Blake Deveraux

I have given up on this one for the moment. Not due to the violence or the brutality. That's not my trigger. I just can't get into the story. it jumps around, it's erratic and really doesn't make sense. And the writing is just not my style. Add to that a word that instead of invoking the appropriate BDSM reference, gives me pictures of animals giving birth and cat litters.... honestly! Any editor with any small knowledge of this would know that whelps is not what is caused when hit by a belt (maybe if used as a sound issuing from the subs mouth), but that the correct word is WELTS!

Sorry, I'll try to revisit this at a later date, but for now it's a DNF… (lisätietoja)

This is not an easy book for me; truth be told I had to start it two times before being able to finish it, mainly since I had to find the courage to go over the first chapters, about a young man and his downfall towards Inferno.

When Daniel meets Brandon, the scene seems pretty much an ordinary romance; Daniel is a former Marine, with apparently a big heart, big enough to welcome and love damaged Brandon; Brandon is like a Fallen Angel, beautiful like an angel but with a dark past haunting him like all the fallens. The meeting of these two should be Brandon’s ticket to happiness, but instead the young man is not able to accept Daniel’s love. He puts himself into situations that are reasons for Daniel to cast him away, but instead Daniel is always ready to forgive and accept Brandon for who he is, more than Brandon is able to accept himself.

At first I thought the damaged one was only Brandon, but then we found that also Daniel has reasons to regret his past and maybe some sins he wants to expiate; maybe helping and loving Brandon is also a way to expiate those sins.

There is a lot of sex in Dangerous Obsessions, not always consensual sex and not always between Daniel and Brandon; for these two to become an exclusive couple the path is long, and probably not even the length of the novel will be enough. I had the feeling that both of them are arriving from experience where the sex, more than an intimate experience, was almost a bartering good, something you use to reach or buy something else. There are few times, when they are together, that I can see between them can be different, but as I said, the journey is long and full of obstacles.

I’m not sure I’m totally comfortable with recommending this novel to all the readers without warning. It can be an intense read, but you have to be prepared. And if you are more the romantic type, the one who wants to see everything through a pink glasses perspective, then maybe this is a little too strong for you.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1604359749/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (lisätietoja)

From a quite common incipit, the Jock who has to be tutored by the Nerd, the author managed to developed an original plot, but be warned, this is a romance heavy on sex and with some dramatic developments.

Mitch is a typical next door guy, from a wealthy family, with a bright future in front of him; Mitch is also gay but he has never had the courage to come out to his father who has great expectations for him. In a way, being a precocious child, almost a genius, is already something Mitch sees as not in line with his father’s expectation who would prefer for him to be the typical frat boy, maybe even a jock. So Mitch prefers to be a “private” gay, and lucky him, he is assigned a dorm room with the only other gay guy in the college, or at least the only other openly gay guy.

Josh is in an abusive relationship with an older man, something that I think he is searching for substituting a lack of fatherly figure, or in a more twisted way, to belong, to feel that someone needs him, not like his own father who disowned him.

Ben is a jock and gay in the closet. When he is assigned as tutor Mitch, he is suddenly faced with temptation, a temptation he cannot resist.

As I said there is a lot of sex, between Mitch and Josh in a sort of buddy-friends way and between Mitch and Ben with a more deep meaning. Sex for these guys is the natural expression of their feelings, not necessarily love, but maybe also friendship or need to “feel” something. That is not said that, when it’s done out of love, all of them are able to recognize the difference, even to arrive to desire exclusivity once they are sure they will be a real couple.

I have to be sincere, sometime the sex felt too much, but that is from my perspective, and that doesn’t mean that it was not good. And maybe in a way, even if I liked Ben, I liked better Josh, and so maybe I was cheering for him to be the main character, but as both him than Mitch said, they are good friends, but not lovers. I suppose Josh will have his story in one of the other instalment in this series.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1604358319/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (lisätietoja)

Dillon’s Prayer, aside maybe for the title, was not what I was expecting. The author bio said “my books have an edge that most erotic books in the “gay” genre generally don’t have. For one they are actually written by a man” and he said “I genuinely enjoy other authors as well but felt that there was something missing from the work”. So yes, since I’m used to read erotic books written by men, I was probably expecting for this books to have a “dark” edge, maybe to be very explicit, less bed of roses and more down and dirty. But I was totally wrong.

First of all, even if dealing with a D/s relationship gone wrong, Dillon’s Prayer is not a BDSM erotic book. Actually it’s not even an erotic romance. There are sex scene, but they are pretty tamed in comparison to other books I have read, and it’s more about the healing process of Dillon than about the sex. Now don’t get me wrong, Dillon and other men in the novel talk about bad sexual experience, there are memories about past rape they suffered, but it’s in their memory and it’s not part of the plot.

If I was expecting for the novel and the characters to be less emotional since they were penned by a man, again I was wrong; actually in some points they were even too emotional, but it was not a “too much” to border the unrealistic, it was more that these men were able to express their emotions without being feminine… actually I think the author wanted to avoid it highlighting the gay men in the novel are all very masculine outside, but they have a sweet core.

There is a character I found, for my own experience, to be a dream if he was real: the catholic priest who is more than welcoming of his gay parishioners. I’m not writing off he is not possible in real world, only that I would make him a saint if he was.

Said that, the novel had a lot of points where it could have lapsed into drama: the brother who is deployed in a war zone, the underage kid, the traumatic past, even an accident to a beloved pet… but all in all the author managed to write them all without making it a dive into angst. As first experience with a novel by this author, I would say it’s a positive one.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1604358327/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (lisätietoja)