Fear on Halloween

Had to laugh today when the editor of All About Romance (AAR) ran my review of Fear which she said she couldn't resist for Halloween.

Fear, however, isn't a funny book at all since it deals with the physical and mental abuse of a gay man by his partner.  Getting some one with low self-esteem extricated from an abuser is neither easy nor fun, which is why Kendrick's book is so hard-hitting.

If you or someone you know is being abused, please get help from:

• Day One
• Safe Horizon
• Gay Men's Domestic Violence Project
• The National Domestic Violence Hotline

or your church, synagogue, temple, nearby hospital, or the police.

Don't let fear take over.

Goode Is Great

The more books I read by John Goode, the more I enjoy his writing style and his adept depth in writing gay romances.  In Taking Chances, his latest, he's commenting on love in general, not just in love in one particular case.  He's also making a statement about whom one decides to befriend.

We all have destructive friends, and Matt and Tyler seem to be relying on exactly the wrong people for advice.  One of the many facets of this wonderful novel is the struggle both the guys must go through in order to realize how their so-called friends are holding them down and are making their lives miserable.

Recognizing and then breaking the bonds of what seems to be supportive friendship, however, is only a tiny part of a story that applies to both hetero and homosexual relationships.  And it's only a tiny reason for readers to enjoy the book.

Junk Is Not Junk, but Interesting Romance

I love the double entendre of the title "Junk" for a gay romance.  Although the subject of hoarding is serious, there's something deliciously funny about two gay men talking about one of the men's junk and meaning both definitions of the word.

I was pleasantly surprised at how enthralling Josephine Myles' Junk was considering that when I first saw the title I thought the book might be one of those great concept, not so great execution titles.  You know what I mean--those books that sound great in the blurb, but turn out to be mundane or nearly dreadful when you read them.

Myles' book isn't one of those.  The main characters have baggage, but not so much that they can't get together and not so much that a reader doubts their ability to have a happily ever after.  And in the end, that's all we want really--just a chance to wish the protagonists of the books we read long, healthy and joyful lives.

The Wine Is Missing a Backbone

I love the premise of Syrah, a gay romance in which the owner of a wine store and a restaurant manager get together.  And the cover to the novel is lovely.  I just wish a reader didn't have to go through page after page of the manager acting like a scared kid who was willing to knuckle under to abuse for no good reason.

Romances, at least for me, are about strength and courage.  Doesn't it take both for people to unwrap their hearts and put them in their hands for someone else?  When someone says, "I love you," isn't the person taking a leap of faith that the recipient of the declaration won't stomp all over the heart and fling to back to the declarer?

So reading a romance in which one of the protagonists refuses to stand up for himself when it's within his power to do so is off-putting for me.  I understand if the protagonist has undergone years of abuse and needs a hand getting out from under that abuse.  But when the protagonist is an adult male who knows he's being offered verbal abuse and does nothing to change his life (get away from the abuser) and then ignores the help of his friends and potential lover, then my sympathies wane.

Syrah had so much potential.  In fact I haven't seen any other gay romances set around the wine world.  I just wish the book's protagonist lived up to its heady promise.

Another Hit from Reed and Reviewing Gay Romances Update

Rick R. Reed's gay romances are often the highlights of my reviewer pile.  Hungry for Love is no exception.

Reed travels from the general to the specific, making his almost painful story not just a story about how two guys hook up for more than sex but also a story about meaning of love in general.  As he says in the book,  "Love was also about taking a leap into the unknown, making yourself vulnerable. It was a chance taken. It was a cosmic gamble. It was faith. It was a belief that happy endings could happen and did, every day."  The novel is a messy, all-too-human example of that.

In other news, my days as a reviewer of gay romance may be numbered.  I bought a great majority of the gay fiction I've reviewed for AAR, a review job that is unpaid.  But after reviewing over 40 gay novels, my retirement budget no longer supports that approach, and having publishers reluctant to send me galleys, I think it's time to go back to picking review books from the pile of those sent to AAR or those posted on NetGalley that sound interesting and are okayed by my AAR editor.

I'm pretty sure that Dreamspinner, Rip Tide, and the other gay publishers won't miss me.  Perhaps some of the authors will.  But who knows?

AAR Top 100 List

Artist Liu Bolin Hidden in Books on Shelf

Top 100 favorite romances.  If you haven't already voted, be sure to do so.  Remember that you DON'T have to vote for 100 books.  A list of 1 is still a list.  But you can only vote once, so if you have two favorite books, you'll have to vote for them in ranked order.
It's that time again for voting for the

This year I've added a lot of the M/M gay titles that I've enjoyed in the past few years, a world I didn't even know existed the first year I compiled a top 100 list.  So without further ado (as they say in the awards shows), here's how I voted for the Top 100 romances:

1.      Slightly Dangerous, Mary Balogh

2.      Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

3.      The Temporary Wife, Mary Balogh

4.      Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

5.      Dance with Me, Heidi Cullinan

6.      Suddenly You, Lisa Kleypas

7.      Something Like Autumn, Jay Bell

8.      Marriage of Mercy, Carla Kelly

9.      Love Lessons, Heidi Cullinan

10.  The More I See You, Lynn Kurland

11.  The Older Woman, Cheryl Reavis

12.  Covet Thy Neighbor, L. A. Witt

13.  She’s Got It Bad, Sarah Mayberry

14.  Beyond Duty, SJD Peterson

15.  A Reason to Live, Maureen McKade

16.  Tigers and Devils, Sean Kennedy

17.  About Last Night, Ruthie Marx

18.  Black Hawk Tattoo, Aundrea Singer

19.  Nothingness of Ben, Brad Boney

20.  Plan B, SJD Peterson

21.  Weekend with Mr. Darcy, Victoria Connelly

22.  After the End, Alex Kidwell

23.  A Different Kind of Forever, Dee Ernst

24.  It’s Not Shakespeare, Amy Lane

25.  After Ben, Con Riley

I Wish I Could Love All Review Books

I think the universal truth about reviewers is that they hope every galley turns out to be the best galley they've ever read.  I know it's true for me.  I start reading, not looking for the negatives, but eager to read something brilliant that takes me outside of myself for a few hours, and if I'm lucky, sporadically for a few days or months while my mind wanders to what I learned or how much I enjoyed certain passages.

Unfortunately, books like The Cost of Loving pop up, leaving me perplexed as to how they got published without someone--a friend of the author's, an editor, someone--mentioning to the writer all the problems the manuscript has so that the writer could fix those problems.

There are so many improbable situations in Cost of Loving that I can't imagine the book previous to it would actually make Loving make sense.  But as a reviewer I live in hope that what I don't understand might make a little sense to someone else.  However, for me to honestly say that I like a book, the very basic requirement is that I understand what's happening in the book and don't have the problems I did with this one.

What confused me?  Why didn't this book work for me?  Click the link on the title above and read my review.  It says it all.

Spoiler Alert in the Title

Sometimes as a reviewer I have to ask myself what authors and editors are thinking when they title a book.  Billy's Bones by Jamie Fessenden is a case in point since the Billy in the title isn't even mentioned until over half of the story.  So as a reader, I spent most of the time waiting for the mysterious Billy to show up, knowing at some point he'd be reduced to bones or at least have his bones (true self?) exposed.

By the time Billy did show up, I was a little irked that it'd taken so long for him to do so.  What were the author and editor thinking?  Or were they?  Could they be hoping to annoy the reader?  Did they think it was cute to make readers think that maybe the wrong cover had been put on the book?  What was the plan here?

Fortunately, Fessenden is a good enough writer that the story moved along otherwise and the plot was one of the angst type that I enjoy.  In the hands of another reader, this book could easily be rated much lower than I rated it.

Usually with a writer that I enjoy, I look up the backlist and see if another of the writer's books sounds interesting.  In the case of Fessenden, I didn't.  I'm not sure I want to wade through another book to figure out what the title means or how the title relates to the story as a whole.  In a way, I felt a little like Billy's Bones was a bait-and-switch story that starts as one thing and changes to another without warning.  In this case, however, the warning is in the title.

Formulating My Top 100 for AAR

 It's that time of year again, when I have to re-order my Top 100 Romances list for the AAR poll. This year I want to add all the A and B gay romances I've reviewed during the past year.  What would those be?  Well, take a look:

5-star:

• Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger
• With or Without You by Brian Farrey
• The Nothingness of Ben by Brad Boney
• Tigers and Devils by Sean Kennedy
• The Cranberry Hush by Ben Monopoli
• Love Lessons by Heidi Cullinan
• Beyond Duty by SJD Peterson
• Something Like Autumn by Jay Bell
• Raining Men by Rick R. Reed
• Covet Thy Neighbor by L. A. Witt
• Plan B by SJD Peterson
• After the End by Alex Kidwell