Tag Archives: m/m romance

Promises

Book Review of Promises (Coda Books #1), by Marie Sexton

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PromisesI downloaded Marie Sexton’s novel,Promises from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Jared Thomas has lived his whole life in the small mountain town of Coda, Colorado. He can’t imagine living anywhere else. Unfortunately, the only other gay man in town is twice his age and used to be his teacher, so Jared is resigned to spending his life alone. Until Matt Richards walks into his life, that is. Matt has just been hired by the Coda Police Department, and he and Jared immediately become friends. Matt claims he is straight, but for Jared, having a sexy friend like Matt is way too tempting. Facing Matt’s affair with a local woman, his disapproving family, and harassment from Matt’s co-workers, Jared fears they’ll never find a way to be together-if he can even convince Matt to try.

Review:

I very rarely read romance sans some sci-fi or fantasy element. Be it M/F, M/M, M/F/F, or any other variation, I generally end up gagging on all the feel good factors or declarations of love and/or dedication. I usually NEED something else in the plot to distract me from all that…that…those hearts and flowers. Having said that, it’s probably not surprising that this book’s been on my TBR for almost 9 months. But after randomly seeing a couple favourable reviews of it recently, I decided to give it a chance.

I’m glad I did. It’s very sweet in its own way, without being nauseatingly sappy. These men aren’t the sort to spout off about their undying love, though they’re not too tightlipped to admit it either. I appreciated that. I adored Jared’s voice as a narrator and practically swooned over Matt’s earnestness. Though that same honestness, combined with his readily expressed excitement left him feeling a little like a wide-eyed child at times. But I just wanted to grab him up and squeeze him to death then too, so it’s all good.

Seeing Jared and Matt struggle through their own issues was a bit of a blessing. Now, I don’t know where it falls on the realism spectrum. I suspect a long way from real. But it also didn’t force any “yeah, rights!’ out of me. Which left me able to fully immerse myself in the story and pretend it really did represent life somewhere out there.

I deem this one definitely worth picking up and I would be thrilled to read more of the Coda series and/or writing by Marie Sexton.

Book Review of Aftermath, by Cara Dee

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AftermathI grabbed Cara Dee‘s M/M romance, Aftermath from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Austin Huntley and Cameron Nash are like night and day. One is a family man, works in a nice office, drives an expensive car, and is content to be content. The other one is an antisocial car mechanic with a short fuse.

Some things don’t change. Others definitely do.

After surviving a five-months long kidnapping together, they struggle to return to normalcy, all while realizing that they’re more drawn to each other than they ever could’ve imagined.

Review:
I generally enjoyed this book. It wasn’t anywhere near as dark as I expected. I loved the narrator’s and the men’s voices (not to mention the characters themselves). The dialogue was believable. It was well edited and there were some pretty hot sex scenes. Yum. I seriously considered giving it five stars, based purely on my enjoyment level. But in the end, I decided it didn’t really deserve a full five. So, I’m going with a four star rating.

What held my rating back a bit was that some aspects of it weren’t very believable.  For example: the previously straight man, having his first sexual experience with another guy, takes charge and knows EXACTLY what to do, where everything is, and has no awkward fumbling at all. Really, wouldn’t’ he need at least a little direction or be at least a little nervous? Nope, he’s balls to the wall confident and competent.

The relationship seemed rushed too. I get that the men had been in close quarters together for 5 gruelling months, but it felt like they just woke up one morning and decided to love each-other and then both seamlessly did just that with no discussion or difficulties. It made for some great ‘Ahh’ moments, but should it really be so easy?

I loved Cam (Austin too, but Cam stole the how for me), but his Aspergers didn’t seem to contribute anything. Most of his behaviours could have been explained by the anxiety disorder, so a secondary diagnosis seemed surplus to requirement. 

I also thought that the author wimped out on the abductions a little. A sadist kidnaps 10 men, cuffs & cages them, beats the living daylights out of them, half starves them, but doesn’t molest a single one in any fashion. I’m not saying I wanted a rape scene in there anywhere, but (fiction being what fiction is) if 10 women had been kidnapped in this book they’d all have been ravished within an inch of their lives. Half of them would probably be impregnated and the reader would probably have had to sit through every agonising detail of it all.

The book does a good job of describing the men’s struggles to come to terms with the fact that they, 10 vibrant men, had been overpowered and abducted by a single madman. This was hard for them to accept, as it felt like a loss of manhood. But The fact that they only had to endure physical and mental abuse felt artificial, like there was some notable line of beyond this point go only the truly depraved that the author didn’t want to be associated with. But, honestly, she created a depraved bad guy. He needed to go there IMO, so that the characters could fully face the perceived loss of  their masculine position. Just my opinion, of course, and it does somewhat suggest that all violent offenders must also be sexual offenders, which is of course a fallacy, but in this case I think the book would have been stronger for it.

Lastly, I’m not a huge fan of the sappy hearts and flowers endings. This one definitely had one. Really, the epilogue had no other purpose than to cram the happily ever after down the readers throat. I could have done without it, or at least without it being quite so overpoweringly cheerful.

All in all, I’m well up for reading the next in the series. I loved the characters, I especially appreciated that at 33 and 40 they were full-fledged adults. I thought the writing was crisp and the story was sweet (even if not particularly plausible). Definitely not a waste of my time.

Book Review of the Royce Ree Omnibus (The Emperor’s New Clothes), by Aldous Mercer

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Royce Ree OmnibusI picked up Aldous Mercer‘s Royce Ree Omnibus after I saw it recommended in a Goodreads thread I was watching in a semi-stalkerish way…you know, reading all the posts while only being marginally involved myself. Since picking a book to read from the thousands I own can sometimes take me hours, I decided to just forgo the search, buy this one and read it. Done. Annoying decision-making process completely sidestepped. Score!

Description from Goodreads:
Imperial Agent Royce Ree needs to pull off the biggest heist the Universe has ever seen, or it’s bye-bye cushy government job, hello cleaning toilets in a dive-bar on Baga-V. 

To succeed, he will need help from the last person he’d ever ask: his ex.

Review:
I just plain had a blast reading this. I thought that Royce and Les were wonderful characters, their interactions were a pleasure and their poorly concealed feelings for one another marvellous. There was a lot of humor and the whole thing just had a sweet feel to it. The writing was crisp and compelling, the dialogue believable, the world-building just solid enough to give the reader a clear picture without bogging down the story, and the wit often subtle but readily apparent. Plus, there were psychic pets, zombie fashionistas, super spies, naked royalty, secret missions, soul searing love and one spunky rebellious princess. What more could I ask for?

Now, the book wasn’t faultless. There were some minor editing issues, changes in tense and person (3rd to 1st) and occasionally I wasn’t entirely clear what happened in a scene or what a particular technology actually did, but it really wasn’t all that often or noticeable. I’ll also admit that if I had been reading the individual instalments, instead of an omnibus (that read as smoothly as any other book I’ve encountered) I’d probably have been scratching my head about why it’s broken up. But I wasn’t, so I’m pretending it originated as a single text and moving on.

Lastly, I’m not a huge fan of the explain-it-all-in-a-big-historical-reveal-at-the-end technique. Here I thought some of it felt a little too convenient, some of it felt unrealistic (characters who knew each-other all pretended they didn’t without the reader knowing why, for example) and some aspects weren’t clearly explained. An example of the latter was the ‘only if he asks you’ scenario. This was accomplished, ostensibly arranged by Royce, but it was never shown how he managed to manipulate events and people to bring it about. (I realise that only makes sense to people who have read the book, for the rest of you it’s just an example to show that there is an example.)

None of these issues severely detracted from my basic enjoyment of the book though. As a ‘buy on a whim, even though I have tons I should read first’ book I deem it a complete success. I look forward to the continuation of the series and will be looking for more of Mercer’s writing.