Playing Dirty (Action! 2) by G.A. Hauser

[reviews_and_ramblings]

I want to try an experiment, I want to write this post on the second book in a continuous series without reading what I wrote of the first book. Why I want to do that? Since I have the clear feeling, soon after finished the book, that this second one has left me a deeper impression in comparison to the first one.

Carl and Keith are both young actors in a cable drama. The tone of the show is quite sexy and they play two gay men in love: the first book was about the two of them finding out that the role they play on video was not so far from what they really felt: not Carl or Keith were gay but they were irresistibly drawn to each other and at the end of the book they started a relationship that seemed doomed by the public opinion.

In this second book, it is soon obvious that they can't pretend to be straight, they live together, they spend every free moment they have together, they work together: Carl and Keith seem to be joint to the hip. Problem is that around them there are discording opinion: the show wants for them to continue to walk on the edge of the dark side, and if they want they can also plunge deep inside, and instead their agents want from them to deny, deny, deny, and maybe also date some fake girlfriends only for the sake of the media. Maybe stronger men will be able to take their own decision, but well, let me say that nor Carl or Keith are strong men, they are quite young and also a lot naivee.

All in all Carl is not a so bad character, he is the more steady in the couple, he is probably also the one who has more to loose. He is not a novice to the show business, before this new show he had some other experiences and a taste of how it could be if he was a star. So probably he is the one who is more cautious when it's time to risk everything in the name of love. But despite all this, Carl is the one who I feel more involved in the relationship, maybe he is the one who is not used to burst his feeling to the wind, but I believe that his feelings are the ones which run deeply, at long distance probably he would be the one who would take more seriously their commitment.

And then there is Keith: he is not only new to gay love, he is new at love at all. He has never had a serious relationship in the past and for him all his a game. He is discovering a world of which he doesn't know nothing and he wants to experiment, even when experiment means open their couple to a third man (speaking of flying low and trying to avoid publicity...). Anyway he is like a baby with a new toy, he maybe doesn't realize how bad it can go, but he doesn't do that with malice. Since he is on the open with Carl, and he doesn't hide anything, he doesn't see it like a cheating. In a way I believe that Keith is behaving like a great majority of young gay men: being faithful and exclusive it's maybe a mental boundaries of mine that I'm trying to projecting to the characters of the book, and instead I should try to read them as they are, and not as I would like them to be.

In this book G.A. Hauser returns to her beginning style, with two young and hot man in love who haven't anything in mind if not doing it down and dirty. If it's consensual and if they don't do anything to arm other people, why they shouldn't play and be happy together? And so there is plenty of sex, scorching and loud, very "vocal". But there is also a novelty, finally a female character that it's not so bad, almost sympathetic with the two heroes, a character in which sometime I believe I could recognize the author herself; but don't get me wrong, this woman is far from being a fairy godmother. She is quite similar to the sister in The Kiss, probably the only other female character by G.A. Hauser that I really liked.

Amazon: Playing Dirty

Amazon Kindle: Playing Dirty

Series:
1) For Love and Money: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/101976.html
2) A Question of Sex
3) Miller's Tale
4) Capital Games: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/210160.html
5) When Adam met Jack: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/300519.html
6) Acting Naughty (Action! 1): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/493312.html
7) Playing Dirty (Action! 2)

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle