reviews_and_ramblings | Campus Cravings 4: Dorm Life by Carol Lynne

Office Advances (Campus Cravings) by Carol Lynne

Sam, Aaron's brother (Aaron was the main character of Off-Season) is a 21 years old college student. He is one of the gay students who chose to live on the KB dorm, the all gay college dormitory founded by Demitri, Aaron's lover. Sam is pretty out of money and so he accepts a part time work from Tony (Tony was the main character of Broken Pottery). But doing so he has to deal with Jace, Tony's vice president and the man who previously refused him a date. Jace is a mid-thirty handsome man, and he said he didn't date "kids".

But Jace's behaviour is all but that of a not interested man, he is possessive and they finish in bed in less time. Only that Jace is living with a former and very handsome boyfriend and everything Sam does seems wrong. In the end they will find a common path, and also some kinky common fetish in bed that will help them to build a steady relationship.

Jace is a man with trust issues, Sam is a young man, point (he has still to learn how to behave in a exclusive relationship). This is all the matter of the story, pretty simple and enjoyable.

The Campus Cravings series is like a soap opera. Every story is of the right lenght to entertain you, but also to not be too binding. And every book give you the chance to get acquinted with all the previous characters and to have a glimpse in the future ones: it's just two or three books that we know of a future couple, the blind Charlie and the ex marine Jack, and in this book we meet also the son flowers Lark and the tattoed biker Kade. I can't wait to read the story of this last couple.

And like in the old and good soap opera, don't try to find reality in it, there isn't... you can't ask yourself how is possible that every handsome men in this series is gay and how is possible that, in a rather small city, there is an average percentage of gay population that it is greater than San Francisco, and how is possible that every gay man has a brother, gay himself... This is Campus Cravings Fantasyland and I like it in this way!

http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?s=scxs4d172795&strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=236

Amazon Kindle: Campus Cravings: Office Advances
Publisher: Total-E-Bound Publishing (March 31, 2008)

A Biker’s Vow (Campus Cravings) by Carol Lynne

Another chapter in the Campus Cravings soap opera, the adventures of a small town college that, book after book, is more and more full of same sex couple and less and less homophobic about it. This time is the time of Kane, former lover of Jace, main character in Office Advances, and of Lark, roommate of Sam, now Jace's lover. Kane and Lark met in the previous book and they are apparently at opposite: Kane is a biker, all tattoo and strong body, 6.4 and moody. Lark is 5.3 and nerdy, always with his nose in a book. But something in the past draw them together: Kane is HIV positive and he has decided to give up sex to make penance of his past careless behavior; Lark instead was raised in a community, a new-flower type, where free love and acceptance is a normal way to live. And Lark first love was also HIV positive, so Lark knows what he will face having a relationship with Kane.

The story is pretty strong, the author is not light in giving all the detail of the consequences to live with the AIDS treat near you. And Kane and Lark don't walk toward the sunset free and happy only cause they are in love. But this is a romance, and obviously there must be a light at the end of the tunnel. Plus this is a continuing series, almost a soap opera as I affectionately call it, and so it ends with hope. More, in the end, the two soap operas by Carol Lynn, Campus Cravings and Cattle Valley merge, with the hypothesis that Kane and Lark will live in the future in the Montana LGBT small town (another utopian world by Carol Lynne) and probably Bo, Lark's former lover and now Kane's friend, will have a story of his own in the new city with a shy cowboy...

Carol Lynne is not new in bring into romance serious matter. Multicultural relationship, disable person, pedophilia, may december relationship... small or big problems, all of them not easily to face. And Carol Lynne faces them with a light hand, not being too angst but still not minimizing them. As always there is a lot of sex, a trademark of this author, and it's a joyous sex, down and dirty.

http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?s=gz8dxb269362&strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=260

Amazon Kindle: Campus Cravings: A Biker's Vow
Publisher: Total-E-Bound Publishing (May 26, 2008)