Weight Isn't Really the Issue, Is It?

From my review of The Skinny on Love by Fyn Alexander:

Two men scarred by their childhoods clash over weight issues in this poignant love story.

When 36-year old private detective Sky Cook gets a call from 37-year-old former British Army captain (now gym owner) John Moorcroft about finding his long lost mother, Sky thinks the case will be a slam dunk.

But when the tall, overweight Sky shows up at John's gym and realizes how much he despises flabby, unfit people, Sky's skeptical about being able to work with him. However, they agree to barter services. John will help Sky lose weight and get in shape while Sky will find John's mom who left when he was a boy.

Sky is skeptical when John, while showing signs of being gay, adamantly keeps telling everyone around him that he's straight. When Sky meets John's acerbic father, who beat John after he'd seen his son in a gay neighborhood when John was a teen, the detective isn't surprised that John is hiding so far in the closet or that John's mother left the volatile man.

As Sky and John get to know one another better and Sky succumbs to John's masterful personality, they not only discover the mother's secrets but also something else...

Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews.

Racing TBR (To Be Read)

Challenge: More Than One (An author who has more than one book in your TBR--to be read--pile)

Title: Racing for the Sun

Author: Amy Lane
Grade: A

First off, I don't have one TBR pile.  In fact, my TBR pile has a bunch of TBR piles.  How does that work?  Well, I like to keep things semi-organized, so my TBR pile is divided by subgenre--review books, gay books, Westerns, contemporaries, and non-fiction.  I also have a miscellaneous TBR pile with bits and pieces which don't fit in the bigger piles.

I always enjoy reading Amy Lane's gay romances, mainly because her books feature such quirky and lovable-despite-themselves characters.  But she writes way faster than I can keep up, so Amy Lane novels seem to pile up quickly on my TBR list.

Racing for the Sun is another in a long line of her anti-heroes who turn out to be larger than life heroes.

Jasper "Ace" Atchison bonds almost instantly with Sonny Daye when Sonny joins Ace's Army unit.  Although Ace immediately knows that Sonny is hiding something, he also knows that short, frail-looking Sonny needs protection from those bigger and meaner than he is, and Ace is just the right man for the job.

Both of them love cars, and Sonny is a mechanic who can build the fastest race car around.  Leaving the service, they set up a garage together and start street racing, winning both with the adrenalin high and the betting money.

But as in all of Lane's angst novels, the past barrels down on Ace and Sonny, nearly wiping them out.  To say more is to spoil the book.

What makes this book special is its tone.  Written in the first person from Ace's point of view, the novel shrieks of rural America, the good-ole-boys standing around an open garage talking about the fish that got away or the car that could go 0-60 in half a second. 

Images of grease-stained coveralls and grimy, calloused hands underlie the tender emotions and electric link between Ace and Sonny.

Both Ace and Sonny are so vivid that even those of us who live in cities and rarely see mechanics working in garages will know them intimately.  Lane's stark prose breathes life into them and makes the unknown believable.

This is one of those books that lives on in the back of readers' minds and bubbles up when least expected.  It's made me move the rest of Lane's backlist to the forefront of my TBR pile.

A Rocky Return Home Turns into Love

I hadn't read any novels by Garrett Leigh before, but am now looking forward to reading more.  Here's an excerpt from my review of Only Love that was posted today at The Romance Reviews:

A mentally and physically scarred veteran reluctantly returns home after fourteen years only to find home is where his heart is.

At thirty-two, Jed Cooper knows his military life is at an end because of a chronic stomach disease and the debilitating wounds he received during his last deployment. When his younger brother Nick visits him in the hospital, Jed agrees to return to their small hometown of Ashton outside Portland.

Since Jed wants to get to know Nick's wife Kim and their two daughters, and because Jed has nowhere else to go, he at first accepts an invitation to stay with Nick's family. When Nick's townhouse begins to feel too crowded and Nick's drinking worsens, Jed agrees to move into the spare bedroom at the beachside home where Kim's adult brother Max lives.

Twenty-five year old Max, an epileptic, and his service dog Flo have carved out an idyllic life in their cabin by the lake. Max creates hand-hewn furniture to sell and lives an uncomplicated life, raising his own food. When he has seizures, Flo is trained to get help, so Max is fairly self-sufficient.

Jed and Max seem to rub on very well together, forging a friendship and then falling in love. In fact, for a while Max is even able to concoct meals that Jed's chronic stomach illness can tolerate.

Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.