Hunter's Prey by Moira Rogers

TITLE: Hunter’s Prey

AUTHOR: Moira Rogers

PUBLISHER: Samhain

LENGTH: Novel (roughly 45k)

GENRE: Steampunk paranormal erotic romance

COST: $4.50

Two people attempting to change their lives. Ophelia, an ex-prostitute, has taken over the job of housekeeper for the bloodhounds in Iron Creek, while Hunter, a bloodhound, is trying to learn how to exist outside a cage. Neither wants to admit their attraction to the other. But when desire and emotions take charge, neither one really has a choice…

The world-building in the first book of this series intrigued me enough to invest in getting the second. However, I’m not completely sure it’s enough to keep me going after this one.

In this installment, our romance occurs between Ophelia, an ex-prostitute who has been given the job as housekeeper at the manor where the bloodhounds of Iron Creek live, and Hunter, a recently rescued new bloodhound who is still learning what it means to be one. Ophelia is done with being a pawn for men, as well as only being valued for her sex appeal, but being a housekeeper isn’t exactly what she wants either. She’s too independent and intelligent for such menial work, and decides she’s going to quit once the new moon is past. The one thing that gives her pause is the latest bloodhound at the manor. Hunter had been caged by vampires ever since being created, used as a feeding source for Nate (who has become a sort of vampire/bloodhound hybrid), and is just starting to learn what it means to be what he is. He’s afraid of what he can do, of how out of control he gets, and he’s especially afraid he’ll hurt Ophelia, since she seems to be the one woman who can really get to him. He turns down her offer to help him through the new moon (a period during which they need to feed off their partner’s lusts and desires, which is basically an excuse for lots and lots of sex over a three day period), but when she makes the arrangements for him to be seen by someone else, he refuses, demanding only her.

The story goes on from there, though honestly, there’s not much that isn’t horribly predictable. The bulk of it is spent on Hunter’s internal angst about who he really is and Ophelia’s flip-flopping back and forth on her feelings for Hunter, with a subplot about a threat running through Iron Creek supposedly bringing things together. While the world is just as fascinating as it was the first time, it’s less developed, relying too heavily on previous knowledge to work well as a standalone. I hadn’t read the previous book again before tackling this one, and found gaps in my knowledge that this one failed to fill in. For a new reader to the series, I don’t think it serves it well at all.

It’s not helped by the fact that the characterizations for both leads aren’t strong. Hunter’s primary conflict is his internal battle trying to figure out who he really is – the man he was before he became a bloodhound or the monster he is now. But because Hunter doesn’t know, we as readers don’t ever really get to find out either. It leaves him as a shell for me to project upon, an archetype to imagine going through the motions of what are meant to steamy love scenes. It’s boring, frankly. Ophelia fares slightly better, as she has a stronger sense of who she is, but just because she’s strong-willed and independent, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s interesting. She’s not. And the sex isn’t written well enough to make up for the deficiency in either of the characters.

The broader cast of characters is interesting, with both new and old faces, but the story is too short to give any of them a decent treatment. There’s barely enough time to get the main conflict resolved, let alone touch on the multitude of subplots that get thrown into the mix (most likely fodder for future stories). I would have much preferred getting some meaty time with just one or two, rather than the plethora that took over the pages.

Will I read the third book when it comes out? I honestly don’t know. This one had such potential, with a hero type that usually falls right in the middle of a bulletproof kink (the broken alpha struggling for identity), and yet, didn’t follow through on its promise. I guess it’ll be a matter of evaluating it on its own merit rather than as an autobuy as part of a series.

Readability	8/10 – Clean and does the job
Hero	5/10 – The problem is, since he doesn’t know who he is, the reader doesn’t either
Heroine	6/10 – Being strong-willed and independent doesn’t necessarily make her well-rounded
Entertainment value	5/10 – As much as I love the potential in this, I never believed the romance enough to invest in it
World building	8/10 – As fascinating as this world is, it doesn’t work as a standalone as well as it should
TOTAL:	32/50

Willing Victim by Cara McKenna

TITLE: Willing Victim
AUTHOR: Cara McKenna
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 41k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotica
COST: $5.20

An attraction to blue-collar Flynn seems simple until Laurel sees his rough-and-tumble attitude inside the ring of an underground fighting club. According to his friend with benefits, Flynn likes his sex rough. Very rough. An intrigued Laurel agrees to watch to see if it’s something that might interest her, but her reaction is far stronger than she anticipated…

I had some issues with the first erotica title I read by this author, and though this doesn't knock it out of the ballpark, it still manages to be hot escapism.

Laurel is twenty-nine and waitressing at a tourist trap, disenchanted with the opportunities her engineering degree has scrounged up. In an attempt to have a peaceful afternoon, she ends up witness to an argument between lovers, but they ignore her attempts to keep it civil. A stranger appears out of nowhere, manhandles the boyfriend into moving it elsewhere, and then walks away. Laurel is intrigued and chases him down. He takes up her offer to buy him lunch, but when she gathers the nerve to ask this man out, he turns her down, saying he’s not most women’s type. She presses, and he finally tells her to show up at a bar on Saturday night, tell them Flynn sent her, and then see if she’s still interested in a date. On Saturday night, she witnesses an underground boxing club, with the man – Flynn, she learns his name is – one of the most brutal in the ring. She also sees him kissing a woman, and discouraged that he’s got a girlfriend, confesses to her that Flynn invited her to watch. The woman laughs it off, saying they’re just friends with benefits, that Flynn likes his sex rough and is willing to take her to dark places most men won’t. She invites Laurel to come watch them after the fight, an offer Laurel eventually accepts. What she sees about Flynn intrigues her even more, and she and Flynn then arrange to hook up on their own.

There’s a warning on the publisher’s site, stating that though everything is purely consensual, the role-playing and rape fantasies that get acted out might prove too much of a trigger for some readers. While this warning is valid and probably necessary – it’s better to err on the side of caution when it comes to these sort of triggers – the story isn’t nearly as rough as I expected it to be. Sure, Flynn uses rough language, spanks and slaps, bosses women around as he wants, but in all honesty, it never feels overboard. That’s largely due to remaining in Laurel’s perspective throughout the entire book. Because she always feels safe, the reader does, too. Flynn is never as menacing as he could be.

That being said, most of the sex is hot. Very hot. Very, very hot. The base nature of their first encounters do smooth out as the story progresses, and honestly, I didn’t care for the final sex scenes nearly as much as the initial ones (nor the implication that developing feelings means kink preferences aren’t important anymore), but that’s likely due to a pacing and structural issue rather than the scenes themselves.

See, this is erotica. It’s sold as erotica. For three-fourths of the story, it is erotica. But suddenly, in the last quarter, a bunch of emotions are introduced that are likely meant to show the viable shift from hooking up to dating. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s all so rushed and out of the blue that it never feels genuine. Flynn doesn’t suffer from it; his casual comment that Laurel was supposed to ask him out for a date but instead they’ve only hooked up is proof he’s been thinking about her and dating prospects. Laurel is the one who suddenly spills secrets, and it just never makes sense.

Up until this point, though, I liked Flynn and Laurel for what they were. Flynn is blue-collar Boston, surprisingly articulate even with his often brusque manner, while Laurel is relatable in her insecurities and desires. The ending is meant to introduce a potential HFN (unnecessary in erotica, in my opinion), and I think I could be convinced these two have a future based on the characterizations I saw up until that jarring last chapter or two. But that’s not the point of erotica. This should have been all about the heat. In that respect, it worked, providing an intense exploration into less romantic fantasies. I’m in for more. Definitely.

Readability	8/10 – Until the last fourth that didn’t seem to fit, hot and heavy
Erotica	8/10 – Though it devolves into more vanilla as the story progresses, it’s still pretty darn hot
Characterization	7/10 – I liked them more for the first ¾’s but found the emotional dumps in the last bit unbelievable and out of place
Entertainment value	7/10 – If this had stayed firmly within the realm of erotica, this would’ve been higher. As a hybrid, it doesn’t work as well
World building	8/10 – I don’t know if the boxing is necessarily realistic, but damn if I couldn’t see and smell everything
TOTAL:	38/50

Family Business by Emma McKee

TITLE: Family Business
AUTHOR: Emma McKee
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 62k)
GENRE: Contemporary romantic suspense
COST: $3.99

Loan officer Nora Bainbridge’s great-aunt is as eccentric as they come, but then again, as an aging actress from Hollywood’s golden era, she’s expected to be. When she breaks her leg, she asks for Nora to move in and take care of her cat, a financial arrangement Nora can’t refuse right now. Little does she know that the TV producer poking his nose around, looking for information on her Aunt Elnora’s ancient connections with the mob, is really an FBI agent, or that he just might be the answer to her recent dry spell…

When an author’s humor works for me, I’m much more inclined to finish a book, even when I can see its flaws. This was one of those cases.

It opens with FBI agent Luke McKinnon staking out aging Hollywood actress, Elnora Bainbridge, in hopes he can determine whether or not his teenaged crush is involved in a stolen art scam. He witnesses her take a fall while chasing her cat and calls 911 anonymously. That same fall puts Elnora in the hospital, and prompts her to pay her great-niece, named after her, to housesit and take care of the over-indulged cat. Nora agrees only because she needs the money. She’s barely making ends meet as she struggles to regain her financial footing after her ex cleaned her out. Luke shows up and introduces himself as a television producer, interested in doing a show on Elnora. He’s struck by the physical similarities between the two women, and it becomes harder for him to separate his growing feelings for Nora with the pressing evidence that Elnora really is involved in something illegal. He should know, after all. His grandfather was one of the mobsters who fought over Elnora before she gave up her acting career for good.

I fell for this story very early on, mostly because I was laughing out loud in the first few pages at Luke’s spying antics. The humor in this worked for me, mostly because I got sucked in by Luke’s appalled thoughts that he would now be scarred with memories of his favorite teenaged crush running around naked in her eighties. It’s a little silly, but that farcical nature worked within the context of the story, keeping it light for most of its length. Not all of it was a success. I’m not a fan of puns at all, and having the nosy neighbor named Ima Payne was mostly just eyeroll-worthy. Still, I liked Nora and Luke’s self-deprecating humor enough to like them in conjunction, thus making it easier to invest in their potential romance.

The supporting cast is colorful as well, from her spirited Aunt Elnora with her illicit online businesses, to Elnora’s attorney Albert, all the way to the overweight, over-indulged cat, Mr. Witherby. Nora bounces around from person to animal with a refreshing aplomb, and if she sometimes seems a bit scattered as a result, it’s nice to be remembered that events are happening very quickly within the story (so quickly that at least once, the author messes up the timeline). More get introduced as the story progresses, and it’s the firm addition of the Mob (as opposed to the hints that they might be involved at the top of the story) that actually starts weakening the tale.

So much is made about what might have happened, the truth is very anticlimactic when it comes out. Then, it plays out so quickly, in a scene that’s far too talky even for a farce, that I was left with a vague sense of, “That’s it?” Add to that a time jump at the end that, while justified, watered down the response rather than heightened it, and I was a little disappointed by the time I got my HEA. If only the last third had lived up to the hype of the first two. This could’ve been truly remarkable then.

Readability	8/10 – Humor goes a long way in smoothing over rough transitions and an anticlimactic ending
Hero	7/10 – His perspective was what enticed me to make this a definite finish, funny and just deprecating enough to be charming
Heroine	7/10 – Self-aware with just enough of an edge
Entertainment value	7/10 – I responded to humor in this, as well as the obvious love for old movies, though the ending didn’t live up to the promise of the first two-thirds
World building	7/10 – Enough hints to make it interesting, not enough to make it rich
TOTAL:	36/50

The Rebuilding Year by Kaje Harper

TITLE: The Rebuilding Year
AUTHOR: Kaje Harper
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 80k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $5.50

After a horrific accident on the job, Ryan Ward has switched from firefighting to medicine, returning to college at thirty. When his bad leg goes out on him on campus, he’s helped by the groundskeeper, thirty-seven year-old divorced John Barrett, and the two strike up a friendship. That friendship provides the basis of John offering to rent a room to Ryan in his house, a move both of them need. But as their friendship deepens over the months, the last thing either of them expects is for attraction to grow from it, too…

One thing I’m coming to appreciate about this author is how very readable she is. Even though I had certain issues with this book, and ultimately didn’t quite enjoy it as much as the other stories I read recently by her, I still read through it in only two sittings, engaged with her voice and the believability of her men enough to get immersed. I even trusted her enough to read a gay for you trope, which tends to be on my list of “oh please no” tropes when I’m looking for something to buy.

This is the story of two thirtysomething men, returning med student Ryan and groundskeeper John. John is divorced and taking a step back from his corporate career with his new job, while Ryan has recently survived a horrific accident as a firefighter and is changing tracks because of that. The title is completely apt for their state. Both are in this state of flux, not just about each other, but about finding their feet in a life they can accept. Ryan has a living situation with a roommate he can’t stand, so when John offers to rent him a room in his house, Ryan jumps at it. Their friendship builds slowly, until gradually John realizes he’s interested in more from Ryan than what they currently have.

This careful build and methodical creation of these two men and their relationship is what anchors this book. I liked both men, though I had a preference for John and his more solid, protective ways. Their friendship felt genuine from their first meeting, and I enjoyed seeing these two discover how to live together as adults. The relationship faltered for me when it began to shift to something romantic. I bought them liking each other, but I never saw the physical attraction until suddenly, it was there in my face and they were struggling with this newfound thing between them. I imagine this is probably as much my issue as it is anything else. While I believe strongly that we love who we love, I don’t buy most gay for you stories because it feels like too much of a copout most of the time (like mating). I need to see and believe in the desire before the author tells me it’s there, or I’m yanked out of believing anything romantic or sexual can happen. Too often, these tropes are used as shortcuts for actual storytelling. In this instance, I think it’s a combination of failing to see the possibility of sexual attraction before it was on the page and my natural reluctance to give in to the fantasy element of this particular trope.

It does smooth out as the story progresses. The sex is reasonably hot, and the emotions at the end are deep and believable. It’s just that hump to get over as the transition happens that lowered my enjoyment of the overall story.

The other element that doesn’t really serve the story well is the side mystery that winds through the plot. There’s a girl John finds wandering on campus, clearly high, that later become instrumental in both of their lives, but the way it kept popping into the story never sat well with me. It felt very shoehorned, like there needed to be specific scenes scattered in the first three-fourths of the story (and very few of them at that), in order to justify the big climax. I didn’t buy it, and actually got annoyed when it would take a sudden left turn into this police investigation.

Overall, this would likely work best for people who enjoy this trope or are already fans of the author. It’s refreshing to see time being taken in creating and building realistic men in an m/m romance, however, and that alone makes it worthwhile to continue following this author’s books.

Readability	8/10 – Slow-paced and methodical, my only complaint rests in the mystery that attempts to get woven through the plotline, it felt very shoehorned
Hero #1	7/10 – Believable and steady
Hero #2	8/10 – While I thought the switch to bi was too abrupt, I liked him more as a person than I did Ryan
Entertainment value	7/10 – Though I appreciated the slow build and the friendship, I didn’t completely buy the turnaround or the mystery aspects
World building	9/10 – Easily the best parts about it, felt very authentic
TOTAL:	39/50

The Concubine's Tale by Jennifer Colgan

TITLE: The Concubine’s Tale
AUTHOR: Jennifer Colgan
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 23k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $3.50

Curator Cait Lang is under orders to show their latest acquisition to collector Grant Pierson, a prospect she doesn’t really look forward to since she finds the man’s smug, know-it-all personality annoying. Grant is glad to finally have the chance to spend some alone time with ice-queen Cait, hungry to find out if she ever comes unruffled, but the story behind the papyrus on the auction block proves to be more enticing than either of them anticipate…

While this story had an interesting set-up, the actual follow-through didn’t quite live up to its initial promise. Essentially, it’s divided into two separate stories, the contemporary one between Cait and Grant, and the Egyptian one between Nayari and Khanu. Cait and Grant are professional acquaintances, with neither really knowing much about the other. Cait finds his superior attitude annoying, while he has never really looked past her ice-queen persona. He decides to see if he can get past it by inviting her out for a private dinner while she’s telling him about the papyrus, and though dating clients is forbidden, she agrees, largely because she’s curious, too. She begins relating the translation, making it clear it’s been embellished, and the story alternates between the rising tension between them and the growing attraction between the concubine and the warrior set to protect her.

The story Cait tells is a romantic one, about a concubine being used as a pawn in her master’s bid to become Pharoah, the world painted there rich and fascinating. Nayari is lovely to watch, from her initial pride to her horror at what’s intended for her to her growing feelings for Khanu. This story provides the strongest momentum for this short novella and offers glimmers of just what it could have been. Unfortunately, none of the other characters possess the same intrigue or depths. Nayari’s story is essentially a tool to get Cait and Grant over their initial misgivings and make them hot and bothered enough to ignore the order not to get involved. Not enough time is spent on developing them as real people for the attraction between them to feel organic, and the back and forth starts to feel very by-the-numbers.

The publisher calls this a paranormal story, but that’s stretching the definition. The problem is, this doesn’t fit neatly into any one category. The historical tale is clearly the most developed and compelling, but it’s tucked inside a contemporary package. The paranormal label likely springs from the mystical ending that Grant eventually discovers to the Egyptian lovers, but it lacks the credibility the rest of the tale offers. Though the publisher doesn't indicate it as such, this is likely meant to be a companion piece to another of the author's works called "The Soul Jar." There's an excerpt for that at the end of this, but in all fairness, I didn't realize this might be linked to something else (and thus give the ending more veracity) until after I started writing this review and went to the author's bio to get her web address. I never read the excerpts Samhain pads the end of their books with (a truly annoying practice, as those words get added into the total word count and can make unsuspecting buyers think they're purchasing a longer work). Frankly, I shouldn't have to happen to stumble across that excerpt/blurb to discover the ending I didn't buy for a second is rooted in another work.

Readers wanting paranormal attributes will be disappointed. If anything, I’d suggest this to lovers of Egyptian stories. That’s what it really has going for it.

Readability	7/10 – The Egyptian portions read much more vivid and interesting than the contemporary portions
Heroes	6/10 – One didn’t have enough depth, the other was too idealized
Heroines	6/10 – Nayari is fascinating, but Cait suffers the same problem Grant does
Entertainment value	6/10 – So much potential in this, but it just never gels together
World building	7/10 – The Egyptian world sizzles, which makes the weak contrast to the contemporary even more disappointing
TOTAL:	32/50

Gambling on Love by Jane Davitt

TITLE: Gambling on Love
AUTHOR: Jane Davitt
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 87k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $6.99

Eleven years ago, Gary ran away from the small town he grew up in on the night he accidentally outed himself and his best friend Abe to Abe’s coach. Now, a winter storm he underestimated and a toss of his lucky quarter have him stranded on the side of the road just miles from where he grew up. As fate would have it, the driver of the truck he hit belongs to none other than Abe, but they have to get out of the storm before they can even begin to deal with the shock of seeing each other again…

Jane Davitt is one of the those authors I can trust to write intelligent prose, which is why I don’t usually have to think to hard about buying one of her books. Unfortunately, it takes more than a strong grasp of language to make a great story.

The book opens in 1998 with best friends Abe and Gary as teenagers. We learn of their close friendship that suffers slightly when Abe realizes Gary is attracted to him, but that soon shifts when Abe finally confesses he’s gay, too, and in love with Gary. A puppy love, in the closet, relationship develops, but one day, the two boys are caught in the locker room kissing by Abe’s coach. Terrified about what’s going to happen to them as gay in their small town, Gary runs away, leaving behind a confused Abe when Abe refuses to come with him. Cut forward eleven years, and Gary is just a few miles away from his home town, on his way to do one last thing for his lover/employer who just died. He underestimates the storm he’s driving through, and ends up getting into an accident with a truck. The truck driver is Abe, who was on his way home, and after the initial shock of seeing each other and a couple arguments, they work together to get to the safety of Abe’s house. The pair end up snowed in together for a few days, during which time they have to come to grips with the resentment and residual feelings between them.

The prologue is appropriately gripping and entertaining, with likeable, believable teenagers discovering that first thrill of love. It backslides a little with the jump forward in time, because the twenty-nine year-old Gary is clearly not the same as the teenaged Gary, and the effect is jarring. It seemed to even out, however, and I was excited when Abe came onto the scene. I was looking forward to seeing these two iron out their differences.

However, that doesn’t happen for a long time. More than half the book is given over to this prologue and the first twenty-four hours they spend together. A lot has to happen in that time, I know, but it created a telescope effect, with far too much intense time spent on dragging out their initial conflict, then not nearly enough time spent on the days that came afterward. Once they get clear of the snow, the most conflict we get is from one or the both of them saying the wrong thing to the other, issues that get resolved too quickly in relation to the pace set in the first half of the story. That schism interrupts the flow, and makes it feel like you’re reading two different books, where the characters only vaguely resemble each other. Ultimately, it’s very frustrating, because Gary ends up proving uneven as a result. His prickly behavior lacks enough context most of the time to make the reader empathize with him. Instead, all feeling ends up getting aimed at Abe, who already has the bonus of being the wronged party in this by being the one left behind.

That imbalance typifies the story’s biggest weakness. While the sex scenes are usually hot, with some mild D/s thrown in as Gary finally gets to be dominant and Abe learns to better accept his submissive sexual side, everything around it lacks the cohesion to glue it all together. It’s not helped that the ending is telegraphed early on, easy to predict for anybody paying attention. The solid prose just isn’t enough in this case.

Readability	8/10 – Intelligent prose and believable dialogue, but pacing was all over the place and slowed it down considerably
Hero #1	6/10 – His skittishness is all over the map, making it hard to get a consistent bead on him
Hero #2	7/10 – Though I thought his turnaround in forgiving Gary was too swift, I definitely empathized with him more
Entertainment value	6/10 – It took forever to get past the first twenty-four hours, and then the rest of it snowballed too quickly to really feel much of anything
World building	7/10 – The prologue and storm aspects felt chillingly real
TOTAL:	34/50

The Locker Room by Amy Lane

TITLE: The Locker Room
AUTHOR: Amy Lane
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 85k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $6.99

Xander Karcek loves two things in this world – basketball and Chris Edwards. Both saved him from a neglectful home and a potential life on the skids. But being gay and being a prominent athlete don’t seem to go hand in hand. Chris and Xander are forced to keep their relationship under wraps, even though it’s slowly killing both of them…

This was one of those books that hooked me from the start, but increasing problems as it progressed ended up making me wish I hadn’t spent the time on it.

With a druggie, neglectful mother, Xander is literally starving to death when he meets Chris Edwards on a local basketball court. When Chris’s mother allows the new friend to come home for dinner, the start of a deep, lasting relationship takes root. Chris and Xander are inseparable, and as their athletic careers progress, so do their feelings for each other. They realize they’re in love before they graduate from high school, but their positions as popular sports figures, especially in light of their desires to go pro, keep them private, through college and then on to the pros when they beat the odds and get signed by the same team.

I loved Xander at the start of the story. He’s fighting horrific odds and somehow has the humility and strength to not realize just how hard he’s fighting. Chris literally saves his life by reaching out to him on that basketball court, a connection both Xander and I as a reader recognize. Since the story is told in Xander’s perspective, it’s very easy to get sucked into his pain.

However, those feelings started to ebb about a third into the story, for two very different reasons. First of all, the author is far too much in love with parentheticals for me. One or two are interesting, but more than that and I find the whole stylistic device too contrived and cutesy to stay immersed within the text. They do dwindle down as the story progresses, but there were whole sections where there were multiple parentheticals within single paragraphs. It’s disruptive to my reading experience because contrary to how I’m sure the author intends, it feels like the author has pulled me aside to whisper this little aside in my ear rather than the character doing it. That constant reminder, that sense of over-friendly “let me tell you this little bit,” was enough to destroy how deeply rooted I was within the story.

The second issue stems from the story itself. While I was initially enraptured by how much in love these two guys were, the heavy, heavy melodrama surrounding them grew too unreal to believe. All the conflict is external to these two, which is more than fine as long as that conflict is organic. But there is no middle ground with these two. They’re either flying higher than a kite, or they’re vomiting over the choices they have to make. It’s too extreme for me, and by halfway through, I felt like I had an ulcer, too. Toss in the fact that all the women surrounding them lack nuances, all worshiping at the altar of Xander, and I realized I just couldn’t relate to any of these people as believable enough to get past the other shortcomings.

I’ve heard so many readers exclaim how much they love this author, so I wanted to give her a try, but I can see now that her style is not going to be one I’ll be able to enjoy. The angst levels are too extreme, and the heroes too idealized. But at least now I know.

Readability	7/10 – The overuse of parentheticals and italics exacerbate the story’s over-the-topness
Hero #1	7/10 – His anguished, insecure strength was appealing, but it becomes increasingly unrealistic as the story progresses
Hero #2	5/10 – Too idealized to ever really believe
Entertainment value	6/10 – I was actually really enjoying this, but the constant over-the-top melodrama proved too much
World building	8/10 – The sports element is well incorporated and feels mostly authentic, while the rest of it suffers from extremes
TOTAL:	33/50

Boot Hill Bride by Lauri Robinson

TITLE: Boot Hill Bride
AUTHOR: Lauri Robinson
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 76k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.50

Desperate to escape her politician father and stepmother, Randi Fulton runs to her aunt, only to have to run yet again when her presence risks discovery. She takes refuge in a tent outside the construction of a new hotel in Dodge City, but its owner, Howard Quinter, comes home in the middle of the night. They’re discovered in bed together the next morning by both sets of parents, at which point Ma Skeeter demands a wedding. The two are wed, and Howard vows to protect Randi from her terrible father and his schemes to be the next governor…

I don’t end up following a lot of series. I can’t come into a series in the middle, so if I miss the first book, unless I end up discovering the author with a different title, I just won’t go back and get it. Frankly, there are too many books out there to try. This Quinter Brides series has been an odd duck for me, but I’m not quite ready to give upon it yet.

Howard Quinter is the third brother to get forced into a shotgun wedding at the hands of his strong-willed mother. His bride is runaway Randi Fulton, the daughter of the man running for governor representing the Populist party. She tried to escape being sold off to marry a much older man by going to her aunt in Dodge City, but her aunt works in a whorehouse, and when her presence is in risk of discovery, she takes refuge in Howard’s tent. Neither wants to be married, but when Howard sees how awful her father is, he lets his argument go. Besides, there’s no saying no to Ma when she gets a bee in her bonnet. She vows to do anything she can to help Howard get his hotel up and running, and when it turns out she loves to cook as much as he does, it looks like a match made in heaven.

This book had one of the stronger starts of this series yet. I’ve had issues in the past with poor editing, but this didn’t suffer from it. Randi was taking charge of her future, Howard was appropriately honorable, and Ma and the rest of the gang were as entertaining as ever. I was charmed and reading with a huge smile on my face. The prose is never very sophisticated and the plotting was simplistic, but that’s not the appeal in this series. It’s the characters, and I was rather enamored with who I was meeting/getting reacquainted with.

But then I realized Randi wasn’t living up to the strong introduction she’d gotten. The woman who’d taken charge of her destiny became this crying mess, breaking down in every other scene. She had zero self-esteem and it showed. I grew very weary of her constant soppy attitude, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Howard remained a strong, noble presence, I would’ve stopped.

On top of that, the cleaner editing of the beginning disappeared halfway through. It started with verb tenses slipping, present coming in where everything has been and should have remained past. Then came the misspellings, more and more the closer I got to the ending. Combine that with Randi who remained a wet rag until the last few pages of the book (and no, one last scene of strength isn’t enough to counter nearly 70k of wimpiness/crying), as well as the sweetness morphing into chapter upon chapter of sappiness, and my enjoyment diminished.

Will I read the next book? Probably. Am I in a hurry to pick it up? No. I want to love these stories, and I do with parts of them, but the weaknesses keep cropping up. If the Quinter boys weren’t so entertaining, it would be a lot easier to quit. But I kind of still love them, so…yeah, I’ll pick the next one up. At some point.

Readability	6/10 – What started out promising gradually deteriorated in regards to simple mistakes, which, combined with the added sap, dragged it down even more
Hero	8/10 – The saving grace, strong and heroic
Heroine	4/10 – Too damsel in distress for me, her constant crying got to be a joke by the end of the story
Entertainment value	6/10 – I was enamored with this for the first third, but as soon as the editorial issues and Randi’s crying tendencies set in, became much less so
World building	8/10 – The one thing about the Quinter books is that I always feel like I’m there
TOTAL:	32/50

Lying Eyes by Amy Atwell

TITLE: Lying Eyes
AUTHOR: Amy Atwell
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 103k)
GENRE: Contemporary romantic suspense
COST: $5.39

Jewelry designer/store owner Iris Fortune is trying to lead a normal, stable life, but her magician father keeps finding ways of disrupting it. His latest scheme involves mythological Russian gems, a thief named Mickey who makes her heart pound more than her lawyer fiancé, a strong-willed rabbit named Edgar, and oh yeah, two half sisters she never knew she had…

There is so much going on in this romantic suspense, it’s almost tough to know where to start. The premise at the beginning is simple enough. Mickey, a hired thug, snatches Cosmo, an aging magician, because he hasn’t followed through on his end of a corrupt business deal. It’s up to Mickey to find the gems Cosmo was supposed to turn over, except Cosmo manages to get away. Mickey then goes to Cosmos’s daughter Iris, the owner of a jewelry store at the Bellagio, to see if she knows anything. Iris is engaged to a lawyer with political aspirations, a boring, safe choice to counter the less than predictable life she had growing up. Iris gets a call from her security company about an unauthorized entry, and when she realizes it has to be Cosmo, lies to protect him. Thus starts a long, convoluted race to find the gems Cosmo is withholding.

The problem isn’t that the plot isn’t interesting. It certainly is. The problem rests in just how many people get involved in it. Right away, we’re thrown into the thick of things, because in addition to Mickey and Iris, there’s Hunter the cop, Allie and Cory (Iris’s half-sisters), the other thugs Mickey works with, Turner the hitman, and the Boss who’s behind it at all. By the story’s end, we get even more characters. It’s not just trying to keep them all straight. There are scenes in so many different POVs (only one per scene most of the time, thank god), that it’s often hard to make emotional connections to any of them.

Thankfully, enough time is spent with Mickey and Iris to recognize them as the central pairing. Mickey is charmingly roguish and capable of pulling Iris out of her safe little shell. She’s intelligent and just wary enough to be believable, but I did feel that she got lost in the shuffle quite often. They have strong chemistry, and I loved how he was able to get her to relax.

Between all this, however, are scenes that often drag on too long (seriously, losing Edgar in the gardens lasted forever), and some that seemed completely extraneous altogether. I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if it had been more tightly focused, rather than allowed to ramble on where it did. It worked to keep me guessing as to what would happen next, but beyond that, I was left fairly unsatisfied.

Readability	7/10 – Clean editorially, but some scenes drag on for far too long and the huge cast does little but muddy the waters
Hero	7/10 – Charming and roguish
Heroine	7/10 – Has a tendency to get lost in the shuffle of more colorful characters, but nothing awful about her
Entertainment value	7/10 – This would’ve ranked higher if certain parts had dragged it down
World building	9/10 – Extensive and fully realized
TOTAL:	37/50

Life Lessons by Kaje Harper

TITLE: Life Lessons
AUTHOR: Kaje Harper
PUBLISHER: MLR
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 88k)
GENRE: Gay mystery erotic romance
COST: $7.99

High school teacher Tony Hart stays late one night and ends up in the middle of a murder investigation when a stabbed co-worker literally falls against him. Detective MacLean begins keeping an eye on him, at first for the sake of the case, then because he can’t seem to stop thinking about the young teacher. When Tony’s life becomes endangered, the two men are thrust even closer together. They have to deal with the fact Mac is deeply closeted, as well as someone out there wants Tony dead…

Though closeted gay cops are plentiful in m/m romance, not all of them are worth reading about. Thankfully, this fell well onto the side of worth it.

English teacher Tony Hart has come back to the school late one Friday to pick up a box of books from his classroom. When the elevator doors open, a teacher he doesn’t really care for falls back into the car, and it takes Tony a moment to realize the man’s been stabbed. He calls 911, but the other teacher is dead before they arrive. Detective MacLean arrives as part of the investigation, and the two get off on the wrong foot since until they know better, Tony is their prime suspect. While Tony is out, Mac is deeply in the closet. Both of them fight their mutual attraction. When Tony is almost killed in a hit-and-run, their relationship escalates. But Mac has no desire to expose his sexuality, and there is still somebody out there who wants Tony dead.

While I love a good mystery, I almost gave up on this one in the first few chapters. Tony’s reaction to Mac at first is not a good one. He gets deliberately provocative in their initial scenes, and though he later laments that he’s acting like his friend Marty, it annoyed me to the point where I questioned how involved I could get if I disliked him so much already. I decided to stick it out, though, and am grateful I did. The belligerence Tony displayed at the start disappeared soon afterward, and I was able to fall into the slow evolution of their romance.

And slow it is. These two don’t fall into bed together. Mac is deeply in the closet, and Tony thinks he’s a straight widower. Both fight their attractions, and as they do so, it succeeds in tightening the tension. Much of the focus is actually on the crime and investigation, with romantic scenes ancillary to that. These are done with a deft hand, detailed and believable, and gradually build the suspense of just what exactly happened with the dead teacher. Mac is thorough and competent, without being perfect, while Tony makes enough mistakes to buy into his procedural ignorance. Even after the romance moves to another level, the murder isn’t forgotten. That noose only tightens further, leading into the explosive last fourth that hurtles the reader toward the end.

I don’t have many misgivings regarding this novel. By the story’s end, I loved both men, though I didn’t completely accept that Tony was as young as I was told he was. The story’s HFN worked for me, too, since it’s made abundantly clear throughout the story that Mac is never going to come out of the closet. It’s more realistic than I would find in a lot of m/m, and I appreciated that. It also succeeded in doing something a lot of stories don’t. It drove me to the publisher’s website to see what else the author has done. I will be reading the sequel to this, as well as the free short I picked up on Amazon. I’m looking forward to what life has in store for these two guys.

Readability	9/10 – Tight action, strong balance of plot and characters, I couldn’t stop
Hero #1	7/10 – I didn’t care for him at the start, and didn’t completely buy his youth
Hero #2	8/10 – I loved the dark conflict within him
Entertainment value	9/10 – The first thing I did when I was done was go looking for more, always an excellent sign
World building	9/10 – Excellent detail on the cop end, highly believable
TOTAL:	42/50

Dark Revenge by Jennifer Leeland

TITLE: Dark Revenge
AUTHOR: Jennifer Leeland
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 86k)
GENRE: Sci-fi BDSM erotic romance
COST: $6.99

When Commander Alex Zeerah gets intercepted on her latest mission, she’s ready to self-destruct rather than be taken prisoner by the captain, the only man she ever had feelings for, the one man she can’t have because of his exile from her home planet. Tory Ingle fought at Alex’s side for years, but he’s spent the last five planning out his revenge on how to clear his name from the treason he was convicted of. Part of that plan includes claiming Alex as his mate, but he’s entirely unprepared for how strong the attraction still is between them. They barely have time to rediscover each other before the threat of civil war looms over their home planet. It’ll take both of them to save the universe…

Yes, I know it’s an EC book so that means a lot of sex. But is it so much to ask that it work with the rest of the story?

It starts off very quickly. Alex is transporting important but unknown cargo for her king when she is intercepted by Tory, her ex-partner in the military and the man she saw exiled from their home planet five years ago. Rather than kill him or let her cargo be taken, she sets the self-destruct, an act he is somehow capable of overriding. He takes her prisoner and demands the rite to claim her as his Saria, an act of claiming a sole member of an offending bloodline to settle revenge. Once this is completed, he chooses her as his mate and restrains her to a rack in his quarters. The sex that follows reminds Alex of everything she could have had if she’d left with him as he’d begged her to do five years ago, but there’s little time to consider the what ifs when the political environment she left behind becomes even more charged. She was never intended to survive her mission, and the cargo she’d been transporting had a far deadlier purpose than she’d ever known. Tory knows much of the truth, however, and he’s determined to put a halt to the wars that are on the horizon.

From there, the book tangles into a complicated blend of interplanetary politics and action, ultimately offering a fresh and fascinating take on zombies. The problem with that is that I had to muddle through the first half to get to the much more interesting second. The success of their attempts to stop everything hinges on the relationship between Alex and Tory, though that’s not made clear while all the sex is going on. Instead, I had to sit through chapters of stop and start pacing as I’d learn an interesting tidbit about the world then have to sit through yet another sex session. Tory is into control and pain, and Alex finds out the first time he touches her she likes it, but I’m told all this at the start rather than learning it from the characters, and with so little time to get to really know them and feel comfortable in the environment, I read their scenes far more detached than I should have been. They’re not badly written – for an EC book, it’s remarkably clean editorially – but without caring a little bit more for them, they just felt like they were getting in the way of the real story.

Because there’s a lot of story to tell here. The author has taken great pains to create a layered, complex universe, with a broad spectrum of characters in varying Machiavellian roles, and it takes too long to be comfortable in their skins for this to be as effective as it should be. Once Tory and Alex stop having sex as their primary function, the novel hurtles forward into the action plot, engaging me far more as I tried to figure that out than any of the sex did. It gave me a different, fresh perspective on zombies – which I admit are not my thing, as I tend to automatically give zombie books a pass when I’m looking at new releases – and I ended up wishing that more of the book had paid attention to that so I could have enjoyed it more. That’s not to say it doesn’t try. It just happens too late in the story for it to really work well.

The two leads are appropriately strong, though I do have reservations about both. Alex, in particular, lost some of her appeal when various twists toward the end only happen by undermining her strength (by being things she has never seen, which I found highly implausible considering her military career). Much of that is mitigated by a strong secondary cast, however. Jezar in particular fascinates me, so complex, and though I might not have enjoyed this book as much as I wanted to, if there’s a sequel with him (which it really reads like there will be more to follow this), I’ll be all over it.

In the end, this was a book of missed opportunities, because really, I should have loved this from the start. It just needed a better balance between the romance/sex and the plot to work. If Jezar gets his own story, I hope that balance is found.

Readability	7/10 – Dense political maneuvering gets eclipsed too early by copious sex scenes, muddying the plot and ease of reading for too long
Hero	6/10 – While I liked him, I never really felt his baser, more dominant tendencies were fully fleshed
Heroine	7/10 – For the most part, smart and resourceful, it was just her blindness to so much towards the end that got annoying
Entertainment value	6/10 – This could’ve been so much higher if the first half hadn’t been so poorly paced
World building	8/10 – A lot of thought went into creating the worlds, but not quite enough to make sure it was conveyed cleanly
TOTAL:	34/50