m/m

Poster Boy by Anne Tenino

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
20795658
Grade: A
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m
Series: Theta Alpha Gamma #5
Published: 4/21/14
Reviewed by Anne
355 ebook pages

Jock (yes, that’s his name) has recently transferred to Calapooya (college) after being horrifically outed as gay and kicked off the hockey team.  His big brother, Tank is a member of the Theta Alpha Gamma (TAG) fraternity and Jock becomes a member, too.  He’s still feeling a lot of anger and shame about how things went down at his previous college, and he’s also feeling a little lost about being openly gay.  However, he’s looking forward to getting the hang of this hooking up thing now that he’s not trying to hide anything.  That’s easier in theory than it is in practice, and he’s still not had that first encounter he’s looking for.  So, seeing Toby, who is known for sleeping around, and ridiculously attractive to Jock seems like a situation meant to be.

For his part, Toby is surrounded by happily committed couples and is starting to think maybe it’s time for him to look for something more permanent.  Jock pushes all the right buttons for him and he’s hoping to actually get to know the guy before having sex.  However, when one thing leads to another, he’s happy to proceed straight to sex with Jock.  This leaves his feelings pretty bruised, though,  when Jock thanks him for a great experience and walks out the door looking for other guys to hook up with.  Toby understands, but was hoping for more.  The two of them manage to avoid each other pretty well until circumstances push them together on a semester abroad in France, where Toby is basically an RA and Jock is one of the TAG students he’s supervising.

I loved this book and I didn’t want to put it down!  It’s really funny, but the issues Jock is facing are real and given the weight they deserve.  Once I was done and thought about it, I realized there were things that should have bothered me, but really didn’t. The biggest issue is that Jock is young – young enough to need a fake ID at a bar – and Toby is not.  Toby is a grad student working on his masters thesis.  Jock is also just barely out of the closet and Toby has been out for years.  It didn’t bother me while I was reading it, though.  Other than his new sexual freedom, Jock comes off as pretty mature.  I also felt like the ending really addressed this age difference and resolved any issues I might have had.

Besides the humor, my favorite part of the book was how Jock and Toby actually talk to each other.  Their road isn’t smooth, but they acknowledge hurting each other when it happens and they work to fix things together.  That was a joy to read.  Their relationship is sweet and hot, and the background of the hilariously immature TAG brothers kept me smiling and rolling my eyes through the whole book.  Seriously, it’s hard to explain how funny this story is!  Beer terrorists.  Testicle poems.  Toby feeling like a babysitter for a bunch of fratbros.  A very unexpected May/December romance.  (Actually, that was more sweet than funny.)  I highly recommend this book, and it’s going on my Best of 2014 list!

I can’t wait for the next book in the series, and I’m hoping it will be about Turbo, one of the TAG brothers they are all sure is straight, but seemed a little confused to me.  Here’s hoping for more TAG fun soon.  In the mean time I’m checking out Anne Tenino’s backlist!

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!

To the Very Last Inch by Heidi Belleau and Amelia C. Gormley

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

To the Very Last Inch (The Professor's Rule, #5)

Grade: A
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: High Kink
Genre: m/m, menage, m/m/m, BDSM
Series: The Professor’s Rule #5
Published: 3/03/14
Reviewed by Kate
56 pages

This is the conclusion to the Professor’s Rule series, and it is everything that I wanted it to be!  We finally get some of Carson’s perspective and everyone finally starts actually talking to each other and…well, it’s rather obvious that I’m still really excited about this one (even a week after reading it).  Oh wait, I forgot…the ending.  It left me happy, but wanting more of Carson, James, and Satish.


If you liked the first ones in the series, you’ll love this one as well.  If you haven’t read the first ones and you like m/m with BDSM mixed in, I highly recommend this series.  They really need to be read in order though.  You could read the second one followed by #1, but the rest really need to be read in order.  I can’t wait to go back and re-read them back-to-back rather than having to wait until the next one is released.


I hope that this pair of authors teams up again.  I’m excited to see what they can come up with next!