reviews_and_ramblings | Doggy Style by Ashley Ladd

Doggy Style is not a story so simple as it could at first appear. Devon is a male nurse who is temporarily on a forced leave after a small kid died under his watch; Devon is sure he is not to blame, but nevertheless he is torturing himself with regrets and ifs. One of his outlet is playing semi-professional baseball with a local team, and even there trouble are arriving, even if they are way more light than his career stop: the new sponsor, Sandy Falco, wants them to wear a jersey with emblazoned a bulldog wearing a biker’s leather jacket and the motto “Doggy Style”. Obviously the real meaning is to advertise the High Fashion pet clothes line of Sandy Falco, but to Devon it doesn’t sound so funny. Even less when he finds out that Sandy will play with them and that Sandy is a really handsome man.

First of all, two things I liked but let me a bit perplexed. Devon and Sandy’s homosexuality is neither flaunted nor hidden; it’s almost like a normal thing. More, in the same team there is another couple of men that are obviously also life partner. Now, I’m not familiar with South Florida, and the team is not a LGBT team, so, yes, it sounded strange, but not in a bad way. It was good to read, for once, about a relationship that has no trouble for its “nature”; not that there aren’t trouble, but being Devon and Sandy gays is not one of them.

The second thing that was quite strange to read, but positive, was the “out of character” of the two men. Devon apparently is the stronger man, the rough and sharp, the down-to-earth macho man, but he is almost always the bottom in the relationship, even playing the damsel in distress and being carried away on the shoulder of his hero at least two times, and Sandy, the fashion designer, the one who treats his dog like it was his son, ends to be the top. I think most of the time it’s a way to play, no one of them takes the role too seriously, but it’s fun to see. Actually all the story has a funny tone that almost crash with the subplot regarding Devon and his forced leave from work. It’s not a crash that it’s not dealt, au contraire, I think the author did it with purpose, to have the turn on the story even more of impact.

Finally there is the plot development, also this one quite original: Devon and Sandy start the relationship like two buddy friends having fun in the backseat of a car after two beer more. It's not a love story, and so, for the first two or three times they met after that, the relationship between them it was still that of friends and not lovers. Love comes later in the story, after they realize that they can like each other both as friends than lovers. I don't know, but I found this way to approach the relationship way more realistic than most of the romances I read.

Overall Doggy Style was a surprise, and the surprise lasted till the end of the story, I was not sure how it would have ended till the last pages.

http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=505

Amazon Kindle: Doggy Style (Bats and Balls)
Publisher: Total-E-Bound Publishing (July 13, 2009)

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Doggy Style by Ashley Ladd

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