One Good Book Deserves Another

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: LGBT - M/M Romantic Suspense
Series: Cut & Run, Book 3
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 314 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Dreamspinner Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.

Genre: LGBT - M/M Contemporary Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 4 Stars
Formats: Unrequited


As a huge fan of the writing duo of Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux, I thought I'd give Roux's single authorship a try, and I'm quite glad I did. Unrequited is the story of prosecutor Vic Bronsen, a man in love with a guy who treats him more like a pleasure pit stop than a partner, and for five years Vic's been putting up with it. Every time his lover Owen leaves his bed (rarely more than thirty minutes after sex), he also seems to leave Vic's life, until the next time Owen has an itch to scratch. Then the phone rings, and Vic's right back to where he was. It's enough to make a man feel cheap and used.

Growing more and more depressed by the situation, and starting to think less and less of himself for his inability to leave Owen alone, when his best friend Shane takes a month's vacation from his job as a seated judge, and offers the opportunity for some sun and sand on the outer banks of North Carolina, Vic takes him up on it. When Vic starts to realize that all the things he yearns for from a relationship with Owen are all the things he enjoys most about his friendship with Shane, he begins to question if he was looking in the right place for love. But Vic doesn't even know if Shane is gay, and that may be a problem. Will Vic be destined for a lifetime of unrequited feelings, or is Shane the one for him?

Well written, Unrequited is a decent story, but it's quite short, and the length hampers the development of the relationship between Shane and Vic and limits the characterizations of all three men. Ultimately, the resolution at the end seemed far more forced than organic to the story, and from the point that Owen shows up at the vacation spot to the end, the story didn't really work for me, but I really enjoyed what there was story-wise between Shane and Vic on their trip. I truly would've liked to have seen where this story could go if it was about 100 pages longer.

For the fantastic writing of Urban & Roux together, I highly recommend these:

Genre: LGBT - M/M Romantic Suspense
Series: Zane & Ty
Rating: 5 Stars
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


If you're a fan of m/m romantic thrillers/suspense, then you can't beat the writing pair of Urban and Roux for incredible fiction, and in Sticks & Stones, the sequel to one of my favorite reads of 2009, Cut & Run, the irresistible and at times irascible FBI Special Agents Zane Garrett and Ty Grady are back with a vengeance. They're still toting around all sorts of personal and professional baggage and struggling with the aftereffects of a case that nearly killed them both, not to mention struggling with their relationship with each other, and yet - thanks to incredible writing and exquisitely detailed characterization - this second book drives home just how amazing a read can be when you transcend the idea of character and plot and start to experience in a profound way these two men's lives.

Just weeks after being partnered officially and drawn back to DC, Zane and Ty are riding desks at Quantico until they're cleared for fieldwork - and neither are too happy about it. The hyper Ty is bouncing off the walls and Zane, who's too emotionally buttoned down to do much bouncing at all, is in a bad place head-wise and still struggling with nightmares and exhaustion. When the unofficial psych evals come down from their boss, SAC Dick Burns, they're forced into a vacation that neither wants but both desperately need.

Ty ends up taking Zane home with him to West By-God-Virginia, and together with members of Ty's family, Zane is drawn into a world he's never known and forced to face - with Ty - emotions and situations he'd never dreamed of. This rich and thoroughly well developed story spans a few weeks of time and deals the men a bad hand of freezing weather on a mountain, murderous treasure hunters, and wildlife that'd sooner eat you than look at you. And how they survive - if they survive - is going to be more a measure of who they are and how they feel about each other than any skill they have as federal agents.

It's an incredible read - just absolutely incredible - not because the plot is so spectacular or the book is so well written (though the plot is solid and the book is very well written). No, what sets Sticks & Stones (and its predecessor, Cut & Run) apart is the total immersion into these two damaged and flawed characters' lives. They're so well drawn, so utterly realistic and believable - in part because they're so human (with all the good and bad traits of two stubborn and masculine men) and in part because they're so often at the mercy of situations they can't control...yet somehow manage to do so anyway. These are guys you may not like (hell, at times I don't like them - but I do love them), and several times I found myself frustrated with one or the other (or both) because they're such men sometimes, but you certainly won't be unmoved by them or their plights. Even when they're so damn stoic it makes you grind your teeth with the knowledge that it would be so much more cathartic for them to just talk about their feelings! I know...sounds just like a man, doesn't it?

And that's the best thing about this series (and yes, it is a series, and the third book, Fish & Chips, is in production at the time of this review); these two men are real. Real frustrating, real charming (when they want to be), real devoted to each other (even when they don't want to be), real, real, real, REAL. They're tragically flawed and hopelessly lost at times. They take damage that breaks their bodies and minds and the consequences of that damage are realistic and humanizing. They want things they don't always get. They love, though it makes them horribly uncomfortable at times. They are sons and brothers and buddies to people who see them as 'son', 'brother', and 'buddy' - and these authors write so well you can actually see that delineation between how they view themselves and how they act in those 'rolls'.

It's just so well written, I lack the necessary superlatives to express it accurately. It has to be experienced. So go. Experience it. Now would be good. But start with Cut & Run - you can thank me later.

Check out my review of another book I highly recommend by these authors:
Warrior's Cross

Genre: LGBT - M/M Romantic Suspense
Series: Zane & Ty
Rating: 5 Stars
Formats: Paperback, Kindle




With deeply flawed characters and a race to stop a serial killer, Cut & Run rockets to the top of my list of romantic thrillers with a breakneck pace and intensity to rival the masters of the genre. Urban & Roux have knocked this one out of the park and vaulted into my "absolute must read" category. I was very pleased with Warrior's Cross, but Cut & Run is even better.

The writing duo of Urban & Roux have penned realistic and tragic characters, characters who aren't always nice (occasionally downright nasty), damaged characters who have drinking problems, drug problems, sex problems, job problems, and issues with their sexuality - and they're written in such a way that they are remarkably believable as less-than-virtuous even while maintaining a level of sympathy that was rather surprising, given their flaws. This feat is accomplished while the authors blend together a plot of danger and death that is both taut and intense, and much like life, sometimes too much for the protagonists to handle. Brilliantly executed and legitimately thought provoking, this is not m/m erotica. This is a deep, thorough thriller with a developing relationship between the two male leads, FBI Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett, that is at times uncomfortable, at times tense, sexy, tender, snarky, and loving...while Ty and Zane run the emotional gamut between hard assed and broken, at times stronger and bigger than life, at times hurt and lost and afraid.

There's no traditional HEA here, and I was left feeling that Ty and Zane's story is really just beginning by the end. In truth, the baggage they carry is still heavy on their shoulders (though lighter than when they started), but there's promise and progress and hope. There's even a little bit of redemption and absolution.

Between this book and Warrior's Cross, I get the impression that Urban & Roux don't like to tie up all the threads of their characters into a neat little rose-colored-glasses bow, and while I do enjoy those bows in most cases, their books are better and more realistic for the lack, and in the end, Cut and Run reverberates with a sense of truism and rightness that other novels with a strong romance theme included just don't manage to pull off. This makes their books stand out in my mind and secures them as books I'll read again and again.

I can not say enough how much I loved this book, or how quickly I'm going to snatch up everything else these authors do together. Fantastic.

Genre: LGBT - M/M Contemporary Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 5 Stars
Formats: Paperback, Kindle

I can't say enough just how much I loved this book. I'm a large fan of books with M/M romantic pairings, but there are only a select few that I feel go beyond my enjoyment of stories with alternative relationship romances to become overall favorites of mine, regardless of genre, whether it be because of the technical superiority in the writing or the emotions it evokes or the subject matter it encompasses.

Warrior's Cross is one of them, and it has joined Zero at the Bone (one of my overall top reads of 2009) as a book that truly makes me feel pity for those readers who don't read books with same-sex lead romantic pairings, because they're missing such a HELL of a read.

With two strong leads in Cameron Jacobs and Julian Cross and a story of relationships, love, and the delicacy of trust in a world that's not always pretty, Warrior's Cross is both complex, complicated, and neither easy nor painless. Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux have penned a novel that is gripping for it's realism and fascinating in the telling of it. I was particularly impressed with the character of Julian and was rather amazed that the authors managed to keep him as dark and dangerous as he was throughout the book yet still made him exceptionally sympathetic and humorous. He was about as three-dimensional a character as I could ever imagine, for all his stoic lack of communication and multiple deceptions.

Warrior's Cross isn't a book that spoon feeds the reader every detail - in fact, many details I would've enjoyed knowing out of sheer curiosity's sake, like who or what, exactly, Blake and Julian worked for. Were they independent contractors or something else entirely? And did Julian's rather nebulous answer to a major question Cameron asked him at the end of the book mean that there is some ambiguity in it? I have a lot of questions like that (quite a lot). So if you're a reader who prefers all their questions answered by the end of the book, all the moments that make you go, "Hmmmm" explained neatly, then it's possible you won't be as thrilled with Warrior's Cross as I was...but I wouldn't let that stop you from reading it, regardless. It's simply fantastic.

I just sincerely hope that we'll be able to return someday to the lives of Cameron and Julian, and until then, I'll be reading up on everything else these authors have penned together. Bravo.