Evan's Luck by Jennah Scott and H. Sterling

Title: Evan’s Luck
Authors: Jennah Scott & H. Sterling
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Cover Artist: Robin Ludwig Design
Genre: contemporary, cowboys
Length: 37,000 words, novella
Formats Mobi, Epub, PDF

Spencer Quinn has an image to uphold. His family name means more than anything. It’s the reason the reason they've become the most successful stock contractor on the rodeo circuit. Fresh out of school, he’s ready to take over the family business. It’s no secret he’s attracted to men, and so far that hasn’t been a problem.

Until Evan.

The assertive friend who knows how to push every one of his buttons.

Evan Taylor is known for his love ‘em and leave ‘em style, yet the last few months have left him deflated and lonely. His father's shadow wasn't where he wanted to end up, but he's having trouble finding happiness. Maybe because women can't keep his attention. He’s losing hope of settling down until a blast from the past saunters by, his heart catches and tingles spread over his skin.

Of all people, Spencer. The one person who would never give Evan a second glance. It’s just his luck.
The old saying, “Bad luck is better than none at all” fits Evan perfectly. Or does it? Is his bad luck about to change? Will Spencer Quinn be a good luck charm instead?

I had a really hard time writing the review for this one, because there were things I liked, and a couple of things that made me mad.

The writing was competent, and the plot mostly coherent. I liked Spencer, who had some support from his family and was tough enough to make it in a business world not inclined to like him. Evan was okay, flailing around with this new attraction to a man, and trying so hard to get Spencer to take him seriously as a romantic possibility, even though it came totally out of the blue.

In short, there were things here I should like, and yet… I could not warm up to this story, even after reading it and thinking about it for several weeks. It's an okay story. Should have been a 3.


Except for one thing—buckle bunny. I do not ever, EVER want to hear that phrase again. Anyone stupid enough to say it in my presence will get punched, because I have hit my gag limit. Yeah, they exist. No, that’s not the only way women relate to cowboys, even the sexy cowboys. So, after a dozen repetitions, and basically the only way women get referred to, I am done. Over and over, buckle bunny, buckle bunny. It pissed me off for the casual and persistent misogyny. Once was enough to get the point across, yeah, he doesn’t have much liking or respect for women. Okay, once shows his character. But a dozen times? That’s contempt. It's also poor storytelling.  I don't like those two things together.

Either that or it IS character, and that makes Evan completely hateful person and Spencer should run miles in the opposite direction and never, EVER stop. And in a romance, that's crap storytelling.

And yeah, the repeated Buckle Bunny made me count. Anything that makes me stop reading and start counting is a kick out of the story. And kicking me out of the story with a term that rubs in the audience’s worthlessness, because be real, the main audience for this book is women, makes me twice as mad. And if someone wants to say but all women aren't like that, then it's converted to slut shaming, which isn't any better. Also poor storytelling, because it takes away from the main couple.

Frankly, the real slut around here is Evan, he's stuck his dick into anything that holds still. No wonder Spencer doesn't trust him.

I don’t care if the authors can tell a good tale or not, because it’s not just a romance, it’s a romance with contempt for the people who are expected to spend money on the book.  1 marble

The Cost of Secrets by Cassandra Gold

Title: The Cost of Secrets

Author: Cassandra Gold

Cover Artist: Kalen O’Donnell

Publisher: Loose Id

Genre: Contemporary

Length: 121 pages (PDF)/Word count: 35,457

Police officer Dan Fallon knows the streets, but he's a rookie at romance, and still very much in the closet. He thinks sexy fitness instructor Isaac is way out of his league, until a dangerous situation breaks the ice between them.

Isaac Weiss has spent years trying to get his life back together after a series of terrible mistakes. The last thing he should be doing is trying to have a relationship with a cop, especially with his past. Too bad he's unable to resist sweet, shy Dan.

It's not long though, before the secrets both men are keeping rise to the surface and threaten to destroy the fragile connection they've forged with one another. Can Dan and Isaac find acceptance or will the cost of secrets be too high?

Review

The blurb sure looked good. Given that the stated theme is secrets, one expects that total honesty will be hard to achieve, but the problems in this story go far beyond difficulties in communication. Between the treatment of some serious life issues and stylistic clunkers, I would have DNF’d this story at the 20% mark had I not been reading for review. 

I was very disappointed, because the major issues in each character’s life would make establishing a healthy relationship challenging, and they deserve thoughtful treatment. Here, unfortunately, they are used only as defenses against communication, and growth in overcoming them isn’t really happening. Body image is an important topic, as is unwilling participation in exploitive situations and drug addiction, but they deserve better handling than they received here.

Officer Dan Fallon is the confident, adept policeman, but Dan the man carries around the memories of a difficult adolescence as a 450 pound band geek, and takes off his social skills with his uniform. Personal trainer, kick-boxing instructor, nursing student Isaac is the sexy twink who’s making his life into something better. At twenty three, he’s still trying to recover from the horrors he went through as a teenager, and what he went through would definitely leave marks. He’s determined to keep everything about his past to himself, believing he’s too sullied for a wonderful guy like Dan, who of course hasn’t a clue about his appeal. 

All of this could be worked up into a touching and healing story, but that’s not what we have here. Various plot points occurring in the present day are either handled clumsily or ignored, and the past traumas come to light as bricks of prose thrown at the plot whenever handy. This cheapens very real problems of sexual abuse and exploitation, drug abuse, morbid obesity, and suicide, and does a disservice to those who have suffered. There isn’t a lot of thoughtful examination or of character growth and change, more melodrama than drama. 

Dan comes across as having personality transplants every few pages. It’s disconcerting, unpleasant, and overdone, and when his off-duty persona bleeds into his professional life toward the end, it’s consistent but irritating. He’s shed 240 lbs and still finds himself too soft in the middle for his own liking, but feeds on chocolate milk and sticky rolls even in situations where it’s not clearly for comfort. His unwillingness to be seen naked at least rings true, and renders it somewhat likely that he’s twenty eight and never been kissed. He’s certainly sweet, a word that appears 17 times and yes I counted, but he’s not very interesting. That’s sad, because he could be.

Isaac has had way too much sex and no love, and can’t believe he’s more than a sex object. He spends much of the story either melting, angsting, or weeping, and at no time is it clear how he obtained the skills he makes his living with. One would expect a certain amount of street smarts from Isaac, given his history, but he stops to worry about Dan’s bloody nose before they’ve completely subdued the armed robber. Once the robber is carted off to the station, the incident is never mentioned again—it’s only a device to get the men alone together.

Again, the point of the book is secrets vs communication, but this devolves into one Big Misunderstanding after another, which is not improved by style. Walls of exposition go on for pages, telling us what the characters are doing and thinking, but not illustrating it with an incident or even breaking it up with dialog. The POV is very shallow and distant, not really allowing the readers to feel along with the MCs and exacerbating the feeling of glib treatment of the major traumas. Between the adverbs, the feelings named outright rather than being illustrated, and caroming from cliché to cliché, the story offers no stylistic balm to make up for the characterizations and clunky plot. 

I would like to say that the sex was completely hot, but alas, that consolation is not there either. We are in Isaac’s POV when they first have sex and this event is more a cause for terror for Isaac than a source of joy—he’s the bottom without discussion, apparently because he’s built more slightly and/or has his horrid exploitive past. He doesn’t even stop to savor the orgasm before he’s running away from the big handsome cop he doesn’t deserve. Of course he has no idea of the significance of the event for Dan, just one more thing they don’t discuss. The fallacy of only anal sex is real sex is alive here, and lube is optional. The final sex scene where they are saying some really cheesy things together, and aware of the cheesiness and able to laugh about it, is the warmest moment of the story.

The premise, two damaged men healing from their pasts and learning to find their own worth and accept love, is ambitious but poorly executed, and I cannot recommend this book. 1 marble

Paul Dot Go by Robin Anderson

Title: Paul Dot Go
Author: Robin Anderson
Cover Artist: unknown
Publisher: Nazca Plains
Genre: bizarro
Length: 200 pages
Rating: 1 star out of 5

Review Summary: A poorly-written descent into the bizarre and revolting; best avoided.

Blurb

Meet WILLIAM (WAN.W) WANDSWORTH, portrait painter extraordinaire, whose diverse backgrounds for his carefully selected subjects (and to their cost) vary from a converted country barn, a startlingly ‘reinvented’ and ‘mechanised’ chrome and mirrored 14th century Italian castle, a refurbished Victorian candle factory and last but not quite least, an eerie cemetery where clandestine midnight assignations could and do go horribly wrong. Added to this bizarre palette is a vibrant clashing of cocks, personalities and multi talents when the larger-than-life artist crosses paintbrushes with the likes of ruthless interior designer HARRY HUMPHRIES and boy wonder pop idol TOMMY TYLER. Aiding and abetting WILLIAM in his determination to become ‘a legend in his own time’ is his hand-picked coterie comprising the sinister dwarf duo, PAUL and NELSON, the olfactory major domo SKIDS along with his bête noir, the rapacious RUFUS, plus the dark, dubious PRINCE ALBERT. An innocent victim caught up within the artist’s ruthless ambitions is the long-suffering MIC SANDFORD whose infatuation with the aforesaid HARRY sees situations ranging from loss of body parts and even a soul or two.

Prepare for a fast, twisted rollercoaster ride - part scenic and part terrifying – of jealousies, perversions and violent revenge but always within the presence of the darkest of humour. As with WILLIAM’S nemesis PAUL GAUGUIN - the original PAUL.GO – this reincarnation is an acquired taste; for some a feast of unsavoury delights and for others a banquet of despair.

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions: I was moved to read this book because of some misguided willingness to try an author unknown to me from a press I didn't recognize. Further checking showed books from Lethe Press and Silver Publishing under Robin Anderson's name, although it may not be the same person, and by the time I researched Nazca Plains, it was too late; I was committed to finish it. The blurb, seen in depth a second time, had all the clues to send me running; I plead not considering that bizarro fiction might be submitted for review here. Learn from my error.


The names in caps is a convention from query letters to agents; the blurb might have been ganked from such a letter, so I read on. The first fifty pages lull one into complacency: the story has a prologue that reads like a horror novel, and then backs up three years. The body of the story begins innocuously enough with a fey and talented interior decorator acquiring clients, discussing same with his clique of employees and hangers-on, and all of them drinking like fish. The dialog is very twee and self-congratulatory, as Harry and all think he's the best thing to hit the inside of a house since paint was invented. Once Harry has a falling out with potential client William Wandsworth, returning his advance, the story descends into mass reshuffling of who sleeps with whom, an occasional who rapes what, and general acquisition of revenge in varied and vile ways. Wandsworth devotes the rest of the book to making sure none of the rest of the cast of thousands, aside from his loathsome sidekicks, is happy.

The plot is tissue thin and exists primarily to organize the assortment of despicable tricks and occasional bodily harm into a timeline. Wandsworth's overblown sense of entitlement suggests he compare himself to Paul Gauguin, something not at all supported by the text aside from the peculiar method of signing paintings. He believes that it's his right to spend years creating torment for everyone, something he's willing to devote most of his time and fortune doing. There are aspects of the horror originally promised in the prologue, but they don't maintain the promise and devolve into the merely horrible and somewhat ludicrous. The promised dark humor comes across as scatological: humor may be subjective but this created zero chuckles.

Characterization is slightly deeper; a few characters' voices stand out, but most fall into the general morass of "those to be tormented." The distinction is further blurred by a plethora of names beginning with "H" but keeping them sorted out was actually a moot point: I detested most of them. One or two, like Mic, were only unfortunate enough to have crossed paths with Wandsworth and his minions, and those I felt sorry for. Some of the characters do pair off into long-term couples, which unfortunately only makes them into bigger targets.

Style, sigh. Words do not mean what this writer thinks they do. An "olfactory major domo" turned out to be only odiferous; there are dozens of examples. Characters snigger, smirk, laugh, and camp their sentences rather than speak. By the time they finish "camping" their lines, it takes 2-3 pages to impart one tidbit of information. My copy was an ARC and may not have had a final currying, but extra words, typos, and absent commas did not improve the reading experience.

If the point of bizarro literature is to shock, it did. I waded through the musical beds, incest, shit-flinging, ear-severing and all, after another good long look at the blurb made me decide that I really had been warned, though I had not realized it at the time. "A feast of unsavoury delights" covers a lot of territory. This story, in any "I have not made promises to finish it unless something horrible and unwarned for crops up" scenario was a DNF even before page 84. That's where the bestiality scene caused me to part ways with my lunch. The author may be satisfied that his work here is done.

Readers of Carlton Mellick III may possibly find something to like here; the rest of us should be reading something else.

A Giant's Friend by MD Grimm

Can love flourish in a time of war? Friends since childhood, Jeth and Kodie now lead an army and guard a mountain pass against the invading Carpathians. Jeth's father was half-giant, and he has always been persecuted because of his lineage. His mother died due to the bigotry of villagers, unleashing the giant’s rage inside him. Jeth has found his purpose in war. When Kodie admits his feelings of love, will Jeth find a new purpose in life?

Before they can find out where their feelings might lead them, Kodie is caught in an avalanche and Jeth must find him before the enemy does. With war all around them, can these two friends find peace that only a lover’s arms can give?
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Problems from the start with this one, and I did read the excerpt, I just thought that the choppy style, full of fragments, was meant to be a slice of thought process. It's actually an accurate reflection of the other 127 pages. What isn't fragmentary is passive or muddled, and I considered abandoning this book several times over.



The author seems to have put next to no thought into her world building, starting with something as basic as names. Everyone has something recognizable in the English speaking world, plus or minus some mangling. The Carpathians in the blurb are what happens in your head because of it -- in the text they are Carpathyns living on the world of Terrya, and fighters such as Johhn and Freedricks have to stand up to them. The Sennicians have one mountain pass to defend against invaders who will dominate the world if they win, but they don't trouble to build a proper garrison -- after three years of active warfare on top of however many years of uneasy coexistence they are still living in rough camp.

So many things are thrown in or mentioned because they would be nice to have at just that moment. A carrier eagle is conveniently available to send a message for a man traveling alone, avalanches come when called, a hot bath for a large man can be filled with snow-melt and no one counts the fuel cost. A horse large enough to carry a man "exactly eight feet tall, with a shoulder width equal to four regular men and a large chest" and a relative lightweight who's only six foot five gets mentioned at the exact moment it's called on to carry double.

If he's exactly eight feet tall, I'm not anticipating any flights of fancy in the rest of that sentence, which makes the shoulders kind of startling -- my shoulders are about 18 inches across, so a regular man's would be bigger, which makes his shoulders six feet across, or more. Huh? Jeth's hung to the same standard, which rendered some of the sex scenes painful to read.

The scenes were all painful to read, actually. Even without being able to know from moment to moment whether this is a trained army or a rough militia, the war duke being seen pouncing on the commander who spends his men foolishly, by random messengers not once but twice, is going to create a morale problem. Is pouncing uppermost in the war duke's mind after an exchange that boils down to "I wasted some of your most precious and irreplaceable assets because I want you"? Both war duke and commander agreed this was a bad plan, not a good plan that didn't work out, so if Kodie is the best commander as we're told, the Sennicians are in trouble.

The battle scenes did not have any relationship to the physics of swinging a broadsword or shooting a bow, but that's pretty much forgivable compared to shattered bone and compound fractures that heal enough to travel in just a few days, without magic. A man who's so badly broken that he'd realistically need a couple of amputations if he couldn't get magical or surgical repair is not a good candidate for sex. If he's hurting bad enough to wish he'd pass out, he's not getting it up.

If there was one point in this book I can wholeheartedly approve of, it's the philosophy at the end.

This had the seeds of a really good story in it, but between the cavalier handling of physical issues, world building that wasn't there, the hand-waving that accompanied the more interesting plot points (how did Jeth approach the other giants?) and a style that was probably meant to reflect simple, uneducated men but actually felt like it was geared to children, it hasn't come to pass. One marble.

Buy here.