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Self Preservation by Ethan Day
Nov. 12th, 2018 07:27 pmMy first review of a book of Ethan Day, dating back to February 12, 2009.
Lately it seems that I read a lot of books that have a starting point similar to an Hollywood comedy movie, but since I love comedy, for me it's not at all a problem. And then some comedy I love more than others, like My Best Friend's Wedding, and not since I like Julia Roberts, but since I LOVE Rupert Everett, you can don't believe me, but I liked him even before is coming out, when he was a young actor in an old Italian movie, Cronaca di una morte annunciata.
Anyway in this story Davis is the classical good boy next door: gay and shy, he arrived at College still a blushing virgin and he was obviously swept away from the first good looking guy with enough patience to see behind his protective shield. Jack actually was not a bad guy, and he really liked Davis, and so, after deflowering the virgin, he also played the role of perfect boyfriend for four years, since the lights of New York called him, and he left without a good reason. Davis, poor guy, still loves him, and he has always hoped that, sooner or later, Jack will see a different light and realize that his true love is back at home. So when Davis receives a phone call from Jack announcing that he is marrying a man he met only two weeks before, Davis is sure that he is doing a big mistake and that he has to do everything to stop him. With his best girl friend in tow, he goes to Chicago with every intention to break Jack up from his future groom, Tadd.
Problem is that Tadd is every bit the perfect man, and Davis has no many chance to succeeded. But an help arrives from Alex, Tadd's best friend: Alex has his own reason to want to test Jack's love for Tadd, and then, it's not an hard work to feign interest in Davis, since the man is really cute.
It's the classical comedy of mistake, and also a whirl of possible pair: Davis-Jack, Jack-Tadd, Davis-Alex, Alex... well I need to leave a bit of mystery, needn't I? But even if there are different interaction between the men, the author manages to never actually making no one cheats on someone else: using different time level, all the possible couple are tested to allow the reader to see how they are together, but in the end, only the real one, the true love will conquer all.
I like the mix of high society party world with the small town tittle-tattle behavior of all the characters: even if Davis is plotting to do a very nasty thing, he never really behaves as a villain, and all his attempts are more funny than dangerous. In a way Davis is still that eighteen years old virgin boy who was starstruck by friendly and handsome Jack; doesn't matter if he left 6 years before, Davis is still waiting at home like a good little wife for her husband to be back home after playing around. Probably if Jack was a really bad man, the reader would have no doubt to whom Davis should choice, but instead Jack is really a good guy, maybe a bit selfish, but not so much to make him a nasty character. And so the reader has the same problem as Davis, he is unable to letting Jack go toward his new path.
Lately it seems that I read a lot of books that have a starting point similar to an Hollywood comedy movie, but since I love comedy, for me it's not at all a problem. And then some comedy I love more than others, like My Best Friend's Wedding, and not since I like Julia Roberts, but since I LOVE Rupert Everett, you can don't believe me, but I liked him even before is coming out, when he was a young actor in an old Italian movie, Cronaca di una morte annunciata.
Anyway in this story Davis is the classical good boy next door: gay and shy, he arrived at College still a blushing virgin and he was obviously swept away from the first good looking guy with enough patience to see behind his protective shield. Jack actually was not a bad guy, and he really liked Davis, and so, after deflowering the virgin, he also played the role of perfect boyfriend for four years, since the lights of New York called him, and he left without a good reason. Davis, poor guy, still loves him, and he has always hoped that, sooner or later, Jack will see a different light and realize that his true love is back at home. So when Davis receives a phone call from Jack announcing that he is marrying a man he met only two weeks before, Davis is sure that he is doing a big mistake and that he has to do everything to stop him. With his best girl friend in tow, he goes to Chicago with every intention to break Jack up from his future groom, Tadd.
Problem is that Tadd is every bit the perfect man, and Davis has no many chance to succeeded. But an help arrives from Alex, Tadd's best friend: Alex has his own reason to want to test Jack's love for Tadd, and then, it's not an hard work to feign interest in Davis, since the man is really cute.
It's the classical comedy of mistake, and also a whirl of possible pair: Davis-Jack, Jack-Tadd, Davis-Alex, Alex... well I need to leave a bit of mystery, needn't I? But even if there are different interaction between the men, the author manages to never actually making no one cheats on someone else: using different time level, all the possible couple are tested to allow the reader to see how they are together, but in the end, only the real one, the true love will conquer all.
I like the mix of high society party world with the small town tittle-tattle behavior of all the characters: even if Davis is plotting to do a very nasty thing, he never really behaves as a villain, and all his attempts are more funny than dangerous. In a way Davis is still that eighteen years old virgin boy who was starstruck by friendly and handsome Jack; doesn't matter if he left 6 years before, Davis is still waiting at home like a good little wife for her husband to be back home after playing around. Probably if Jack was a really bad man, the reader would have no doubt to whom Davis should choice, but instead Jack is really a good guy, maybe a bit selfish, but not so much to make him a nasty character. And so the reader has the same problem as Davis, he is unable to letting Jack go toward his new path.
Starting from the assumption that I liked this romance, and that I'd recommend it to my friends, I want to let it out from the beginning the only nagging feeling I had while reading it: the two men in the story are bisexual, and they really wanted to let the reader know it, cause they more than once said it, highlighting how people don't understand the concept of bisexuality, how everyone believes that or you are homosexual or you are heterosexual; now maybe I'm familiar with the Kinsey scale and I didn't feel necessary to affirming it so many time, but truth be told, I also understand the author that probably faced more than once this sort of ghetto for bisexuals, like they are in a limbo people don't recognize.
This one reminded me one of those serial romances I read when I was a teenager, in particular there was a series about people and travels, always visiting exotic locations, like this time, the Fiji Islands, a private island resort, Bendura.
Blain’s husband, Manny, is missing, just like that: they went to Blain’s high school reunion in Alabama, and Manny disappeared from the party and was nowhere to be found. Being this a mystery, you would think the story was to understand what happened to him, but actually it’s more Blain’s rediscovery of himself and of his relationship with Manny. In the aftermath of that night, Blain and Manny appear to be a perfect couple, but days pass and the cracks in the relationships become more visible. What I appreciated of this story is that the author doesn’t try to make Blain’s pain less hurting for the fact he had trouble with Manny: Blain and Manny were in love, and they were trying to make their relationship work. Actually, considering it was Blain’s infidelity that causes some of those cracks, there is also his feeling of being in part responsible for Manny’s fate.
This was mostly a funny and light seasonal romance, but indeed, it had an unexpected deepness in the characterization, subtle but not stupid. Mick is apparently a college jock, too handsome for his own good, but little by little you see hidden layers within him, the first his decision to leave the frat dorm to be able to really concentrate on his study; Mick was introduced to sex at 14 years old, basically abused by a female family friend: it’s not that Mick considers that an abuse, not until he realizes that now he considers sex with women something detached, something that is not giving him the emotional fulfillment that he needs. The only real emotional attachment he has always had has been with male friends, in particular with his current roommate, Fielding.
Friends with benefits is a theme I like a lot, I have always found sexy when two “new” lovers know each other so well they have a mutual understanding that usually couples found in years of relationship. It’s quite common when the friends with benefits theme is paired with a gay for you, but here the author played an originality card: it’s not the gay friend who falls in love with the straight one and manages to conquer his best friends, it’s actually the opposite.
While reading this book I was often remembered of the Kinsey scale; “The Kinsey scale ranges from 0, for those who would identify themselves as exclusively heterosexual with no experience with or desire for sexual activity with their same sex, to 6, for those who would identify themselves as exclusively homosexual with no experience with or desire for sexual activity with those of the opposite sex, and 1-5 for those who would identify themselves with varying levels of desire for sexual activity with either sex, including "incidental" or "occasional" desire for sexual activity with the same sex.” That is, if someone wondered about the credibility of a character like Cooper, who was heterosexual for all his life until the moment he finds himself in love with his best friend Noah, I suppose it’s not impossible, it simply means that Cooper is somewhere between 2 and 4 of the Kinsey scale. Another conclusion I reached is that, more than likely, if Noah wasn’t taken away from Cooper when they were just teenagers, and they had the chance to grow up together into adults, this development towards love of their relationship would have happened before. Like this, they met again at the brink of thirties, with their sexual experiences as adults done, but there is a but for Cooper, he hasn’t had really the chance to see the world, and there aren’t many gay people around in Blackcreek, or better no many openly gay people. And considering that Cooper likes women too, it was easier for him to develop his heterosexual side.
This wasn’t really a time travel story, but the feeling was like reading one. Phil is travelling on a country road near Bath and he has an accident; alone and trapped in the car, he goes into a semi-coma that basically transport him back to the Roman Empire age and in the body of Caius, a younger man who was in an accident in the same point, only, more or less, 2000 years before. While Caius wasn’t really an expert in deception, Phil is and he is able to recognize that Caius’s accident wasn’t casual, but a plot to kill him. Problem is that, among the people around him, and possible suspect, there is also Rianorix, a barbarian who resembles strongly Ryan, Phil’s partner in the XXI century, and a man Phil was starting to find quite attractive.
Owen’s Home and Garden is a novel that moves slowly and insinuates in you without notice, and suddenly you find yourself caring for these characters that maybe, at first, you didn’t even like so much. Owen and Simon are best friends, maybe they could have been more, but when they met, Owen was in a relationship with someone else, and Simon was just out a bad break-up with no mood to start anything else. Simon needed a friend and Owen fit the bill. 5 years later they are both single, but Simon is playing the field, hard, and Owen doesn’t want to be just another scratch on the bedpost, even if, truth be told, he is a little pissed off that Simon never even tries to get into his pants.
There are some romances that are not pretty or cute or pink glasses perspective; they are raw, and intense and a punch in your gut. Amy Lane is able to write the first but also the latter, only that, when she goes for intense, she goes all the way through you and take your heart, and just squeeze that little to make it hurt, but not too much to break it.
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In common with almost all the other novels I read by Rosen, Sparkle focuses more on the friendship than the romance, like the author wanted to highlight that, even if the quest for the perfect romance is something that everyone is undertaking, the real important thing is to have a best friend by your side. There is strong sense of community, the clear message that, most of these young boys may have lost their native family, but they have now a new, and more supporting family, the one made by their friends.
Very classical seasonal romance with a bromance subtheme. Adam awakes in an hospital bed with a caring boyfriend by his side, Joe. He is in pain, but the soothing presence of Joe is helping a lot, and Adam thinks how lucky he is to have such an handsome and caring man by his side. The problem is Adam doesn’t remember Joe and he doesn’t remember anything else of his past life. Doctors are confident the memory will be back and Adam doesn’t worry too much. But as soon as Joe brings him home, their home, Adam finds out he is not Joe’s boyfriend, but his best friend since forever. They are not together and moreover Adam is straight, and with a girlfriend, while Joe is gay and single. But why Adam feels like he is in love with Joe, and why Joe is protective of Adam to a level that it seems almost jealousy?
It was difficult to find a label for this novel, it’s a Fantasy (I tend to classify as Fantasy every novel with an angel in it, moreover when the story is set in the Afterlife) but it’s also Gay Romance, since the main purpose of Allan is to finally conquer his friend Warwick, even if that will happen after they are both dead. Probably the best label is Satire, because I think the author is playing with the stereotype of the gay novels to make them his own and craft his personal genre.
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.
An all-boys story with women playing best girlfriends. Maybe I have this feeling since all three men involved were friends before becoming lovers, but indeed they bond on different levels, not only through love and sex. The interrelationships between Riley and Jason, and then Riley and Eric play well inside and outside the bedroom; plus they are all-100%-men, enjoying sports and outdoor life, even if Riley is a college professor.
I stopped reading het romance more or less in 2006, but Sherrilyn Kenyon and J.R. Ward were among the last authors I read in that genre, and I remember I liked them. I especially liked the paranormal genre (while oddly I now prefer the contemporary ones) probably for their alpha male hero, always so strong, always so protective, always so bound to being honorable and right. That is not how Qhuinn and Blay are, or at least not totally; they are not really Alpha males, they are more enoforcerers, and till now they gravitated on the edge of the series, favorites to many readers but never having their own story. On the forums there was speculation they were gays, but the author never really gave them the definitive push, not until the book before this one: from what I gathered (since I haven’t read that one), Blay finally came out, but not to be with Qhuinn, but instead with Qhuinn’s cousin, Saxton; and to make things even more complicated, Qhuinn decides to have a child with a female, even if he didn’t mate with her.
I had the wrong idea this was an almost comedy type of romance, and that is the spirit I started reading it, to then, almost immediately, realizing there was something deeper, and even if Joel, the main character and narrating voice is a mix of bittersweet and spicy, I tend to classify the novel more on the discovery/journey life genre other than romance. Truth be told, and that is also where the major points lie for me, I felt like the real relationship was that between Joel and his dog Dudley, more than that between his current lover Philip, temporary lover Lincoln and past lover Matt… and no, don’t get the wrong idea, Joel is not “easy”… well, not soo easy at least.
A collection of three novellas, all of them dealing with the theme of friends with benefits, or better from friends to lovers, as the title suggests.
This story surprised me because, well, I was expecting to have to suffer more for these boys to be together. Nick and Angelo grew up together, both gays and misfits, and everyone was expecting for them to get together; and instead Nick ran away with the first guy showing a real interest in him, leaving Angelo, big bro, the one who, maybe, was only waiting for Nick to be old enough..jpg)
Just the other day I was reading a story about college boys and thinking how they were really too naïve in their behavior for being guys living out of the protective umbrella of their family. Here the feeling was exactly the opposite, when first we met Chase, I didn’t feel the vibes of a college boy but of a more mature man. Then in the course of the story, and especially when we met Alex, the college boys theme is more accentuated, but still, I have the feeling this story could have been also between two older friends suddenly realizing their mutual feeling had turned into something else.
In the same series of Chase in Shadown, Dex in Blue follows the life of two other Johnnies (a gay-for-pay porn movie company), factotum Dex (and I mean “totum”, in front and behind the camera) and stud Kane. As many of the other Johnnies, both Dex and Kane arrived to the company posing/believing as straight men who needed easy money; the only difference with many other porn company, is that Johnnies accept candidates only if they are comfortable with being gay-for-pay, i.e. they have to be very near the gay/bisexual end of the Kinsey scale.
After the very long ride to read this book, I feel like worn out, an hole was forming in my heart and the author suddenly filled it in a rush, so strongly that it let me hurting. This novel is good… disturbingly good. John Parker is an eighteen years old straight teenager who decides to give himself up for sex to his best friend Nathan; Nathan is gay and in love with John, and John is thinking he can be Nathan’s sex toy, while at the same time having a girlfriend and some other heterosexual adventures on the side. While with all the women he is the dominant lover, with Nathan he is always the submissive; strange as it’s, John is able to have sex with a man only if that man is Nathan, and only if Nathan is in command.
A mix of friends with benefits and gay for you themed, this is the story of best friends David and Trace who will find the love of their life in each other arms. When David is in need of a good friend, the one who is immediately in his mind is Trace; it’s not that Trace is the only friend he has, and by the way, he is not even is oldest or best friend, but maybe unconsciously David needs someone to love and take care of him in a deeper way than simply a friend, and maybe he knows he will find that in Trace.
While I was browsing October Gay and Lesbian releases on Amazon, I stumbled upon this book; I didn’t know the author, it was a self-published book, so I didn’t know either the publisher, but if an author is willing to pay for an original cover art from Michael Broderick (author of a coffee-table art book for Bruno Gmunder) then he has to be pretty confident of his own work. So I bought the book and since the story was too nice, I also decided to read it as soon as I had my hands on it (sorry to my thousand books long reading list).
As the title suggests, Eric Arvin takes a spin on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and weaves a contemporary tale with a fantasy flavour. I say flavour since, after all, nothing that will happen in this novel is magical, if not the magic of love.
At first I had some difficulties to understand why two men that were so obviously made for each other, like Nick and Holly, were not together. Nick and Holly were best friends at college and maybe even something more, but Nick has always played the role of the caretaker and Holly that of the modern rake, a young man with too much money and too much trouble in his hands than what he could manage. And then college ended and real life kicked in, and Nick moved to New York City while Holly set in Los Angeles, a whole country between them. Why such a choice? 
I don't know if Ethan Day, the author, is like one of his characters, but I like to think so, since Julian from As You Are, Aden from Dreaming of You and Davis from Self Preservation, are men that I'd like to know, and they have all one thing in common, they firmly believe in Love, in The One that will make you happy, and despite the age, or the time spent waiting for him, they know that sooner or later the happily ever after will be there also for them.
Faceoff (Playing The Field 1) by J.M. Snyder
Tee'd Off (Playing The Field 2) by J.M. Snyder
Play On (Playing The Field 3) by J.M. Snyder
Another hint that basically this is an erotic romp, and not a sweet romance (if sex in the shower, on the couch, on the kitchen table is not enough...), is that Sean's attraction for Cordero is very much physical; Sean doesn't even know what Cordero is studying, what he likes, what he wants, he at first doesn't even know if Cordero is gay, but despite all of this, Sean knows that he wants the man; Sean likes African American men, he even tries to melt with the slang, that is not his own, to have better chances at success. So Sean is more attracted to what Cordero represents than to who really Cordero is. But as I said before, for a sexy romp without expectation to be more, this is more than enough and leads to very naughty and enjoyable sex scenes.
This is one of the best novella I have ever read, seriously, before anything else, click on the link at the bottom of the page and go and buy it, trust me, you will not be disappointed. It’s funny, sexy, naughty but with a serious undertone that makes everything just perfect. 
It took me a while to read this second book in the “The One that…” series by T.C. Blue, so much that I have almost forgotten what the first story was about. I do remember thought that I like T.C. Blue’s characters since they are simple and ordinary men, your friends, your neightbors, your colleagues. 
This is by this time the fourth book I read with this fellows, and so now they are for me as familiar as old friends. I know them and I don't need to find new hint to understand them, but, it's strange, they seem always a bit different from book to book. 
In the recent polemic of who is writing for whom, most of Stormy Glenn’s books are probably aimed more to a female target (and I think that you all know that for me this is not a negative point). 
I'm too old and it's too much time I'm around. Or maybe it's only that I read too much. Z.A. Maxfiled wrote a parody about a man who wrote a parody... I think I'm able to recognize to whom Z.A. Maxfield identifies herself in the novel, enough to say it's not the writer (too simple), and I recognized who was the writer she is paying homage to. 
Interlude by Vivien Dean
The story is pretty simple and not very long, 60 pages more or less. It's a pretty classical theme, two friends, one of the two hopelessly in love with the other, and then, BUM, the big revelation: my best friend is also in love with me! And instead of joying at the idea, AJ is scared, he can't really grab the opportunity, since having it for a bit, and then loosing both friend than lover, is worst than not ever having to lover but always having the friend.
There is a whole story behind this book, but the author chose to tell us only a little bit. Inside Tamotsu’s mind, who is half daydreaming and half remembering, we learn that he is in love with Aki, the rock singer he is the manager of, the same Aki who he met when they were 16 years old, 20 years before, and to whom he is in love since then. The same Aki he has never had the courage to approach in any different way if not as a friend, preferring to see him with other women and men, loving and leaving them, to always, in the end, coming back to him, Tamotsu. 
I think I have already said it for the previous long novel by Willa Okati I read, but she is going better book after book. And Call Me in the Morning it’s not only one of the most nice Silver romance I have ever read (meaning for Silver Romance a book where one of the two main character is over 40 years old, and here they are both) but also a Friends with Benefits romance, another theme that I like a lot. In a way, it's also a Gay for You romance, since not Eli or Zane has never considered the option of being with a man, they are not suddenly turned gay, they fell in love with their best friend, and it happens that the best friend is a man. 
Bound to Please perfectly explains one of the reasons why I understand the existence of a ménages a trois, while I usually am a monogamy supporter. 
Well, I’m always kind to college boys stories, since the guys are so young and cute that it’s difficult to not enjoy their story. At that age, they are no more teenagers, but they are not yet adult: the world is still in front of them and everything can happen, even that you fall in love for your man-whore and straight roommate and, in the end, that love is not either without hope. 
First time I "met" Ally Blue, she was known as the Queen of Angst: books as Easy and Forgotten Song are without doubt beautiful books, but so full of angst. The she started to change, and she gifted us with light funny comedy as Catching a Buzz or The Happy Onion (even if, between books, she also wrote the Bay Paranormal Investigation series that's not exactly "light"), but sometime she returned back to her old habit with books like Untamed Heart. So you can understand that I approached this last book with a big question in my mind: angst or light and funny? The Show Business setting let me think that it would be the second one but then the not easy relationship between Adder and Kalil, with their incapacity to come clear with their feelings was a sure hint that the angst part was there, ready to struck. 
Take two young pretty boys who know each other since forever and so, in a way, bring with them all the innocence of youth, add my personal kinks of the difference in body structure of the two guys and the long hair of one of them, and you have the recipe of a very nice short story. 
