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A very nice reverse cinderfella theme, meaning that, the Prince Charming here is the one needing to be rescue by the “peasant”. Gavin Montgomery is the middle son of a very wealthy family; his older brother is already presenting the good boy façade for the society, and his younger sisters are one the rebel and the second the social/political climber… no stereotype remains for Gavin who is basically living in the shadow. Sure he is gay, but in today modern “good” society, that is no more a scandal, above all when his father decided that could be a good promo and became a supporter of Marriage Equality.And then Gavin meets Jamie, the police rescue diver coming to drag Gavin and his friend Beau out of the river; now don’t think Gavin did some tragic mistake, but truth be told, he was not far from it. Gavin did not have stability in his life, aside from trying to patch together his dismantled family. On the other hand, Jamie doesn’t have a real family, but he is building it with friends, problem is they are all couples, and they would like for him to follow on the same path.
The story is a classic with a touch of sexy, or maybe even a little more than a touch. Both Gavin than Jamie are quite free when coming to sex, and when they are still consider themselves unattached, they are not against the idea of group sex or exhibitionism, of course always considering that they are not doing a wrong to anyone.
The cinderfella theme was always a favorite of mine, and I quite enjoyed this new twist of having the rescued becoming the rescuer. Not that Gavin has to be really rescued, more he needs love, plenty of love, and above all he needs something real, basic, something that money is not able to buy. Jamie has plenty of what Gavin needs, and aside from some initial misunderstanding, Jamie is also able to not judge Gavin from the appearance, to read behind the bored brat to see the simple guy who would like a suburban white fenced house with a back yard and a dog into it.
http://store.samhainpublishing.com/bad-a
Amazon Kindle: Bad Attitude (Bad in Baltimore)
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd. (April 23, 2013)
Series: Bad in Baltimore
1) Bad Company
2) Bad Boyfriend
3) Bad Attitude
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
I have to be sincere saying I picked this book for the title that seemed funny and for the assumption I was to read a quite ordinary romance balancing the blue collar lover with the white one. That is not actually what I got and the change was unexpected but good.
I followed this couple of billionaires around the world for the last three books, so my judgment is probably biased, but I really feel like they are old friends and I know all their antics and like with friends, you accept them and smile with indulgence.
Reading this book, sometime I had the feeling the author would have liked to write a full historical novel, but she opted for a fantasy to allow her characters to “live”. This is because, aside for a paranormal element, as big as it’s, the presence of dragons, the rest of the novel is pretty much a classical medieval novel, with intrigues and adventures, to a level that, if not for the sex, I had almost the impression this was a young adult novel. Much to this point was the young age of the two main character, just 19 years old and struggling with the duty of being adult but still with the innocence and naiveté of young men.
Don’t know why but I had the wrong idea this was a paranormal romance, and on the contrary it’s far from it. St-St-Stuffed is a contemporary novel, about two young men, and they fall in love, so you can add “romance” to the description, but I wanted to highlight this is more wide story than the love story.
Tailor Made is a funny romp about a naïve, and slutty young man suddenly thrown into the shark pool of business.
A futuristic approach to the old fashioned Cinderfella story, Redemption is the story of Jason, a young man who has an immediate need for money and the fastest way to find it is to sold himself into a bondmate contract for 20 years. Even if the term “bondmate” can suggest something more romantic, the bondmate contract is basically the modern way to be a slave: accepting the contract Jason accepts to become a property of someone else, man or woman is the same, if they have the money to buy his contract.
Quite a complex plot for being barely a novella length story; in a fantasy/futuristic world, once that reverted back to more or less medieval times, Galon is a mage and he is a man’s man. For a mage that is not acceptable, also since mages have to reproduce as much as possible being theirs an hereditary trait. But Galon is not able to renounce to his most basic desires and so he is often in danger, like this time when Anzel arrives to save him.
A 100% Cinderfellas story: Cyrus and Weber met some years before during one of Cyrus’s travel with his friends. A surgeon from San Francisco and a cowboy from Texas is apparently a mismatch, but they click together in a perfect way. Weber thinks the only reason is that they are meeting every few months, so that Cyrus has always the feeling it’s a light escapade; Weber is sure that, if they had to enter in a routine, the novelty will soon wear off and the wealthy surgeon will find a better match.
This story reminded me a little The Boxer by Jan Irving, but only since the incipit is similar, after that the development is very different, and above all Muscling Through has a full English flavour. Al Fletcher is this big guy with a kind heart but with a different perception of reality; he is not stupid, but Al is not able to fake emotions, not even the small things you do to not hurt people. To Al, what you say is what you think, what you do is what you want. Larry on the other side is small and lithe, an history art college professor.
First of all, I was surprise to find out this was an historical romance, I don’t know but I was of the wrong impression it was more sci-fi/fantasy. In a way, there is a steampunk flavour on it, it’s not that the author pushed much on fantasy details, but I think she took some “liberties” to make the story more a romance than a historical novel. For example, John Fauth is a University professor and a scientist, and his machine to find noble metals seems a little too much futuristic to be true, but I’m not so familiar with the various scientific discoveries and their time to be able to tell how much far from reality the author went. Another of such liberties is maybe the forced profession of Robert Belton, a male prostitute in a brothel in Seattle; while it’s true molly houses and similar places were already existing at the time, a saloon/slash brother in a frontier town like Seattle in 1898 I think was not a common place to find a male prostitute. Again the author made it believable, specifying Robert is a “necessary” evil thing, according to the owner of the brothel; but I wonder who would have been the courage at the time to enter such a place and openly ask for a man instead of a woman (since women were available); from Robert’s words, even if they were not the majority, and the women gained more money than him, he still had customers.
