college, dumped his life in the garbage and left town.  Now he is back, pulled his life together, and wants Harlan back too. Harlan has never recovered from his devastating break with Ryder and doesn’t trust that Ryder has changed.

Ryder does everything he can to get Harlan to see him, listen to him, including breaking into his house to leave messages. When Harlan accidentally puts Ryder into the hospital, can Ryder’s convalesce  and his nursing skills give them both their chance at true love.

This short story has it all.  Lovers reunited after a long time apart, intense characters and marvelous dialog.  In the beginning I wanted to swat Ryder with a noodle but as the layers to his character start to peel away, you see the insecurities, and poor self image that set him on a destructive path to begin with and you start to root for him instead.  I loved these characters and wanted them to find their HEA as they so readily deserved it.  So I was thrilled to find that I would see both of them again as the series continued with the great secondary characters introduced here.

Emery’s Ritchies (Synchronous Seductions #2): Ritchie Lymings has just finished dropping off his best friend and secret love interest, Harlan Mychals at Ryder Halloway’s house. Harlan and Ryder have reunited after 7 years of misunderstandings and pride kept them separated.  Ritchie also tried to keep Harlan from letting Ryder back into his life but love with a capital L brought them back together and now Ritchie is wallowing in a world of self pity, made worse by the fact that he never liked Ryder to begin with.

As he mopes into his coffee at a nearby shop, a stranger barges into his pity party and asks to sit at his table offering to make him smile. Ritchie is unaware that the stranger is in fact Emery Hawkins, Ryder’s boss and friend.  Emery has listened to Ryder talk about Harlan and his best friend Ritchie for five years, so much so that Emery has become intrigued by the man Ryder refers to as “the infuriating twit”. Then Emery saw a photograph of Harland and his best friend on Harland’s mantel and he couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the picture. Now  coincidence has  brought Ritchie to him and Emery has never been one to let an opportunity go by to get what he wants.

Again Havan Fellows gives us a wonderful story with a heart of snark!  That would be Ritchie Lymings, snappy dresser, sarcastic manner and a loyal friend. Fellows’ characters are a simpatico bunch, fully realized and totally human.  We first met Ritchie as Harlan’s best friend who saw him through the worst time of his life and we agreed for a while with his viewpoint of Ryder as human pest.  But now we see that Ritchie also loved Harlan and did what was best for his friendship.  All Ritchie’s redeeming features are hidden under a caustic veneer but upon meeting Emery, Ritchie has more than met his match.  For every wall put up by Ritchie and sneering comment he makes, Emery comes back with a plan to break down the wall and has the last word in their arguments until Ritchie finds himself succumbing to Emery’s seductions.  It is such fun to watch the  courting of Ritchie as Emery finds he too must make some adjustments in order for their relationship to succeed.

A real relationship is a juggling act between two people and their baggage.  In this case, the men are constantly reminded of their past because of their close circle of friends, includes some of that “baggage”.  Havan Fellows understands relationship issues and the sometimes painful journey you must take in order to have a successful one.  We watch Ritchie and Emery  do the relationship dance.  Two steps forward and one step back.  Throw in some hot sex, a little frustration, wonderful dialog, and great characters and you will find yourself nodding and thinking “yep, that’s about right,” and then start laughing.

A lighthearted, fun romp that also introduces us to Geoff, Ryder’s smart, small assistant with an attitude much larger than his stature. Geoff is looking for love and finds it in the final book of the trilogy, Geoff’s Teddy.

Geoff’s Teddy (Synchronous Seductions #3): When Geoff’s boss,Ritchie, makes up a false dinner meeting to get out of a date with Emery, Ritchies makes Geoff come out with him for appearances sake.  But Emery has Ritchies number, and Geoff’s too when he “accidentally” stops in at the same restaurant, his employee in tow.   Emery has brought along Teddy “Fuzzy” Beough,  pronouced “boo”, to take Geoff home when Emery wisks Ritchie away for the night. But that is fine with Geoff because  Teddy is everything Geoff has always wanted.  Teddy is hairy, huge, in fact he is a downright gorgeous bear whose nickname just happens to be Fuzzy Wuzzy to Geoff’s unholy delight. He has a sense of humor about himself and they ended up talking for hours. Too bad Teddy says he’s straight.

The lightest, guffaw inducing story of the trio, you can tell Havan Fellows was laughing the entire time it was being written.  From the twists and turns of Teddy’s name (I will not spoil the entire beauty that is his full name for you), to his introduction to gay sex and Geoff’s meeting with Fuzzy’s parents, it’s one laugh after another.  Don’t look for angst here, there is a brief whiff and its gone.  Fuzzy thinks he is gay because he chose the path of least resistance, at least for him.  Girls were ok, he just can’t sustain a sexual, romantic relationship with one.   And then he happens upon cable at Geoff’s apartment and much, much more to complete his epiphany.  I don’t think that makes Teddy/Fuzzy gay for you, perhaps bisexual at least.  Teddy is simply Teddy, a very accepting, non judgmental person open to all possibilities, including the fact that he might be gay. Geoff is more than happy to demonstrate the ABC’s of Gay Sex or as he calls it Gay Sex for Dummies.  Everyone should have such a teacher.

Whatever you wish to name it, it is happy, it is fun and it leads to much more.  This story is just a delight.  Wonderful, fully layered characters having a great time in a fun romp on their way to true love. In fact, the entire series is like this.  Don’t miss it.  Everyone needs a good, heartwarming laugh.  Here are three.

Cover Artist: Victoria Miller

While it is helpful to read these stories in the order they were written, it is not necessary in order to understand and enjoy the books.

The Series Order is:

Harlan’s Ryde  (Synchronous Seductions Series #1) – found in the Story Orgy anthology Word Play

Emery’s Riches (Synchronous Seductions Series #2)

Geoff’s Teddy (Synchronous Seductions Series #3) available July 20, 2012 from Breathless Press.

Review of Suicide Point by Georgie Leigh

Rating: 3.75 stars

Surfer boy Charlie and police officer Ness have a one-night stand and part, not to meet up again until the night Charlie crashed his car.  Until that traumatic day Charlie has only been interested in casual relationships and days spent at the beach while Ness has been fighting with the nightmares and scars that remain from a past relationship gone horribly wrong. But on that day when Ness and his partner come across Charlie’s twisted wreck of a van, the lives of both men change forever.  As Ness holds onto Charlie, the emergency team must amputate Charlie’s arm in order to free him from the twisted frame of his van.

When Ness visits Charlie in the hospital, a relationship is struck up between them. Charlie needs Ness in so many ways.  To help him adjust to his new body and loss of his arm, to provide emotional support as Charlie works to accept the reality of his disability.  Ness also needs Charlie’s love and faith to conquer his insecurities and doubts in starting another relationship and reaching out  again after such a long time alone.  But it is not just their fears and uncertainties they must overcome, but Charlie’s foster brother, Joey whose possessiveness and instability threaten all around him.

Suicide Point is interesting and successful on several levels but ultimately falls short in my opinion due to too many plots within one book.  The main issue I see here is that the author has two great stories here.  One story is that of Charlie’s traumatic accident,  from his amputation,through his journey from  shattered self image to one of self reliance, recovery and acceptance of his body. That plot line alone, along with starting a relationship with the man who helped rescue you and was present during the amputation, would have elevated Suicide Point into the 4 star category easily.

The second book contained inside Suicide Point is that of a thriller.  Two men brought together by a life changing event are threatened by a person close to them, who not only plays cruel mental games with them but physically sets out to harm one or both men, a la Gaslight.  The level of anxiety the author creates increases exponentially until the reader is constantly waiting for the next horror to occur. Separated, the stories are fine but together intwined, each fights for the reader’s attention and empathy until both suffer from an overload of angst and anxiety and a really satisfactory ending is lost.

The other issue here is that of characterization.  Charlie is easily the most realistic character Leigh created.  I really believed him, from the cocky surfer to the depressed amputee.  Charlie grabbed my attention and my compassion.  Ness Anderson was part of the problem though.  He was weighted down with too much backstory.  He had an unstable lover who shot him and then committed suicide.  He is a police officer who works on RBDU, Rescue and Bomb Disposal Unit.  And yet even as Ness recognizes the dangers that Joey poses, he disregards his gut and intellectual feelings?  I just never bought that.  Ness came across as a much less authentic character and that took away from the story.  I think he was most successful as a character during the time he was helping Charlie adjust to life as an amputee, after that the realism faded.  Their layered relationship seemed to have a realistic foundation as Charlie went through the known stages of grief for his past life and body.  Joey, however, made a very credible damaged kid.  A unstable child, his fixation on his foster brother turns him into a menace that no one wants to recognize, a personality often seen in the news today in shattering detail.

To recap, there is much to admire about Suicide Point and the author’s ambitious goals for this book.  Sometimes less really is more and Suicide Point could have used a divider so that both stories could have gotten the attention they deserved.  I look forward to more from this gifted author.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Cover:  Reese Dante’s cover is fine except for the font.  While I get the idea of a red (bloody) messy font, it’s not necessary and a cleaner font would have been much better.

Review of The Florist (Workplace Encounters #8) by Serena Yates

Rating: 3 stars

Dylan White, free spirit and free lance florist designer, is on vacation when he gets a call that will change his life.  His friend, Mike Benton, has died and left him everything he had owned, including a house and florist shop in Jacksonville, Florida.  Dylan lands in Jacksonville and heads to the law offices handling Mike’s will and funeral services.  As Dylan leaves the law firm, he runs smack dab into a human wall in the form of Sean Mellick.  Sean Mellick is a junior defense lawyer with the same firm handling Mike’s affairs and is immediately struck by his attraction to the gorgeous man leaving his law firm.

Dylan finds himself similarly attracted to Sean.  Suddenly, he is finding reasons to stay in town, settle down and run a business.  As Dylan and Sean embark upon a romance, problems with the shop he inherited and a law case Sean is involved in rise up to threaten their new formed relationship.  Can Dylan throw aside his temptations to leave and fight instead for love and a home?

I had a hard time staying with this book but it took me some time to figure out why.  Serena Yates has the elements in place for a riveting story. We have a commitment phobic free spirit and a work obsessed lawyer coming together with a couple of stressful events thrown in their path to happiness.  The characters seem likable and their situations appeared realistic.  So what was the problem?  Why didn’t the story or the people engage me? The answer I keep coming back to is that I just didn’t buy what the author was trying to sell me.

Let’s start with the characterizations.  Dylan White is supposed to be this amazing larger than life bon vivant, a true free spirit. But the author never gives us one, not in her descriptions nor dialog.  We are told he is one, because he is on vacation and left the florist shop his parents own. Why?  Because he didn’t like the floral designs they were putting out.  That’s a free spirit?  The only thing that says impulsive free spirit is the statement in the beginning telling us that Dylan is one.  The same goes for Sean Mellick.  We are supposed to buy that Sean is a young man driven to become partner at his law firm, putting that goal above all else, including a personal life.  How do we know this?  A senior partner is surprised he has a date and again, the author told us so.  As far as I could tell, the senior partner could have been surprised because Sean is socially inept.  Again, there is no backstory or pertinent characteristics to support this view of Sean Mellick.    It all comes back to the fact that an author must build a character/characters that a reader will believe in.  If that person has a devil may care spirit, show me in dialog, history and actions. Don’t just leave him flat on the page.  If you want me to  believe a character is driven, convince me of that!  Don’t just tell me he is one.  I never believed in either character because there was never any followup to support that initial description and my interest in the story was gone.

If you can overlook the superficial characterizations, then the next problem lies in the criminal element Yates introduces into her story.  It just never made any sense.  The problem at Dylan’s new shop and Sean’s case are supposed to be connected but little is made of that fact.  Everything is not as it appears at the floral shop.  An interesting element is thrown at us, but this plot line is essentially wasted, as it is not well developed, and in the end not necessary to the story.  Nor is Sean’s job, which we were made to believe was a singular goal of his.  All these roadblocks or issues the author raises for the characters just slide away, another unreal or unbelievable  element in a story full of them.

So in the end I didn’t buy the characters or the storyline.  This is the only book I have read from the Workplace Encounters series so I won’t write them off based on this alone.  But I am not recommending this for anyone other than a hardcore Serena Yates fan.

cover:  Cover Artist is Reese Dante.  The cover is just ok, doesn’t speak to anything inside the book or the story.

Olympics Addiction Continues, the week ahead in Reviews and a new Summer Cocktail

It’s August, it’s hot and dry here in Maryland.  Normal right?  Well, except for the 100 degree days, but the dryness?  That’s becoming typical too.  We are down about 8 inches here from our normal rainfall, but compared to some of the other states now experiencing record drought conditions, that is nothing.  As we hear of farmers and ranchers selling off stock they can’t feed and the Mississippi is down 20 ft in places,  along with Lake Michigan recording a water temperature in the 90’s,  I think Maryland is getting off easy comparatively speaking.  But we will feel it, make no doubt about it.  Higher food prices, higher costs in transportation, we are all woven together.  A small ripple here becomes a tidal wave there.

So I would like to think that the Olympics in Great Britain are generating tidal waves of good feelings that are crashing upon the shores of many nations.  I love watching athletes from all over the world competing and (mostly, what was with those badminton teams?) giving it their best.  Did you see that rower from Niger?  Never been in a boat, never rowed  before, came in dead last and grinned like crazy! And then there is Michael Phelps putting on a show of remarkable  physical ability, great team spirit and a happiness that I will remember for some time to come.  So many wonderful moments this week from the women competing whether it was gymnastics, swimming, Judo, weightlifting, or women in head scarves running like the wind.  I am just glued to my set and don’t see that changing until the very last whistle is blown and the torch goes out.  How about you?  Are you watching?

So this is what I have been reading in between watching the Olympics:

Monday:                       The Druid Stone by Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane

Tuesday:                        When Forever May Not Be Long Enough by Mychael Black and Shayne Carmichael

Wednesday:                  The Florist by Serena Yates

Thursday:                       Priceless by M.A. Church

Friday:                            Suicide Point by Georgie Leigh

Saturday:                        Brook Street: Thief by Ava March

Now on to this Sunday’s Feature Cocktail.  In a nod to the British Olympics, here is the recipe for a Pimm’s Cup.  This recipe is  for one drink. Make as many as you like!

 

 

 

 

 

Pimm’s Cup Ingredients:

About 1 cup ice cubes
1/4 cup (2 ounces) Pimm’s No. 1
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) ginger beer or ginger ale
1 cucumber slice
1 sprig fresh mint (5 to 6 leaves)
Directions:

Fill highball glass with ice. Add Pimm’s, then top with ginger beer, garnish with cucumber slice and mint sprig, and serve.

Now I am off to watch the Olympics and finish Megan Derr’s Poison, the 4th book in the Lost Gods series.

Review of Frat Boy and Toppy by Anne Tenino

Rating: 4.5 stars

Brad just had an epiphany, several actuality.  Too bad it happens when his teammate bends over to expose his hairy ass in the communal shower. It’s not just his obvious physical reaction to the moment but all the moments leading up to this one that tells Brad that yes, he really is gay no matter how hard he has denied it. Now what is he going to do about it?

All his life Brad Feller has done what people expected of him.  Huge physique? Athletics all through school into university, while a little voice in his head whispers he would be happier in home economics and cooking classes.  Join a frat full of jocks because of a family legacy and expectations? Yeah, and because he needs to the money for school.  Date girl after girl even after he starts to realize he is using them as a front? The answer is yes to his growing shame. And then there is Sebastian, his TA in the History classes he took for graduation.  Sebastian is gorgeous, cool, hot and oh so out.  Sebastian is also the star performer in all of Brad’s dreams and hopes. Brad wants to come out but doesn’t know how.  His whole world is about to change.

Sebastian is aware of the hot jock watching him in class.  A straight guy , the Frat Boy, right? But a meeting over a paper and Brad himself tells Sebastian a different story.  Brad wants him and Sebastian is only too happy to oblige, take a teacher roll as it were.  But the sex between them is more than hot, it is mind blowing, and perhaps  something more than Sebastian wants to admit.  Can Frat Boy and Toppy admit to the changing relationship between them and grasp the love within their reach?

This book more than met my expectations.  I had expected a cute, somewhat fluffy enjoyable book about coming out and opposites attracting.  This was so much more.  Let’s start with characterization, which for me is always the driving force behind terrific books.  Brad Feller is such a surprising character.  Yes, his exterior is that of a intimidating jock but his interior? Inside he is an almost excruciatingly vulnerable young man trying to understand his sexuality along with his need to be safe and loved.  That his inner voice is also honest and humorous is a huge plus as well. Brad is well aware of the dichotomies he represents, the brooding jock exterior versus the uncertain, insecure, shy young man he really is. Years of hiding his real self has also isolated him as he keeps even his so called friends at arms length.  Tenino has done such an excellent job in creating Brad that from the first inner mumblings of Brad’s thoughts on his life and sexuality, I was hooked.  Not only hooked but in love.  How could you not fall in love with a compassionate, funny, gay chef in jocks clothing who first gets in touch with his inner sub by interacting with his   hair brush in a way not sanctioned by its manufacturer.  Trust me, I was choking in laughter over that one and you will too.

And then there is Sebastian.  In other hands, I am sure he could come across as a complete jerk, a player with a revolving door in his bedroom.  But again Anne Tenino gives us a complicated, totally real person who is more than a match for our Brad.  Sebastian appreciates Brad and truly sees the real person Brad is while totally appreciating the gorgeous body toned through constant workouts and athletics.  Sebastian too must work through his own issues before he can accept the fact that what he is feeling is love for Brad and not just an appreciation of their great sex life.  Sebastian is deserving  of Brad’s love, it just takes him some time to realize it.

There is wonderful humor throughout the entire story.  This includes one of the most memorably funny coming out scenes I have read recently.  I laughed until I cried, trust me it’s hilarious.  This story has it all.  Pitch perfect dialog, outstanding characters, very hot sex scenes (waving fan) and a heart warming tale of coming out and coming to terms with who you really are. I wanted more, much more of Brad and Sebastian, that was my only complaint.  So will you. You really don’t want to miss this story.  It’s that great.  Trust me.

Cover:  What a great cover.  Cover artist is LC Chase and I think they did a wonderful job. Loved it.