Stiff Assignment by Skylar Sinclair

TITLE: Stiff Assignment
AUTHOR: Skylar Sinclair
PUBLISHER: Siren Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Gay erotic romance
COST: $2.99

Undercover agent Daimon is put on the case to determine once and for all whether or not wealthy businessman Jefferson Bartel is linked to the mob. What he doesn’t anticipate is practically falling into the man’s lap, and worse, falling head over heels in love with him. What happens if he discovers that the new lust of his life really is crooked as they come? Will it be too late to save his heart?

When the surname of the hero in the story doesn’t even match the surname given in the blurb, you know there’s going to be problems. When there are leaps of logic not indicated in the story (like when Daimon gets hit over the head and wakes up to find himself in Jefferson’s house, freely admits he remembers nothing between going unconscious and waking up, and has never even had contact with the other male in the story, but immediately jumps to the conclusion that yes indeed, he’s in Bartel’s house), you know there’s going to be problems. When the whole story is packed with dialogue like:

I am totally hypnotized when your cock goes from flaccid to steel covered in silky flesh as it raises along the trail of hair up your stomach. The evidence of your desire unmistakable by the cum dripping from the head of your cock as I lick your balls.

…you know there’s going to be problems. The only thing this story had going for it was the fact that it was so short. At least I didn’t have to put up with the problems for very long.

I don’t even know where to start. The hokey, melodramatic dialogue maybe? Nobody talks like these two men. The most realistic exchange in the whole book happens in the first chapter between Daimon and his boss. Every time Jefferson opened his mouth, I cringed, and when Daimon got around him…oy.

Then there’s the plot. I bought the book based on the blurb and the semi-normal sounding excerpt from the first chapter. The blurb puts the emphasis on the conflict between the two men – one’s a cop, the other might not be exactly law-abiding – but the story handles it differently. There is a single chapter devoted to Daimon investigating Jefferson – and not even that much, because it quickly devolves into Daimon blowing Jefferson – and that’s it. All the rest of the story is about Daimon deciding near instantly that he trusts this so-called crook and Jefferson deciding at the age of 50 with 30 years of playboy behavior behind him that the man he sees roaming the beach outside his house is the one for him. Not believable. In the slightest. I don’t care if it is supposed to be escapist romance. In order to qualify as good escapist romance for me, there has to be some sort of realistic evolution to characters.

Oh well. Maybe next time.

Readability	4/10 – Stilted dialogue and over-the-top prose make even a novella hard to wade through
Hero #1	4/10 – What starts out with promise devolves into a romantic mess
Hero #2	3/10 – Our enigmatic playboy never rises above the ideal the author tries to paint him as
Entertainment value	3/10 – Early hot sex can’t make up for the plot slapped on from nowhere
World building	3/10 – The author doesn’t even try to create the criminal world our hero is supposed to be investigating
TOTAL:	17/50