Month: November 2014

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Rack & Ruin by Charlie Cochet

Optimized-Rack and Ruin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreamspinner Presents: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5518

Blurb

New York City’s streets are more dangerous than ever with the leaderless Order of Adrasteia and the Ikelos Coalition, a newly immerged Therian group, at war. Innocent civilians are caught in the crossfire and although the THIRDS round up more and more members of the Order in the hopes of keeping the volatile group from reorganizing, the members of the Coalition continue to escape and wreak havoc in the name of vigilante justice.

Worse yet, someone inside the THIRDS has been feeding the Coalition information. It’s up to Destructive Delta to draw out the mole and put an end to the war before anyone else gets hurt. But to get the job done, the team will have to work through the aftereffects of the Therian Youth Center bombing. A skirmish with Coalition members leads Agent Dexter J. Daley to a shocking discovery and suddenly it becomes clear that the random violence isn’t so random. There’s more going on than Dex and Sloane originally believed, and their fiery partnership is put to the test. As the case takes an explosive turn, Dex and Sloane are in danger of losing more than their relationship.

Morgan’s Review
Chaos in THIRDS land.

The Coalition has a mole from inside THIRDS and some Therian is killing humans. And if that isn’t enough, things inside THIRDS are in chaos as well.

Dex and Sloane are navigating their budding relationship. Sloane is trying to get the rest of his team to pull it together and leave personal business at home. Dex is trying to help Cael with his feelings for Ash. Letty and Rosa are … okay, they’re fine. Taylor is sexually harassing EVERYONE. The new guy Levi might be hooking up with Lou, and Dex has to plan for his pre-birthday-party-party. It’s a lot to deal with.

In this installment we get to see a lot of Sloane and Dex and most of it is really, deliciously, ooey and gooey. Sloane even purrs! (Wait til you read that part – so fantastic!) They seem solidly on the forward track until… well… Sloane runs … again. Dex inadvertently moves the relationship forward and Sloane isn’t prepared for it, so Sloane takes off for a bit, but eventually, with the help of Ash (of all Therians) figures out what a good thing he has in Dex.

The sex is super hot and Dex and Sloane as a couple are hilarious. (My favorite is the closet scene: “This isn’t what it looks like. I dropped some change, it rolled under the closet door, and when I went to pick it up, my clothes fell off. True story.”)

Ash has something going on in his life that is making him distance himself from Cael and Cael is heartbroken and making potentially fatal mistakes as a result.

When the dust settles and the bad guy (for the moment) is disposed of, we’re left with a cliff hanger. We’re going to have to wait til next YEAR to see what happens – that Charlie Cochet, she’s naughty!

Now, we can all probably guess the outcome, but in addition to the main worry, we also have to worry about Cael and Ash – will Ash ever figure things out and get it together enough to be with Cael?

And, really, what is going on with Calvin and Hobbs? Inquiring minds want to know.

Overall, this was a wonderful third installment to the THIRDS series and I really enjoyed it. There was lots of Therian shifting which I like, Sloane acting like a happy kitty, which I liked and some tricky spy stuff, which I like.

I highly recommend this book and the series and give it a 5 of 5 hearts.

amazing

 

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Quiddity Flight-A.J. Llewellyn

Publisher:  Amber Quill Press, LLC/Amber Allure (LGBT)

Retired LAPD detective Quiddity Flight yearns for action, adventure, and good old-fashioned romance. He’s about to get it all…and it might just be the death of him. Just as Quiddity accepts an insurance-fraud case, looking into the lifestyle and allegedly fake injury of multi-millionaire soccer player João del Sol, he finds that del Sol is deeply attracted to him.

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But Quiddity has bigger problems on his hands. Del Sol is the best thing that’s come his way in a very long time, yet somebody apparently has it in for the sexy-but-slightly-grizzled, silver-fox cop. Missing posters start popping up around town offering a reward for information on his disappearance. Except he hasn’t disappeared. Then, new posters begin offering higher rewards for information about his murder. Except Quiddity Flight is still very much alive, and he’s not gonna sit around waiting to read his own obituary…

I really like reading this author’s work. Her quirky titles and characters never fail to capture my attention. What I particularly like about this book and this character was the fact that he was a more mature man, a silver fox, if you will. It’s refreshing to read about a sexy, mature man in his 50s. Many would look at this age and dismiss them as being old men, but that is further from the truth. Men in their 50s and beyond are rather sexy. The characters in this book were really fleshed out and well written, the pace just right. I truly enjoy her writing style. She didn’t drag out the mystery or tease you with the romance and sex. This book is short, but Llewellyn manages to pack quite a bit of substance in this book. I would absolutely love to stop in and see how João and Quid are doing, maybe see them featured in another one of Llewellyn’s wonderful stories.

5

Amazon

Amber Allure

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Grif’s Toy (Tease and Denial Book 1) by Joseph Lance Tonlet

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00069]Grif believes he’ll live his life as a virgin. After all, who would want him? How could anyone find him, a guy who came with less than man-sized equipment, worthy of their love?

What he hadn’t counted on were the two amazing men who would change his life. After entering college, he meets Tate, his fun-loving, wealthy roommate. While years later, with Tate now just a memory, Wes, a handsome, rugged ex-marine who runs his own security firm enters his life.

Both men force him to see his value, despite his size and insecurities.

My review:

From the moment that the story opened with Grif and his boyfriend Wes meeting for a dinner at a swank restaurant, I knew this was not going to be a run of the mill love story. It snared me from the start and while Grif is into humiliation which isn’t my thing, I simply had to pick the book up again and again after pausing long enough to grab a cup of fortifying tea.

Make no mistake about it, Wes has a bit of a sadist in him while Grif loves to be humiliated during mutually agreed upon scenes. It’s a dynamic that works for them both and actually cements their bond deeper as they both feel urges to depart from their more typical love life.

Tonlet starts us off by throwing the reader into the deep end and then giving us a set of flashbacks as to how the two men came to meet and enter into their current relationship dynamic. We also get to meet a much younger Grif who discovers that the dream life he’d envisioned for high school was not going to be as he and his family discover Wes has a physical  anomaly.

His relationship with best friend and college roommate Tate is as gay for you as it gets behind closed doors, and it is also heartbreaking in all the ways it could not be. Despite their rigidly set personal parameters, it was liberating for both young men though and extremely sensual, allowing both men to explore sides of themselves they’d never expected to discover, and not just sexually.

His relationship with Wes is also revealed to be not quite what one at first thinks, as their first meeting and early relationship shows. Wes is a deeply passionate man who greatly respects Grif and truly adores  all of him, but deep inside he has the urge to indulge in a dark kink. Luckily, it coincides with Grif’s desire, and the two have a system worked out. If neither consents, it’s business as usual. Indeed, most of the discomfort I initially felt was not due to the expression of their particular kink, but the very intimate way the two men are depicted as well as my personal surprise at just how H.O.T. their “chocolate” scenes were..

Never before have I encountered a character who breathed from the page so vividly with his inner psyche so exposed, so that I wasn’t merely observing the scene with him, but it almost felt like I was participating. Yeah, I had a lot of fortifying tea.  I did have to be careful to not spit it out though as quite often I’d sit down and sip my beverage only to be read some banter between the two men that made me want to giggle.

It’s as real as relationships get. With mutual respect, deep affection, heavy on mutual trust, and a genuine sense of joy. None of the characters are reduced to archetypes, the dominant Wes can be submissive as well in his own way, while Grif definitely has his dominant side. When the sexual roles are reversed, it made for a smoking read that nearly overheated my Kindle battery.

If this is book one, I can’t wait to see how Tonlet challenges me with book 2. Bring it on.

Rating: 4.5

Buy: Amazon US  Amazon UK   ARe  Smashwords

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