m/m

Dirty Laundry by Heidi Cullinan

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Dirty Laundry (Tucker Springs, #3)

Grade: A-
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Moderate Kink (D/s, spanking, restraints)
Genre: Contemporary, m/m
Series: Tucker Springs #3
Reviewed by Anne
265 pages
 
Adam is a college grad student with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Anxiety issues that severely shape his day to day life.  He’s at the laundromat doing some laundry when a group of drunk college guys start harassing him.  Denver, a tank of a man, comes to his rescue and scares the drunks away.  Adam is thankful, but also very attracted to Denver.  They hook up right there in the laundromat.   Adam is amazed at how calm and centered he feels with Denver, and how attracted he is to the kink of having Denver be physically in charge of him.  Denver is surprised that Adam stays on his mind.  He has a lot of one night stands, but he just keeps thinking about Adam.
This is a really sweet and very dirty story.  Amazingly, that balances really well.  Adam’s issues are huge.  It’s a struggle for him to function every day.
 

“… I have no idea how I’m supposed to make out with someone when I know the soup cans aren’t alphabetized by type and the shoelaces are all sloppy in the closet.  If they’re even in the closet at all.”

 
 
Denver is a muscle bound bouncer at a local gay bar.  He’s interested in Adam, and doesn’t think much of working around Adam’s issues, even before he really understands what they are. This is so very, very sweet!
 
My only issue was in the use of D/s as a therapy type tool.  This was somewhat balanced out by the fact that Adam also saw a therapist who was helping him figure out coping skills. The story was about much more than that, though.  Denver has his own suitcase of issues and it’s unbelievable to him that Adam would be willing to accept him if he knew.  Watching these two work their way together was just so wonderful.
 
This book is third in the Tucker Springs series, but it was the first one I read and it stood alone very well.  Note that the books in this series are written by different authors.  Another note:  I LOVE this cover.  This is exactly how I pictured these two!
 
This book brings me to about a dozen m/m books read now and I’m officially declaring my love for the m/m subgenre.  How about you?  Do you read m/m?  I’ve read and enjoyed Heidi Cullinan, Marie Sexton, Daisy Harris, Sean Kennedy, and Josh Lanyon.  Any other m/m authors you’d recommend?  And standout books I MUST read?

College Boys by Daisy Harris

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

College Boys (Men of Holsum College, #1)

Grade: A
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m
Series: Men of Holsum College #1
Reviewed by Anne
113 pages
 
Chris is a soccer playing college jock.  After his mom’s death he needs a little more personal space and ends up moving from his dorm full of jocks into a dorm with a private room.  As it turns out, he’s moved right next door to Peter, an openly gay student.  Also, did I mention, the walls are paper thin and provide provide vision privacy only?  Chris and Peter had met once before, and they end up becoming friends through the wall.  The thing is, Peter is very attracted to Chris, though he’d never act on his attaction because of Chris’ hetero-jock status.  Chris has always thought of himself as heterosexual, and his attraction to Peter takes him by surprise.  Where they take it from there is just awesome!
This is an incredible read!  I gobbled it up in one day and was enjoying it so much I didn’t stop to leave myself notes.  That’s a sign of a really good book for me!  The scenes in this book where Peter and Christ talk through the wall are so sweet.  The moments where Christ starts being honest with himself about his feelings for Peter, and the doubts he has were heart-wrenching.  The writing was just exquisite!

Yes, the ending was over the top happy with unicorns pooping rainbows and all that, but it’s ok.  They both seem a little young and the relationship a little new for the ending, but that’s an issue for me for any book with young characters.

I’ve not been a fan of college aged (would this be considered New Adult?) books, but this one really worked for me. I’ll be looking for more by Daisy Harris!

Family Man by Heidi Cullinan and Marie Sexton

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Family Man
Grade: A

Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m

Reviewed by Anne

 

Vince is a 3 times married and 3 times divorced man who is just finally admitting to himself that he might be gay.    Trey is a 25 year old student working 2 jobs to support his mother and grandmother.  He knows he is gay, but he’s been way too busy for a relationship. When Vince decides to try going to a gay night club and see if that helps with his confusion, he’s shocked to see Trey, an acquaintance from his neighborhood there.
 
What a sweet and hot story!  Painfully real at times.  Just pretty darn awesome.  There is so much going on in this book to love.  I’ll make you a list:

  1.  Vince’s journey from realizing he might just possibly be gay to finding himself in a relationship with a man and considering coming out to his family is heart wrenching in a very good way.  I can only guess what that kind of emotional journey is like, but I imagine it just like Cullinan and Sexton wrote it.

  2. Vince’s sister is awesome, both in her teasing of Vince and in her support of him.  She was a wonderful person to read about.

  3. Trey has a journey, too, and it’s a bittersweet one.  His life experiences with his alcoholic mother make it believable that the age difference between him and Vince just is not a big deal.  

  4. I felt like this could have been a true story.  All the details felt right to me.  The character that had a seizure and the descriptions of it, the scenes in the hospital?  I’ve been there, done that, and reading this made me want to compare notes with the authors because they really got it right.

  5. I enjoyed Vince and Trey’s families, especially Vince’s mother and Trey’s grandmother.  They were strong women who had raised strong men, and I liked seeing their relationships.

  6. The relationship between Vince and Trey had such sexual tension!  At the same time it was really sweet.  They gave each other room to figure things out.  Neither pushing the other to move faster than they were comfortable with, but at the same time clearly enjoying their time together.  

  7. Vinnie and Trey dance together.  And it’s hot.

  8. The part where Vince’s sister has to help him dress for a not-a-date with Trey.  So funny and sweet.

    Rachel ended up putting him in a pair of suit pants but with a dark plum-colored shirt with iridescent silver pinstripes she dug out of the back of his closet. He tried to shoot it down, because it had always felt too flashy to him, but Rachel insisted.

     “You’re gay now, big brother. You can be a little flashy.”

     “I am not gay.”

     “Right. You’re just making yourself a nervous wreck over a night out with a man. Completely different story.”

  9. The story grabs you from the first line. Seriously. I bought this book because I read the excerpt on All Romance ebooks. Here. Go check it out. I read it and I bought the book, that simple. (I checked it out because it was Smart Bitch Sarah’s book club pick of the month for April, so props to her, too.) 

Probably the only thing about this story that made me pause was how it switched point of view back and forth from Vince to Trey.  I enjoy it when a story switches back and forth, but in this case Vince’s POV is told in third person, and Trey’s in first person.  On one hand that made it really easy to tell whose POV we were in, on the other hand, it took me a while to get used to it.  By the end of the book I didn’t really notice at all, though, so it’s pretty much a non-issue for me.
 
I loved this book so much.  I want to go back and re-read it right now!  I highly recommend it.  It’s going on my best of 2013 list, and I’ll be looking for more by these authors!