Four M/M Romance Mini Reviews
Care Blackstone O'Flaherty has put together four mini reviews of the latest M/M romance she has been reading. There is football, hot contractors and, ummm, a funeral director? If you are looking for a new romance book to read, one of the below might be just the ticket.
Playing for Keeps by Avery Cockburn
Rescued, by Felice Stevens
Ryder Daniels is on his own. Broken hearted, kicked out by his family for being gay, all he has are his two best friends and the pitbull rescue they run. Enter Jason Mallory - a contractor with a bitchy girlfriend and a pack of abused dogs in the ruins of his new construction project. Things... well, they mostly go as expected - Jason is hot, Ryder really tried not to fall for him, but... Yeah. It sounds from this that I didn't enjoy the book, which is far from the truth. I actually really did like it! If it sounds like I have 'but face' going on, that's 'cause I do. I enjoyed the hell out of this book, reading, and rereading whenever I needed something quick and light. It's a stand-alone, so there's no extensive time commitment to the story. However, sometimes the dialogue feels very trope-y - like it's something we've all read before and can recite verbatim (usually with either deadpan or over-the-top inflection). It's a very sweet book, with enough angst to feel 'real,' without being blown over the top, and immersion-breaking. In the end, we're left with a neat wrap-up, and a tidy epilogue, and a general feeling of completeness. I really did enjoy it - and will probably be back reading it again soon!
Learning to Feel by N.R. Walker
Doctor Nathan Tierney has spent the last two decades assuming he's just not interested in sex. Nobody has caught his eye at all. Then, sick of the stress and feeling like something's gotta give, he puts in for a one-year position at a tiny hospital in a tiny town in Maine, leaving his time in the ER of a major metropolitan hospital. He arrives in SmallTown USA, only to find that his house - which is included as a deal-sweetener - has a contractor living in one of the bedrooms while he finishes fixing it up. Nathan is stressed enough that you know what? It doesn't matter anymore, whatever. And off he goes, keys in hand. When he arrives at the house, he meets Trent Jamieson. Trent is the contractor, and damn is he hot. Even Nathan notices. There's a fair amount of internal wrangling from Nathan, who just isn't sure what to make of all this mess, and a whole lot of flirting from Trent, who knows exactly what to make of this - especially since he's going to be gone soon anyway. This book gets a lot of flack in the reviewing world for the giant volume of sex contained in it. The reason I tend to overlook that is simply that it all advances the story somehow or another. It's not thrown in there for shits and giggles, it's there either as a trigger for the next issue for one of the men, or as a resolution to something else (toward the end of the story, and I'm not spoiling anything). The book, in general, feels real, genuine, and less trope-filled than others, highs and lows that mirror the struggles we see portrayed when we listen to the voices in the LGBT community, and honestly, while it was (apparently) born of fan-fiction, I find it to be MUCH BETTER PUBLISHED WORKS than anything else I know of that was once fanfic, then turned published.
For The Living by L.A. Witt
Let us know what romance books you have been reading lately.
Comments
Post a Comment