B Reviews

Straight Shooter by Heidi Belleau

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
18808267
Grade: B+
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Moderate Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m, BDSM
Series: Rear Entrance Video #3
Published: 4/7/14
Reviewed by Anne
271 ebook pages

Austin Puett is hoping to be a professional hockey player.  Right now he’s on his college team, and that takes up most of his time and concentration.  Unfortunately some personal issues are making problems for him.  First of all, he’s been rude to one of his roommates and his landlord/roommate has given him the rest of the month to make things right with the newly cross-dressing roommate he insulted.  On top of trying to figure that mess out, he’s dealing with a recurring identity crisis.  He’s an uber-macho hockey player, but he gets turned on when his teammates insult him and call him gay.  

Austin can NOT figure out what is wrong with him.  And it’s not a simple thing.  It’s not just, do I like girls or boys or both?  Austin knows there’s more on the line.  No way could a hockey team, college or pro, accept a player as sexually messed up as Austin is.  Desperate to break himself of this boner-at-inappropriate-times issue, Austin decides that binge watching m/m porn would be a great way to return himself to normal.  It’s got to work, right?

This book is more Austin’s story than anything else, but there is a nice romance, too.  Austin is so convinced there’s something fundamentally wrong with him!  His attempts to cure himself are comical and tragic.  When his job at Rear Entrance Video leads to him meeting Puck, the star of his favorite binge-watching porn series, things start to take a turn for the better.

It’s a really good story of self discovery and thinking of sexuality not as something that’s black or white or even easily defined.  Watching Austin come to accept himself was both painful and hopeful!  I really loved how his acceptance of his friends led to him accepting himself. You could also see how not acknowledging who he was and what he liked could hurt his friends, too.

The story is told entirely from Austin’s point of view, which really works, since Austin has the most growing to do.  Heidi Belleau does a great job of cluing us into where Puck is at through the things Austin sees, even if Austin doesn’t seem to understand them. The author also gets mega bonus points for writing the first Dom I’ve ever read who doesn’t have magical psychic powers of understanding and predicting and isn’t perfect.  This made a lot of sense, because Austin really didn’t know what he wanted, either.  The way they worked through things when Puck was wrong about what Austin wanted was even more important than the sex they were having.

Austin’s kink (and I won’t say exactly what it is, because he doesn’t really even know it when the story starts) is not my favorite kink to read about, so credit to the author for still making it a believably affectionate relationship!  The only other issue I had with this book was that the ending was a little too much happiness and rainbows and HEA.  It seemed to me they had a lot to work through.  In my head they’re much more HFN, and I can accept that.

Heidi Belleau has put herself on my READ IT NOW list!  Her stories aren’t just entertaining, but they make me think and stretch my empathy to situations I just didn’t understand.  I know Kate also loves her The Professor’s Rule series of novellas.  I’m moving them up on my list!

Every Inch of the Way by Heidi Belleau and Amelia C. Gormley

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
Every Inch of the Way (The Professor's Rule, #4)
Grade: B
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Mild Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m, BDSM
Series: The Professor’s Rule #4
Published: 3/03/14
Reviewed by Kate
42 pages

Ah.  The story of James and Professor Carson and Satish continues.  Let me start by saying that if you haven’t read the first 3 in this series, stop everything and go read them, then come back.  It’s okay.  I’ll wait…


Okay.  #4 picks up right after #3.  Satish is debating about calling James.  After running into Carson, he decides to make the phone call.  But it’s what happens afterwards, when James goes back to Carson that has me so gobsmacked.  Thankfully I had #5 loaded on my reader and ready to go, because I don’t think I could have tolerated the ending otherwise.


Stay tuned for my review of the conclusion to the series…

Up In Flames by Lori Foster

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Up In Flames: Body Heat\Caught in the Act            

Grade-B+
Hotness Level-Blaze
Kink Level-No Kink
Genre-Contemporary
Reviewed by Kate
368 pages

The book is split into 2 novellas.  Up in Flames is about the first third of the book, with Caught in the Act taking up the rest.

Up in Flames-Melanie and Adam went to high school together.  She was a rich girl, he was poorer than dirt.  Although they both were attracted to each other during school, neither made a move.  Now, years later, they find themselves on the same party boat.  When they go overboard during a storm and end up stranded on an island, things really start to heat up.  I will be honest and say that I love the whole stranded together on a deserted island plot line.  That’s pretty much a sure fire way to get me to read a book.  And this one did not fail to dissapoint.

Caught in the Act-Mick, a police officer, has fallen for a lady he’s never met.  He’s seen her jogging before and just knows he needs to meet her so he follows her into a jewelry store.  When the store is robbed, he protects Delilah and takes a bullet.  Delilah offers to let him recover at her place.  And while he does need time to recover, he’s also beginning to suspect that someone is after Delilah.  So he moves in with her to keep her safe.  Caught in the Act had just the right amount of suspense for me. Delilah is such a unique character and Mick accepts her for what she is.  There was a lot of secret keeping, especially on Mick’s side, that I didn’t appreciate, but otherwise I enjoyed this one a lot.

This is the first book I’ve read by Lori Foster but I’m looking forward to checking out her back list. I especially want to see if there are stories for the secondary characters (Mick’s friends) from Caught in the Act.

The combination of these 2 novellas made for a quick and enjoyable read.  Fast paced and engaging, I did not want to put this one down.  At one point I found myself mad at my 7 year old who interrupted reading to ask when supper would be.  Then I looked at the clock and discovered that it was already 7:30pm.