One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: M/M Urban Fantasy; LGBT
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 360 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Black knows all about the dark underbelly of life. He should. He lives it every night. He and his twin sister were little more than children when circumstances forced them to the streets. Now they're Nightwalkers, selling themselves to survive.

Not sex...or blood, for that matter. Their vampire johns - Lyche, they call themselves - don't drink blood, and sex has never been one of the services the siblings offer. Besides, vampires have other needs. What Black and his sister sell is their chi, their life energy.

Hey, it's a renewable resource, and vampires pay well for it. Not that the transaction is risk-free. Quite the contrary, especially as he and his sister don't just sell their chi. They steal vampire chi for themselves in the process.

Turns out, their johns don't appreciate that much, a fact that becomes painfully clear when Black taps the very last vampire he should have anything to do with, Monsieur Garthelle. Not only is Garthelle the top vampire in the city and the law of the land, but the chi tap Black did on the guy goes wrong in a way that no other has.

Now he's got two choices. Either he lets Garthelle turn him and his sister into his two pet spies during some swanky party thing the vampire is holding for his nearest and dearest not-exactly-friends, or Garthelle will end them both.

Which really isn't any choice at all, is it?


With a fresh and original twist on vampire mythos and a complex and intricate story, Etzweiler's Blacker than Black was a much more entertaining read than I was expecting based on the cover alone. No offense to the art designer, but wow - that cover does this book no favors at all. Fortunately, both the atmospheric world and Black's travails after biting off more of Garthelle's chi than he could handle made up for it nicely.

I loved the mystery and investigation surrounding the murdered Lyche, and the world that Black and his sister are surviving in has just enough of a touch of slightly futuristic dystopian nightmare to give it a seedy, humans-are-second-class-citizens-at-best flavor but not so much that it turned me off (I'm not normally a fan). It was a nice balance, and all the meatiest plot threads were woven together in a way that slowly revealed more and more pertinent details about the characters and the Lyche culture.

It wasn't love at first chapter for me, though. I have to admit, I had to work at it a bit in the beginning. Black is narrating his story in first person perspective. Nothing unusual about that; a good majority of urban fantasy fiction is the same. What was unique...and, for me, off-putting, was the present tense in the telling. It made the beginning of the book in particular feel a bit odd and jarring, and I was well into the story before I realized I was no longer getting jerked out of the read every few minutes by the style of the narration.

The fact that Black wasn't my favorite character didn't help matters, either. I didn't dislike him. He had several good points. I just didn't think he was all that strong as the lead character - especially in comparison to his sister, who I loved. Black tended to focus too much on the fallout of his tap of Garthelle's chi for my taste, shortchanging the story's potential for more comprehensive world building and additional plot depth.

And because the story is being told by Black, who is almost completely ignorant of Lyche culture and all the labyrinthian politics, obfuscated loyalties, and seemingly cross-purpose agendas, he didn't serve as a very good source of information about them as the story progressed. I was forced to learn what I could as Black did, around his obsession with fighting off the effect of Garthelle's chi. There just wasn't sufficient explanation for me to be able to fully immerse myself in the world, or be consistently solid on was going on in it.

I liked what there was, don't get me wrong, and some of it I liked a whole lot. There just wasn't quite enough of it for me.

Black's sister would have made a stronger protagonist, I think (though that would obviously have put the kibosh on the M/M leanings). She was brash, cagey, independent, and showed no fear, even when she felt it. And she loved the hell out of her brother, which softened her roughest edges nicely. I was saddened to see her so underutilized in the story, but every moment of page time she got improved whichever scene that included her.

Garthelle was the other character that really worked for me. I can't say I feel like I knew him all that well by the end, and I still don't completely buy his motives or the wisdom of the decision to bring Black and his sister into his situation, but I loved his inscrutable, stoic exterior, especially when it was so clearly covering up a much more vulnerable side of himself. His machinations were deliciously Machiavellian, but those moments when he let his guard down around Black were some of my favorites of the book.

It all set a nice foundation for the personal conflict between him and Black, but as most of Black's best efforts were made with the hopes of getting out from under Garthelle's influence, it threw a monkey wrench into the arc of the romantic relationship between them. I just never felt they were ever on equal footing - neither in Lyche culture nor in the relationship that slowly develops between them. That put a serious crimp on the romance-flavored aspects and made some stuff at the end of the book not quite as satisfying as I would have preferred.

If this was a first book in a series, I think most of my other issues with parts of the story - an abrupt ending, the odd relationship jump between Black and Garthelle, and the myriad questions that lingered after the final page - would have been largely mitigated. Plus, I'm greedy. When I'm impressed by the originality of a book's world or the freshness of the plot, I can only want more.

This book begs a sequel. Or a series. As a stand alone it was entertaining, if not always consistently so, and I liked it. If it was the start of something bigger, it may have been love by the end. For now, I can only hope to see more of Black and Garthelle...and Red and Blue, for that matter...at some point in the future.

Genre: M/M Paranormal Romantic Suspense; M/M Paranormal Romance; LGBT
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 250 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Crawling under his desk to hide from his board of directors is perhaps not the most dignified course of action for museum curator Dr. Wyatt Case, but with members of the board looking to discuss the museum's dismal attendance and subsequent lack of revenue, it seems a prudent option at the time. Unfortunately, it wasn't a successful one.

With his job on the line and not one crowd-drawing idea to speak of, he needs a distraction from the growing probability of impending unemployment. Maybe that's why he lets his best friend Noah drag him out to an odd little gaslight-themed bar called The Gravedigger's Tavern.

Wyatt quickly realizes he should have been more specific about that whole distraction thing. Gravedigger's is definitely not his normal scene. Not that he's gotten laid enough in the last decade to really have a scene, but still. Hey, at least the bartender is cute.

Ash Lucroix, bartender extraordinaire, takes one look at the geeky-chic Wyatt and falls into serious like with a side-order of healthy lust. It's obvious he's not the history buff's normal type, but they hit it off so well that a night spent flirting and talking while he serves the man his drinks certainly put ideas in his head.

Gravedigger's puts ideas in Wyatt's head, too. Ideas for a new museum exhibit featuring history on hauntings and haunted buildings, as the tavern is purported to be. When Wyatt's research uncovers the building's sinister and macabre past, even the skeptical Ash is freaked out. Then a barroom brawl ends with Ash taking a bottle to the head, and suddenly his skepticism is taking a worse beating than his noggin.

Is Gravedigger's really haunted, or is the combination of a concussion and the stories Wyatt has dug up playing tricks on Ash's mind? More importantly, will they live long enough to find out?


Expectations can be so damaging to a reading experience. I went into this one with my mind set on paranormal romance and ended up almost doing this fabulously freaky story a grave disservice. Yes, it has paranormal elements and there is romance, but the relationship between Wyatt and Ash is never really the focus of the plot. At times it's even less than a secondary thread.

Personally, I got way more of a paranormal romantic suspense vibe from the story, and if I had gone into it with that mindset, I think a lot of the problems I ended up having with the romance (and there were several) wouldn't have ever been problems and this would have been pretty close to a five-star read for me. Right or wrong, as a reader I have a different set of wants and needs from the arc of a romance in the two different sub-genres. For romantic suspense, those were mostly met, for romance, they weren't even close.

When I remove my issues with the relationship arc, though, I have to say this book is haunting, chilling, and creepy-good entertainment. Hell, even with the issues, I didn't dislike anything I read.

Wyatt and Ash were solid lead characters, if a little lacking in depth and definition. The plot didn't leave a lot of room for complex personal or interpersonal issues, but as characters they were perfectly likable. They were even quite nice as a couple, though they aren't actually a couple throughout a good portion of the story (part of my problem with considering this a romance). It also wasn't a relationship that was brimming with visceral sexual chemistry - at least, not that I ever felt outside the few sex scenes - but it made up for that with an abundance of endearing charm.

The book has a nice assortment of colorful secondary characters that had more going for them in personality than they did in depth, but that worked for me. They added to the vibrant intensity of the story itself. I really enjoyed Wyatt's best friend Noah and his relationship with Ash's boss Caleb. They were fun together and had a lot of sweet scene-stealing moments. Actually, in a lot of ways, the arc of their romance was more traditionally satisfying than Wyatt and Ash's.

Where this book truly shines, though, is with the superlative storytelling surrounding the Gravedigger's ghostly woes. There is a wealth of interesting historical information throughout the book, some of it disturbing as all hell, and a conflict with a psychotic poltergeist that builds in intensity and horror as the story goes along. Everything is woven together so brilliantly that the blend of historical fact and imaginative fiction creates a stalwart foundation of horror and suspense that seeps into every nook and cranny of the narrative.

It starts with chilling subtlety, with much of the weirdness being written off because of Ash's head injury. It was all so fabulously realistic and believable in that regard. Then things begin to get increasingly weird as Ash draws more and more attention from the spectral sadist. Roux handled it perfectly, keeping me perched precariously on a razor's edge between the unbelievable: a haunted tavern and a serial killer ghost, and the entirely believable: a young man with head trauma.

It was really well done; atmospheric, disturbing, and more than a little scary.

With Halloween just around the corner there couldn't be a more perfect time for fans of creepy ghost stories to make note of this little bundle of spine-tingling fun. Just check your expectations at the front cover. There's some hot M/M sex, solid characters, an understated romance, and one mightily brassed off ghost with a yen for the freaky life. Enjoy.

Genre: M/M Fiction
Series: Irresistible Attraction, Book 2
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 49 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Lauded researcher Steven Campbell is off his game. Way off. Normally as suave and charming with women as he is with research sponsors and financiers, he blames a brutal schedule and work overload for his lack of interest in...well...pretty much everything he normally enjoys - including sex. Or he does until a mental image of Connor, his best friend and research partner, pushes Steven over the edge into an intense climax during a bit of self love.

As if the angst about his sexuality at this point of his life isn't enough, Conner certainly isn't available. He's happily committed to someone else. Steven's journey of self discovery is going to be a painfully difficult and lonely one.

Then a chance meeting with a male escort changes everything, and Steven learns that it's never too late to find peace and happiness within himself.


This wasn't the story I was expecting. It's not what I would consider a romance, first of all, and it's so short that there isn't a lot of room for a satisfying, self-contained story arc. What's there is well written, but it's just not my cuppa for reading entertainment.

I hate to say it, but I was not at all fond of Steven in the beginning. He was shallow and self-involved, and didn't have much to recommend him as a decent human being. It's a testament to Grant's writing ability that by the end I was actually sympathizing with him. Not liking him, per se, but definitely feeling for what he was going through.

I do consider this short novella quality M/M fiction, and a short but solid evolution of a flawed character into self awareness and acceptance. It may not have been to my personal taste - I seriously disliked the male escort element and there was no romance in the read to speak of - but the writing was strong, and I admire the author's talent.

Genre: M/M Science Fiction; LGBT
Series: Santuario, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 258 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





It's called Santuario. Rocked by poverty, ruled by powerful and corrupt familias, the southern island is populated by a race of people who landed on the planet two hundred years ago. Santuario became their home...though reservation may be a more accurate term.

The Skanians, themselves long settled on the planet, banished them to Santuario out of fear and distrust. Two hundred years later, that decision has bred discontent and shame among the Skanians and change is in the air. The political climate is heated, and while there are Skanians who want to keep the walls raised high between the two cultures, none are as adamant about maintaining the status quo as the brutal heads of the familias.

They are, without a doubt, adamant enough to kill to get their way, but they wouldn't leave a corpse around for the police to stumble across. They are too well versed at disposing of their enemies, especially as crimes like murder are reported to the Skanians. None of the familias want that.

No, the dead body that police tentiente Alex Rukow is called to investigate is a victim of something else entirely. All he knows is the entire case feels like one huge, potentially deadly nightmare. One that will be bringing the Skanians to Santuario and putting Alex directly in their path, as he's one of the few on the island who can speak their language.

When the Skanian investigator Bengt shows up, surly and huge and sick from the heat, Alex has every intention of washing his hands of the whole of the investigation and leaving it to the huge blond man. Then a second victim is discovered, and with it, a whole new range of far-reaching implications and deadly danger. Investigating what is fast becoming a complex and complicated case is definitely bad for his life expectancy, but the longer Alex and Bengt work together, the more Alex likes the man he's working with and the more determined he becomes to see this through to the end.

In ways, perhaps, that could bring more danger to both men than all the familias' fury combined.


I liked this book very much, but to be honest, it wasn't exactly love-at-first-sight. I had to work at it. In fact, there were several times in the first quarter of the book that I debated leaving it unfinished. The world was very sparsely defined and confusing, the murder investigation didn't do much for me from the beginning because I was missing so much of the context, and the overwhelming presence of Santuarian words (obviously heavy on the Spanish influence) in the narrative made it very difficult to fully grasp what I was reading and killed any chance of a smooth, flowing reading experience.

Not to mention it gave my embarrassingly shoddy high school-level Spanish comprehension a workout.

There really was only one reason I kept muddling through the tough spots until the story picked up for me, but it was a very good reason: Alex Rukow. He was an insular, solitary main character, that's for sure; an intriguing mix of jaded cynicism, hopeless ambivalence, tense apprehension, and wary doggedness. I just couldn't seem to stop reading about him. Intelligent, painfully resigned, surprisingly kind and generous...but so bruised by life and world-weary in a way that painted its own layer of complexity on his character, I found him utterly compelling.

For all that optimism left Alex behind a long, long time ago, there was a long-suffering sense of justice, fairness, and honesty about him that appealed. And kept appealing long enough for me to meet the other reason I didn't put the book down.

Bengt. He is light to Alex's dark, and I'm not talking about skin tone. From the moment Bengt stepped onto Santuario, he was the perfect compliment to the other man. His slightly superior attitude, the disdain he has for the heat and accommodations, his temper, and the frustration he feels with Alex's apparent apathy to life in general and the case in particular all combined to make him stand out like a vibrant, Viking-esque bastion of all things Alex doesn't have it in him to be.

There is an veritable cornucopia of problems between the two men from the very moment of their introduction. Their differences were profound and absolute, and watching them bridge the distance first to work together, then to forge the bonds that lead to the slowly-evolving relationship between them proved, for me, to be the most captivating and entertaining aspect of the entire book.
I was especially fascinated by the differences in their sexuality. The openly gay Bengt comes from a place where there is no stigma at all to being so, and Alex was raised in a place where it is considered such an unspeakable sin that he hadn't once even pondered the merest possibility that he was anything but a vaguely disinterested heterosexual. Which, really, spoke for itself in all sorts of deliciously subtle and foreshadowy ways from very early in the story.

The evolution of their characters and the slow, sometimes painful process of two such disparate personalities finding common ground and working together, then coming together, is where I felt the core power of the book really lies. I did enjoy seeing Santuario slowly expose its dark, corrupt, gritty underbelly as the investigation proceeded, though. Those elements gained greater and greater appeal as I gleaned enough information about the world the characters inhabit to better put things in perspective.

Romance lovers should be warned that a romance between Alex and Bengt is never the focus of the book and those plot threads are ancillary at best. Though there is sex in the book, it's by no means plentiful and what there is is mostly brushed over and written in carefully euphemistic ways. As a result, this book struck me more as an intriguing, complex journey of two very different men who come to realize they offer each other far more than either one of them knew they needed, as opposed to a more traditional-style romance novel.

Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance; LGBT
Series: Tucker Springs, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 194 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Life for Paul Hannon hasn't exactly turned out like he thought it would when he first moved to Tucker Springs. First he flunked out of veterinarian school, then his girlfriend dumped him and moved out, and now he's stuck, nearly flat-broke, locked into a lease for the firetrap of a home he can barely afford to pay for with his job as a secretary for a vet clinic.

Not exactly a lot to smile about in all that, but mostly he just wants his ex-girlfriend Stacey back so much he aches. Her birthday is coming up, and Paul sees that as a perfect opportunity to try to get her to come back to him. He just needs the perfect present.

Jaded loner El Rozal is minding his business, literally, when the cute guy with the reddish hair and quirky smile walks into the pawn shop he owns looking for a gift for his ex-girlfriend. It doesn't take fifteen minutes for El to realize how adorably cute but truly clueless and heartbroken Paul is.

El is hardly a perfect angel, though, and when the opportunity to spend time with Paul drops in his lap...for all its less-than-ethical reasons...he shamelessly takes it. And the more time he spends with Paul, the more El crushes on the man. So much, in fact, that he can't help but wish Paul isn't as straight as he thinks he is.

Trying to find out if Paul could ever be receptive to him romantically in a risk-free, subtle way, though, is a far more difficult task than El could have ever imagined. For all that Paul is sweet, funny, kind, and adorable, he's also absolutely and completely oblivious. To just about everything.


Cute and quirky, with one very likable main character and one eminently lovable main character, Paul and El's story made me smile. Cullinan and Sexton kept the plot conflicts from delving into angst-heavy complexity. Problems were mostly taken at face-value, quick to flair up and just as quick to be resolved. I enjoy light, uncomplicated romance now and then so that worked wonderfully for me here. Sometimes, a girl's just gotta have some brain candy.

I loved El. He made the book for me. The things he did to keep Paul coming back to his shop, the way he maneuvered him into spending time with him, both very sneaky and very endearing. He was just so good to Paul, so patient, and when he gets his chance with him, so perfectly in...over his head. I spent most of the tale either amused and/or delighted with him.

And I can't remember any laundry night I've ever had even remotely as entertaining.

El's issues with his sister and mother added a layer or two of depth to both his character and the story, and from the moment he took the dog I was an absolute sucker for them both. I do think that some of the souces of conflict, notably his mother's hoarding, were a bit glossed over, but it did add a twist to his backstory and current family conflicts.

Paul's obliviousness about everything from his sexuality to his job prospects was endearing for most of the book, but there were a few times he seemed more dense than oblivious. He was just a little too gullible for me on more than one occasion. When combined with his self esteem issues, his personality quirks started to wear on me in the latter half of the book, and I couldn't quite embrace his character as thoroughly as I did El's.

I was a little confused by their relationship conflict in the climax of the book. After El's seemingly endless patience and understanding nature when it came to Paul, that struck me as feeling a little out contrived, coming of nowhere. Like everything else, though, it didn't languish unresolved for long. I prefer a bit more work put into the resolutions leading to the end of a book. This one seemed as abrupt as the initial conflict. I have to say, though, I wouldn't have missed Paul's mother explaining her understanding of her son's life for anything. I loved that.

Though Paul and El's romance falls on the lighter and shorter side of a full sized novel, I thoroughly enjoyed their story and my first visit to Tucker Springs. It was just the feel-good, cute, sexy read I needed for a little light entertainment.

Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance
Series: Theta Alpha Gamma, Book 2
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 100 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Calapooya College grad student and tutor Paul is an intellectual elitist and a cynical bastard who loathes jocks on principle and is no more fond of frat boys. It's a wonder the guy ever gets laid.

Booted from his old apartment for treating his former roommate's new boyfriend like the jock boy toy he is, Paul is stuck tutoring lunkheads all summer long. He needs the money to get out of the dorms and into his own place before fall session starts. Then he gets a specific request for his tutoring services from the new head coach of the Calapooya woman's softball team.

No. Absolutely not. Paul has a strict "no athletes" policy, and he has no qualms about meeting with the coach and explaining that to the man. At least he doesn't until he actually gets into the guy's office. Then there's all sorts of qualms. And maybe an emotional meltdown or ten.

Calapooya's new softball coach is former Major League Baseball player Trevor Gardiner, the man who betrayed and humiliated Paul back in high school, back when they were boys...and earnest boyfriends...until he and Trevor were caught in an incriminating position and Trevor threw Paul under the bus and out of the closet to save himself.

Everything, absolutely everything Paul had hoped and dreamed about Trevor died a horrifically disillusioned, brutal death that afternoon. And now he's at Paul's school. Retired from baseball and out of the closet, Trevor claims to want nothing more than to make up for the mistake he made nine years ago. He claims to want to try for something real between them again. And he claims to be so very, very sorry.

Yeah, well, there's no way that Paul is going to fall for that line, no matter the hoops Trevor is willing to jump through. It would be emotional suicide. The only way he would be insane enough to even consider risking it would be for love...hypothetically.


This followup to Tenino's charming Frat Boy and Toppy isn't a perfect read. Beyond some pretty extensive editing issues that I hope are polished out in the final version, it's also got some story issues that caused some problems for me. The story is short, even for a novella, and there were a few scenes that I felt could have better served the tale had they been focused elsewhere. Like on character development.

Paul's character is pretty limited in nature to the prick he's always been, but at least he felt familiar to me from his introduction in the first book. Trevor isn't even that lucky. There is almost no page time given to fleshing out or defining his character at all. Readers who prefer depth in character should be warned. There is little to be found here.

It was impossible for me to even consider Trevor a main character, actually. He wasn't in as many of the scenes as I was expecting. Unfortunately, that limited the relationship development between him and Paul quite a lot. I also thought the end of the story was a little rough and too abrupt, and felt the frat house tie-in seemed a bit awkward and forced.

Thing is, though, this story still worked for me. I was not a fan of Paul in the first book, and I don't particularly care about the reason given in this one to explain his prickish behavior and attitude. I don't think just knowing his caustic, bitter personality is born from pain and betrayal redeemed his character. It explained it, yes, and I certainly felt for the boy he used to be. It didn't redeemed the man he is now, though. Not for me.

Something else did that. And that's when I started to notice how much I was enjoying this read. Tenino has this gift for capturing awkwardness in her characters and making it endearing. She did it with Brad throughout the first book, Sebastian towards the end of it, and when Paul's not being an utter ass (which is, admittedly, often), she manages to flush out his tender little underbelly here, too.

Paul's scene with Toby in the bar, that whole hypothetical situation they discussed as Paul battles ice cubes and citrus garnish, was flat-out cute. The scene that really put it away for me, though, was the one in Sebastian and Brad's apartment. It wasn't just the conversation between the three men that appealed, though that was stellar, but also the internal goings on in Paul's head, the thoughts and feelings he's having while they're conversing. I absolutely adored that whole scene to the point that it elevated my overall appreciation for the entire read.

Keeping in mind the length of the tale and accepting the story for what it is helped me enjoy this one. I am really starting to dig Tenino's writing style and her sharp, sardonic wit. Her characters aren't quite the most individual I've ever read (Sebastian and Paul seem pretty interchangeable in a lot of ways), but there is something very appealing about them. And their stories. It helps that Tenino is absolutely no slouch in the yummy sex department, too. So...any chance we'll see Collin's story? I'm still waiting on that one.

Genre: M/M Erotic Contemporary Romance
Series: Theta Alpha Gamma, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 186 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Riptide Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




As far as paradigm shifts go, consciously realizing you're gay because your fraternity brother's naked bum looks like something you'd want to tap is fairly conclusive. Up until that blinding moment, Brad had never let himself think about why the girls in high school and college have never really done it for him. Not that he didn't try lots of them out. He did. So many, in fact, he feels bad about it.

Especially now, when it's finally become so clear that he was just hiding from his sexuality, and if anyone treated his sisters like he's treated women in his past, he'd kick their asses. That is one humbling revelation.

So, okay, he's gay. He can deal with that, he supposes. He has no idea how he's going to come out to his fraternity, though. Not the frat who practically worships at the alter of booze and gives medals for chick boffing. It sucks that he was so good at building up his jock reputation all these years. He doesn't even particularly like playing football.

He does, however, like Sebastian. Sexy Sebastian, TA for Brad's history class, is one put-together, good looking, openly gay man. Just watching him as he reads essays, wearing glasses that add a whole other level of academic hotness to his appearance, gets Brad's blood flowing - and all of it southward. Now that he's finally embraced being gay, there is no doubt who he wants to embrace first. But getting Sebastian to notice him is a whole other issue.

Sebastian is a little bit of a snob when it comes to the third year history students. They're not serious enough about the subject to warrant him learning their names before the end of term. So he doesn't. Except for Brad, anyway. That young man is definitely too hot not to pay all kinds of attention to. Between that gorgeous jock body and those cheekbones of his... Yeah. Pity he's straight, because Sebastian would totally do him.

Except Brad approaches him one night after a party and gives Sebastian his own personal paradigm shift. No way is Sebastian not taking the guy up on it. But no matter how out of the world the sex is, Sebastian is afraid Brad is going to fall for him. And that is going to be a problem, because Sebastian doesn't believe in love. Doesn't even know what it is.


Well, hell. Obviously I haven't been paying close enough attention, because my first experience with author Anne Tenino is by no means her first book. Using this little gem as a yardstick, I have definitely been missing out!

I loved Tenino's authorial voice. It's got a lovely a mix of witty sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek humor that always appeals to me. It comes through with wonderful clarity in the narrative and imbues both Brad and Sebastian with a sense of lighthearted sexiness that keeps this story far from any significant amount of pathos or angst.

I really enjoyed seeing a coming-out tale that wasn't mired down by a bunch of emotional dreck. There's certainly a place for the serious, emotion-pummeling stuff. I have enjoyed many a thoughtful, heartfelt, intense M/M read, but I also love getting a healthy dose of temperature-raising smutty goodness with lots to chuckle about besides. And that is exactly what Tenino offers readers with this one.

From first moment of Brad's self-revelation all the way through to the frat boy's coming out announcement there were tons of scenes that just tickled me to no end. I was especially fond of Brad's discussion with his family and the scene in which he catches Kyle up on various options for gay sex. All the scenes between Brad and his sisters and Sebastian with his were also big hits.

And I adored Collin. He was a scene stealer from the...well...very first page, actually, but his character also allowed for a wistful poignancy and a touch of seriousness to balance out the rest. I am dying to read his story.

Make no mistake, either, Tenino definitely writes smoking hot, erotic sex scenes. Even solitary ones. She did so with a deft hand, stirring fearless lust with hopeful yearning to create an erotic playground for her yummy characters. I definitely eyed my hairbrush differently this morning. And that was actually a little disturbing.

The tale definitely stays closer to the surface as far as story depth and complexity goes. There's not a lot of conflict - neither internal nor external - and everything progresses rather quickly. What conflict does exist is resolved without any significant trauma or is handled with a sharp eye for the lighter tone of the story.

Neither main character has a ton of depth or dimension, just enough to flesh them out a bit and individualize them. Most of the story evolves from Brad's perspective, so his character feels a bit more robust than Sebastian's by default. Both he and Sebastian are likable, though, and both are defined enough to keep them from feeling cardboard. This just isn't the sort of story that provides any deep character studies or sweeping emotional sagas.

It didn't need to be. It entertained me by being no more or less than exactly what it is, an erotically-charged, fun, light read. It is chock full of cute moments, richly flavored with amusing moments, spiced up with scorching hot moments, and even, when you include the end, touched with sweet moments. I enjoyed it a lot.