Tumbling Blindly by Sue Brown

Title: Tumbling Blindly
Author: Sue Brown
Cover Artist: Posh Gosh
Publisher: Total E-Bound

Genre: Contemporary
Length: 63 pages

Book one in The Arches Series

Dumped by his partner, Matt isn’t looking for love. Once he meets Gabe at the gym, he finds a friend as well as a lover.

After he is dumped by Milo, his long-term partner, Matt retreats to his bed, only to be scared out of his wits by two policemen breaking into his house, checking to see if he is still alive after being alerted by a nosy neighbour.

The last thing he expects is to meet one of the policemen a few months later at his local gym. Gabe makes it obvious that he is attracted to Matt, but Matt is still getting over his break-up. To his surprise, Gabe isn’t deterred by Matt’s reluctance, and promises to be friends until Matt is ready for more.

Then Matt’s world is turned upside down by Milo’s return, begging a bed for one night. One night turns into a week and Milo doesn’t move off the sofa. Although Matt still has feelings for Milo, he realises he also has feelings for Gabe, who is more than a friend, and waits patiently to be a lover.

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There’s not much to spoil after that blurb, so I guess I can speak freely. The story turned out to be more fun than I feared after a slightly off-putting beginning.


Finding your MC huddled in bed, sniveling for days on end over a breakup isn’t a really auspicious beginning, and I wanted to kick Matt a good one. Hurt, yeah, but this was flat out self indulgent. Seriously, he was holed up in there long enough to prompt a worried (Matt spells it “nosy”) neighbor to call the police. Which might be the biggest favor anyone ever did him, aside from scummy Milo walking out on him.

Matt took the breakup hard, even though there’s very little to show that Milo was ever a kind or loving partner, and even two months later, he’s barely willing to entertain the idea of Gabe being interested in him. Of course, when your first meeting is “cop finding not-dead body holed up in rancid bedroom,” there’s still that first impression thing to get over.

Matt “wanted to prove to Gabe that there were times when he didn’t smell like the arse end of a donkey” when they first meet at the Arches, a gay gym that looks like the planned backdrop for a series of stories. Odor keeps cropping up, some mentions work better than others.

Gabe’s willing to go for friendship—he’s really a too good to be true sort of guy, aside from a tendency to go toppy without provocation or invitation, which Matt does learn to utilize as he gradually comes out of his funk. He’s also the resident kicker of asses, figuratively speaking, which Matt needs in large doses after Milo starts weaseling his way back into Matt’s life. Gabe’s more alive on the page than Matt is, and it’s a little bit of a mystery what he sees in Matt that draws him so strongly.

Milo thinks Matt’s a decent meal ticket though, and like the camel under sticking his nose under the tent wall, starts oozing his way back into Matt’s life. Since Matt’s backbone is a good grade of cooked spaghetti, he might just manage it.

The story is well enough written and the character growth is strong enough that I was willing to read through to find out how this resolves, because the initial impression of Matt as a sad sack wasn’t particularly enjoyable. If Gabe hadn’t kicked his butt into a better approximation of a human with a spine, I wouldn’t have found much to like about him, but as it was, I could believe in Matt getting his act together and the two of them as partners with some sort of equality.

Luka, the gym owner, is an interesting secondary character with a lot of potential conflict, and I like the notion of the gym as a nexus of stories. I’m certainly willing to read the next one.

It’s embarrassing to admit that my opinion may be colored by this being my third book in a row where a POV character can be mistaken for a particularly helpless damsel in distress, and that I might have felt differently had I come upon this one cold. My rating is half a star higher than my first inclination, to try to compensate for this bias. 3.25 marbles

Mr. Plum by Sue Brown

Dave picks up coffee every morning at the train station on his way to work. He can't help but notice when the man in front of him is given a plum-colored cup holder, as it goes perfectly with his own tie. There are other things he can't help but notice, like how hot "Mr. Plum" is.

When Mr. Plum hands over a cup of coffee, exactly how Dave likes it, the morning he's late getting to the station, it's the start of a beautiful friendship. Or is it?

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The opening paragraph of this sweet short story tells you a lot -- two men who dispute the small stuff but agree on the bigger issues have come together over coffee and commuting.

It's a slow build-up -- Dave, who fixates on small details, goes from noticing the color of the cup sleeve on the stranger's coffee cup to noticing the stranger, and from chatting to making dates. The fragility of taking such a casual acquaintance as a morning commute to something deeper seems to keep both Dave and Tom from asking some basic questions, or perhaps the underlying regularity of meeting a morning train with coffee in hand lulls them into thinking no day would be different.

Then the changes they are trying to make with each other collide with the changes life thrusts upon them. Dave has a lot of trouble rolling with the punches. Described as nearly OCD and certainly worried about details at the wrong moments -- honestly, finish the orgasm, enjoy it, and THEN start cleaning up! -- he's going to be a bit of a challenge for more laid back Tom, but there's hope.

The big events happen to Tom offscreen, so Dave is left to hear about them later rather than share them, making the story a little flat. The struggle is for them getting together anywhere but on a commuter train, so it's very low key, and doesn't really perk up until the last third, when they can finally interact outside the train.

Overall, this is sweet -- they both mean well, though Tom has no way of knowing how invested Dave is, and that his actions have more impact than he thinks. You have to cheer (softly) for them when they finally do get together.

The convention of an HEA in romance takes the spoileriness of starting at the present moment in the relationship and going back to the beginning, as this story does, because it's the journey more than the destination. This journey is cute but not intense, it's made of small disappointments and small triumphs. 3.5 marbles




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Prey Time by Sue Brown

Two men are checking Jeff out before he even enters the club. They're a real pretty picture, Blue Eyes with his back pressed against Green Eyes' chest as they watch him get a drink. He waits to see what they do. If they want him, he'll play, but first they have to ask nicely. Jeff is the top, the one in control. Except Jeff soon finds out he isn't. The little man with the snapping blue eyes is definitely the puppet master here.

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Third person present tense brings us readers along on a a hunt -- Jeff is looking for a night of hot sex, and the two dancers are hunting him equally hard. The power dynamics of a threesome waver all over -- who's in charge is the name of this game, and in the heat of the encounter - and damn is it hot - one of the dancers vry smoothly takes over running this show.

There's a nice twist at the end of sweaty, raw sex, and when one of the men says what's bubbling through my mind, I could only think I've been played just as hard as Jeff has, and I like it just as much. Which is a lot. The story is 95% PWP, really, but very fine PWP, and that 5% of back-loaded plot puts it on my re-read shelf.


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