Tag: mm romance (Page 14 of 14)

Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander

March 19, 2012 / Kaetrin

Why I read it: I’ve seen this one recommended by a number of trusted reviewers to I took the plunge. I’m glad I did – it was certainly worth my time and it was a bargain at $2.99 on the Kindle.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) A male prostitute, a mangy cat, a murder and a maniacal mix-up that threatens his career, his impending marriage and his life. Nothing is going as planned for Austin Glass.

Austin seems to have it all. At least on the surface. A loving fiancee. A future with the FBI and a healthy sized trust fund. He also has a grin and a wisecrack for every situation. But the smile he presents to everyone hides a painful past he’s buried too deeply to remember. And his quips mask bitterness and insecurity. Austin has himself and most of the whole world fooled. Until he meets someone who immediately sees him better than he sees himself. As events unfold and Austin’s world unravels, he finds himself pushed into making quick life-changing decisions. But can he trust Peter or what’s happening between them when each meeting seems to be just a series of volatile reactions?

What worked for me (and what didn’t): This quirky m/m romance come detective novel comes with bags of humour, an engaging, if very large, cast of characters and angsty goodness to top it all off. Told in Austin’s 1st person POV (except for a brief flashback scene in Peter’s POV), the writing style is light and funny, with Austin delivering cracking one-liners, mainly at his own expense. His characterisation is very consistent and his arc is believable. Events shortly before the commencement of the book have left him ripe for an implosion and, when he meets bunny-slipper wearing Peter at a diner when he’s waiting for an informant, his heretofore buried homosexuality makes itself known – along with all the baggage he’s been hiding as well. Austin’s life – his job, his relationship with fiancee Angelica, his relationship with his co-workers and his plans to join the FBI are all threatened by his burgeoning feelings for Peter. But, can he be trusted? It seems that almost every word coming out of Peter’s mouth is a lie. There is enough there however, for Austin to keep coming back.

As Austin is presented as someone who’s lid has finally blown off rather than it being a totally new revelation, I found his journey to be quite believable, even if some of the individual decisions in terms of his position as a detective and his dealings with the criminal justice system were more than questionable. He did face consequences for those decisions though so, even though some of those things were perhaps a bit on the unbelievable side, it wasn’t magically made better and it gave some balance to those aspects of the story.

Peter was harder to get to know. As we see him almost exclusively from Austin’s POV. There were a couple of questions I had about him even at the end (which the author was kind enough to answer for me when I emailed her – she was a bit too subtle for me in places!).

There were some small editing issues in the book – some random words cropping up in the middle of a sentence where they didn’t belong, a few typos – this is a self published piece but frankly, I’ve seen the same (and even much worse) errors in traditionally published books. I did notice it however so it gets a mention here.

To add to the sense of quirk this book has in spades, each section has a brief sentence providing a descriptor of the scene to come. Eg,

Fucking Bunny Slippers

Not a Cock Sucking Fixation

Givin’ It Before Gettin’ It – Always Beat Them To the Punch

The Truth Sucks. And It Is Awesome

It was amusing at first but I was a bit over it by the end. If it had been each chapter instead of each scene change, I don’t think I would have got so sick of it but the scene changes were frequent and it seemed like there was one of these lines every 2 or 3 pages.

The plot is convoluted – but the book is 331 pages long on my reader, so we are talking a full length novel here – there is room and time for the large cast of characters – they pretty much all had things to do and they were all distinct enough that it wasn’t difficult to keep track of. However convoluted the plot, it made sense and I never felt that the story was being tortured into a twisted knot to make it all fit – clearly the author knew where this was going from the beginning. As this was as much a noir-ish detective novel as a romance, I appreciated that very much.

I also appreciated that the female characters in the book were not caricatures – I’ve seen a few complaints about the place that a lot of m/m romance seems to be very woman-hating – in that female characters are all the evil-witches of evil and there are no nice ones. I’m not all that sensitive about the issue (I’m not sure what that says about me!) but I’ve seen the complaint enough that I noticed here that character’s like Dave’s wife, Marta, the fiancee/ex-fiancee, Angelica and even Cai’s mother, are portrayed in a (mostly) flattering light.

What else? My buddy Kris rated this one 4 stars on Goodreads, which is like an 11 for anyone else so you don’t just have to take my word for it.

There are more books in this world coming out later this year I believe and I’m certainly looking forward to Cai and Agent Cordova’s story.

Grade: B

Out of Focus by LA Witt

March 12, 2012 / Kaetrin

Why I read it: This book had been recommended to me by a number of reviewers I trust so I decided to dig it out of my TBR pile.

What it’s about: Photographers Dante and Ryan (aka Angel) have been happily together for about 12 years. They are both Dominants and Angel never bottoms ever, and so they take on a third, submissive partner, from time to time. They meet horse rancher Jordan, brother of the bride at a wedding they are photographing and there is instant lust between all three. There follows some sweet and sexy manoeuvring to establish that there is interest and that Jordan is interested in exploring submission. Things get complicated when they all fall in love with each other and it looks like at least one them is destined to be hurt.

What worked for me and what didn’t: The story is told in the alternating 1st person point of view of all three main characters, mainly changing from chapter to chapter, but later in the book, within a scene as well. I was often confused about whose head I was in and it took me a while to work it out each time the chapter/scene changed. This was complicated by the similarity of Dante and Angel. They’re both Doms and both photographers and there wasn’t much else to differentiate their characters for me. I had to keep reminding myself who was who. It was easier to differentiate Jordan – he’s a submissive for one and if there was a scene on the horse ranch it was most often (but not always) from his POV so that helped. I did like that I got all three main characters points of view but the alternating 1st person was confusing.

The beginning of the story is about setting up Dante and Angel’s relationship with Jordan and this was done very well. In fact, by the middle of the book, I was wondering what was keeping Dante and Angel together. I mean, I could see they not only were together but happily so but I wasn’t seeing the how/why of it. About the time this was beginning to really bother me there were some scenes which showed Dante and Angel alone together and reflecting on how they met and who they were to one another. I think, in hindsight, that the author did this deliberately to add to the tension of the book, and it worked.

The sex was very hot and very plentiful but the best parts of the book for me, were when each realised they had fallen in love with the other and that what was supposed to be an intimate but not emotional relationship had morphed into something else. Angel was worried that Dante would leave him to be with Jordan, there were things he couldn’t do for Dante that Jordan could and did and it seemed that Dante’s other needs were met by Jordan too.

The fact was, Jordan was everything I couldn’t be for Dante, and slowly but surely, if I read the two of them right, he was becoming what I had always been.

Jordan was worried that he’d forever be the interloper, the “expendable one” who would be “first drop” if something went wrong. Of course, by then they had all fallen in love with each other so breaking it off was going to hurt no matter what, but the idea of a true menage relationship with the three as equal partners was full of complications and each was dubious about how it could and would work. In fact, the author did such a great job of alerting me to the possible pitfalls, I didn’t entirely buy the HEA. I would have liked to have seen some practical examples of the problems being successfully resolved instead of an epilogue which told me that “it had been hard, but it was worth it”. Once again, I could see that it did work but I didn’t see the how, except this time, I wasn’t shown it later.

What else? I did like the way the characters talked about their relationship, especially at the beginning, setting safe words, advising hard limits and working up their own set of rules. It added to the sense of reality of the book, because I’m sure that in real life people have to sort these things out by conversation rather than the osmosis which occurs often in fiction.

There was a secondary storyline involving Eli, Jordan’s mooching ex-boyfriend and his lack of ability to finally kick him out. It took up quite a bit of room in the story and the conversations between Eli and Jordan were largely the same. I didn’t really get why it was featured so strongly. It certainly wasn’t as interesting to me as the developing relationship between Dante, Jordan and Angel.

Favourite Quote:

Angel had been there. He hadn’t been cropped out of the image. I’d shifted my attention to Jordan, to Angel, to Jordan, to Angel. Neither pushed the other completely out of the picture; each simply rendered the other… out of focus.

Grade: B

Lovegames by M. Jules Aedin

March 8, 2012 / Kaetrin

Why I read it: After reading the wonderful Paper Planes, I was keen to try and repeat the experience with the next book in this (extremely loosely linked) series.What it’s about: Rockstar Keith Black and actor Adam Cruce are lovers who invite a third occasionally for a bit of fun. Their respective careers keep them apart and their arrangement is that they can have sex with other people, just be safe. Part of the arrangement comes out of Keith’s bipolar disorder (disclaimer- I accepted that this was what Keith needed in the context of the book but I don’t necessarily think that all people with bipolar disorder would feel the same way). At Charlotte’s Pride concert/fair/thingy, both Adam and Keith separately meet up with Sebastian Keane, a 21 year old college student who is slight and short and wears glitter eye makeup. Both Adam and Keith are smitten and they invite Sebastian (Baz) back to their hotel for sex. After spending all night and the next day with Baz, Adam and Keith are eager to repeat the experience, even though none of their thirds have ever been invited back. Baz visits Keith and Adam in LA and they spend a few days together but are outed by the media which creates problems for all three. All three want the relationship to continue permanently but all three have their own fears about coming out and saying so.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): It’s a hot story – there’s plenty of sex and it is very well written. Each of the three men have distinct personalities and I was able to distinguish between them fairly easily fairly quickly.

Keith’s mental illness is described, from his point of view, as colours – the blackness moving in, a smile from Adam maybe causing a rush of purple, a high from performing a fireworks of gold and silver sparks for example. It was a very effective and lyrical way of describing his emotions. Keith is vulnerable. He worries that he’s too needy for Adam. He worries that his feelings for Baz will push Adam away or make Adam feel bad. He’s desperately in love with Adam (and later Baz also) but he’s very frightened of getting any treatment for his mental illness because his manager has warned him it is a career killer.

Adam is worried about Keith all the time. He is also desperately in love and he worries all the time that Keith will lose it and hurt himself or someone else. He’s worried that he’s older than Keith and a lot (but I didn’t catch how much) older than Baz.

Baz is a little more straight forward – he’s interested in both men from the start but worries about intruding on their long term relationship.

Unfortunately, these issues weren’t canvassed anywhere near enough in the book. Here’s what I noted on my Reader immediately when I finished reading last night: “BOO! Ending way to abrupt! HISS!! On the positive, I was totally caught up with the story and the characters . On the negative, the story WAS NOT FINISHED.” Literally, I went to press the next page button and there was no more book!! Argh!!

Keith’s vulnerability, Adam’s worries, Baz’s concerns and what would happen with his school and career – these things were all mostly unexplored and left hanging. Would Keith change managers? How does his treatment go? Too many questions!! The last sex scene was particularly unsatisfying. It needed another 50 or 100 pages to finish the story.

There’s also a stalker-ish subplot which didn’t really add to the story and could have been left out.

What else? If I’m lucky, there will be a sequel and the things which were missing for me can be explored but as it was, I’m struggling to grade this book now. It would be a B+ for what book there was but the ending (or lack of it) was closer to a D. Honestly, I was so caught up in the story (which is a good thing) that the lack of closure was a big deal for me. Overall, therefore, I’m going to go with a C/C+.

Grade: C/C+.