Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Fessenden's Delightful Screwups

Nothing is screwed up about Jamie Fessenden's new novel Screwups, not the characters, the plot, or his excellent writing.

In 1996 at the University of New Hampshire, business junior Jake Stewart takes a bold step, moving into Eaton House, the creative arts dorm. Jake's homophobic father has denied his youngest son's love of art, saying art is for sissies. But Jake rebels because he realizes that if he doesn't give reign to his artistic side now, he'll never be able to do so when he goes to work for his dad's company.

Eaton is a revelation to the closeted Jake, whose out-and-proud roommate Danny Sullivan is a key player in an ongoing Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. Not only that but music major Danny is Jake's dream man. But since Danny, like everyone else, thinks Jake is straight, this is a bit of a problem. Is Jake ready to come out to his new friends in Eaton House and more importantly to Danny?

As are most guys around the age of eighteen, neither Jake nor Danny is completely self-confident. Jake's so far in the closet, with good reason given his father's and brothers' homophobia, that he's miserable as he looks around at the free-wheeling hookups going on around him. He wants to belong to the GLBT club, but can't quite out himself, even to those like Danny who would support him.

Danny, too, is miserable, but his misery is somewhat self-imposed. Danny did something stupid in high school and has been taunted for it ever since. He wants to move on and leave the past in the past, but unfortunately, one of the Eaton residents also attended Danny's high school and isn't above persecuting Danny for his past mistake.

Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Gotta Love Them Good Old Boys

In Mathew Ortiz' Love and Salvage: Eli's Three Wishes, Eli Gaither is a good ole Georgia boy in the best sense of the description. He works hard, plays hard, and loves even harder. But Ortiz is quick to remind readers that even good ole boys who look like they have life by the tail need true love, and sometimes it's harder for them to find it than it is for us lesser mortals.

Big, brawny, and bald Eli works at the Gaither family salvage company and despite a huge family and friends has been a loner since his divorce. His younger son, with whom he bonded more than his other two children, refuses to speak to him, and lately the family pretty much avoids him because Eli's been acting like a bear with a thorn in his paw.

The only one who doesn't seem even the least bit intimidated by grouchy Eli is Oscar Hernandez, a tall, thin Hispanic man who isn't afraid of yelling at and teasing Eli. At first annoyed by the interior designer, Eli mentally bats him away, trying to walk away from Oscar's taunting, until Oscar suddenly kisses him.

However, Eli only wants three things in the world: For his son to talk to him, for someone to love who loves him back, and to become a family man again. He's embraced the fact that he's gay and that getting married in the first place because it was expected of him was a stupid idea. Now he wants the love and happiness that so many of his extended family have, not just another roll in the hay.

Fortunately, Oscar is just the right guy to take on Eli. Coming from a loud and lively Hispanic family, Oscar immediately understands the Gaithers and reads Eli as just the man he wants and needs to complete him. And Oscar is just the bandy rooster to get what he wants.

When Eli's son appears, having been kicked out of the house by his mother after he announced that he was gay, Eli greets him with open arms, only to realize that taking care of the boy, who is hurt and confused, will probably end his burgeoning relationship with Oscar. But how can Eli walk away from the son he loves so much or from the man who is stealing his heart?

Read the rest of my review at All About Romance.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Finding Yourself in Freshman Year

The first year of college is always a year of change for eighteen-year-olds. For Lewis, it's a year of revelation as well in Jay Northcote's Not Just Friends.

Lewis moves from Kent to Bristol where he meets his flatmates, all of them freshmen. One young man in particular catches Lewis' eye. Max is an out-and-proud gay man which intrigues Lewis who has called himself straight rather than buck the tide.

As he hangs out with Max, Lewis begins to feel the latent twinges of homosexuality that he's been repressing since he had a crush on one of his lower form friends. Suddenly Lewis is questioning whether he's gay or not, and coming up with the answer that he is.

Meanwhile, he's hanging out with Max and agrees to be his friend, only to watch the handsome, charismatic Max get a boyfriend who, after a few nights together, dumps Max. Now when Lewis is ready to get serious about Max, Max decides he's off boyfriends and only wants to be Lewis' really good friend.

Jay Northcote explores the ups and downs of freshman year and the changes young people go through as their world expands. Because it's based on the British school system, the book will be particularly interesting to Americans who are in college or who've been through it since some events and people are quite recognizable and some are completely different. This is an added dimension to a sweet story that isn't terribly remarkable, but definitely enjoyable.
Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

A Gay Romance for Coffee Lovers

I'm a tea drinker myself, so the overall setting of B. G. Thomas' Hound Dog & Bean, Bean's coffee shop, isn't really my cup of....tea.  (Sorry!  Had to do it.)

But Thomas' book is a lovely romance in the true sense of the word, a bringing together of two hearts.  That they're brought to together by coffee and dogs is something foreign to me and something that should have put me off the story.

But Thomas' nearly lyrical passages and the magical realism when Hound Dog and Bean visit a special tree won me over.  Lyrical passages and magical realism aren't what appear in any other gay romantic fiction as far as I'm aware, so I wasn't really prepared to have both qualities pop out at me.

The book didn't make a coffee drinker out of me nor did it tempt me to adopt a puppy, but the story has stayed in my mind for months.  Every once in a while I remember a particularly beautiful scene and smile.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Intriguing New Author: Darien Cox


Challenge: New-To-You Author (an author you've never read before)

Title: Guys on Top
Author: Darien Cox
Grade: B+

My M.O. on Amazon to pick out books to read is to look at the suggestions listed below the books I've really enjoyed (A-list books) and sample them for new authors.  That's what I did in this case, but I can't remember which of my A-list books prompted this author and title.

I've found that I can't read the entire Amazon sample, but try to stop myself somewhere in the middle.  If I read the entire sample, I've been known to buy a book that sounds interesting, but don't have time to read, and then read it later.  But later I think I've already read the book because the beginning sounds so familiar even though the little Kindle indicator says I haven't finished the book yet.

All this brings me around to Guys on Top, a book that I read in one day, staying up at night to finish.

Two other things you need to know about me:  I've read so many gay romances in the past two years that I often can tell exactly what happens in the book having read the first two chapters.  In some ways the romance is gone from the romances I read.  The second thing you need to know is that I haven't stayed up in a long, long time to finish reading a book because I'm uneasy about where it could be heading like I was with this one.

The plot started fairly normally.  After breaking up with a longtime boyfriend who was cheating on him and subsequently getting involved in a lawsuit that bankrupt him, Doug Crandall is rebuilding his life and getting a new apartment out of his brother's house.  But the first week is a nightmare because the upper floor tenant in the house he's renting carries on parties nearly 24/7.

When Doug meets his new neighbors, two beautiful, hunky men, he's enamored with Stewart, a professional plumber and electrician, and repulsed by Corey, a masseur who's angry with Stewart because the landlady called Stewart and Corey about the noise.

At first I thought this might be a ménage romance and wondered why I hadn't filtered it out even though I've read ménage books (particularly memorable is SJD Peterson's Tag Team), too many of them have been silly excuses for excess sex with no substance.

But as I kept reading and Corey got weirder and weirder with seemingly level-headed Stewart becoming odder and odder for putting up with Corey, I started getting the Stephen King uneasiness about the story.  Would Doug, who has a history of anger issues, tear into Corey?  Would Stewart play love-'em-and-leave-'em with Doug, breaking down the fragile Doug even more?

As if that weren't enough, I started wondering about Doug, the point-of-view character.  Was he a reliable viewpoint character?  Or was I relying on the wrong character to get the facts of the case?

Doug and Stewart were having sex like hyper rabbits, and Corey was getting even more angry and schizoid.  Instead of building to a romantic finish for me, the whole story seemed to be building like a tornado about to run riot over a Midwestern community.  I could envision fallout not only from the main characters but also from the peripheral ones as well.

So I read into the night, trying to figure out where Cox was going.

As is reflected on the grade I've given it, the ending didn't quite meet my expectations--if so the book would have gotten an A+.  But explaining why I was disappointed and what didn't hang together for me would entail major spoilers, so it's better that I rest my case and let readers decide for themselves.

Suffice it to say that I'm now intrigued by Cox and his writing style.  He's definitely on my watch list.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Kade Boehme's Latest Is Definitely a Hit

I remember reading Kade Boehme's Don't Trust the Cut and thinking, wow, I hope this guy keeps writing.

It's so nice to get my wish fulfilled.  Trouble and the Wallflower may have an incredibly dorky title, but it's an excellent novel about a shy college student raised by an agoraphobic mother and what may seem his polar opposite: a brash, outgoing student who's one of the moving forces in his posse.

What I like best about Boehme's books is that not only are the central characters interesting and alive, but the supporting characters are too.  There's a very minor character in Trouble in particular whom I absolutely loved--the older woman who hung around with the brash guy's grandfather and his poker cronies.  She was almost a nothing in the story, but is the epitome of what Boehme does well.  She was delightful in the story and very memorable afterward.

I feel like Boehme is on a roll now and I can't wait to read what he comes up with next.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Love and Angst in Britain

I can't image having a sister hit by a car and losing her identity the way Lyddie does in Sue Moorcroft's Is This Love?  Being the younger sister and witnessing a bright older sister regress to having the mind of a child for the rest of her life must be unusually difficult.


As the oldest sister in my immediate family and the oldest cousin on my father's side of the family, I've seen death come too many times among my contemporaries.  While death takes a chunk out of one's heart, the hole is less painful as the years pass although it never goes away.


But to see someone regress like Lyddie did in the novel, I'm not sure would be as easy to reconcile.  Lyddie's sister Tamara in the novel seems to be a saint in how she helps her parents work with Lyddie and how she keeps from getting totally frustrated and angry with her older sister.  I'm not sure I could step up and be as accommodating as Tamara.


Perhaps the real story in the novel is how yoga helps Tamara, who is an instructor, live life without having to run into a nearby green space and yell.  Maybe as my daughter has been telling me for years, yoga really is the answer.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Reed's Sequel to Hungry for Love

I absolutely love the passion that leaps off the pages of Rick R. Reed's books.  His Legally Wed isn't as gritty as his Raining Men or as sappy as Hungry for Love, but it shows how completely vested he is in his story just as the others also demonstrate that trait.


Having been married to a gay man for a year and having left the marriage bitter and resentful because he wasn't up front about the fact that he was gay, I empathized with Marilyn in Legally Wed a little more than I think Reed did.  But then how could he know some of the thoughts that go through the heads of the Marilyns of the world?


This is one of the few times I've wished I could have been in on a writer's creative process and possibly helped the writer turn a really good book into a great one.  Between what I know as the wife of a gay man and what Reed knows as a gay man, I think we could have turned out a terrific romance.  (LOL)


As it was, Reed was on his own, writing an interesting and impassioned novel.  Thanks for another good read, Mr. Reed!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Valentine's Day Redux


Had I gotten the galleys for two Valentine's Day novellas before February 14, I would have gotten the reviews to my editor so that the stories would have been highlighted on or before the day in question.

I still don't understand why the review copies of  John C. Houser's Valentine Shower and Bru Baker's Campfire Confessions were sent after the fact.  Once upon a time, I was a PR person for a small publisher.  I remember having trouble convincing editors why it was important to get galleys out to review outlets in a timely manner.  Any publicity at any time was okay with them, but not for me.

And something like Valentine's Day novellas being reviewed before Valentine's Day seems like a no-brainer to me.  Obviously not to Dreamspinner, the publisher of these two stories.

The overall concept of a Valentine's Day rainbow, with covers in the colors of the rainbow--in this case green for Baker's title and blue for Houser's--is a clever one.  Perhaps Dreamspinner has enough paying members that it doesn't need outside sales, in which case promoting these stories to reviewers isn't necessary.

But I've yet to see a publisher that turns away sales, as this one did, by not sending review copies in enough time for reviewers to recommend the books as perfect add-on Valentine's Day gifts.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Is Dyslexia a Deal Breaker?

As a lifelong voracious reader, I was intrigued by the premise of Z. A. Maxfield's Eddie: Grime Doesn't Pay.  Eddie, a dyslexic whose adapted to his inability to read quickly by using a number of electronic gadgets, falls for Andrew, a teacher whose father was a bookseller and who has shelves of books in his house.

I know that if my husband wasn't a reader (and writer) we would have never gotten married.  Being with someone who doesn't read would have driven me crazy.  Since I worked in libraries and newspaper offices, the chances of my falling for someone who wasn't a reader weren't large.  So I was curious to see if Maxfield could convince me that Eddie and Andrew might make it as a couple.

Fortunately, she did, and it was easy to give the book an "A" rating at All About Romance.  I think the thing that tipped the balance was that Eddie wasn't against reading, but knew there were many things he needed to read, like menus in restaurants for example, and found ways to work with his inability to decipher them.

As I read the book, I realized it wasn't someone with dyslexia that I couldn't have lived with, but someone who hid himself because of his inability to read well and who refused to find ways around his inability.