LGBT

Book Review: Healing Hunter’s Heart by Charlie Cochet

Reviewed by Nikyta

25136703Title: Healing Hunter’s Heart
Author: Charlie Cochet
Series: A Little Bite of Love #2
Heroes: Ari & Hunter
Genre: M/M Paranormal
Length: 200 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: April 24, 2015
Available at: Dreamspinner Press & Amazon
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb: Months after being forced to leave his lover and mate Ari Jannsen behind, Hunter Devin settles into his role as Enforcer for the newly formed Deagan Clan under the rule of his new Alpha and best friend Tristan “Trip” Hagan. Along with Hunter’s brother Boone, their nephews, sister, and mother, Hunter finally has the family he’s always wanted, but without his little rebel Ari, his heart is incomplete.

The Hagan Clan is unable to accept the Deagan Clan’s betrayal for walking away and taking the clan’s pups with them. War looms. As both clans plan their attack, a greater enemy plots against them. But Hunter is determined to get his Ari back. Bonds are put to the test and unexpected alliances are made as Hunter and his clan set out to protect their own and end the spreading heartache.

**This review contains spoilers, please proceed with caution**
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Categories: 4 Star Ratings, Book Review, LGBT, Nikyta's Reviews, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Book Review: No Matter What by K.A. Merikan

Reviewed by JustJen

1Title: No Matter What
Author: K.A. Merikan
Series: Sex & Mayhem #4
Heroes: Ghost/Luca
Genre: MM Contemporary
Length: 176 Pages
Publisher: Acerbi & Villani Ltd.
Release Date: April 25, 2015
Available at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb:  — A gentle heart has no place in an outlaw’s chest —

 

Ghost. Not a member of the Coffin Nails MC. Not a doctor anymore. Not gay.
Luca. Bent, not broken. Will not let go of Ghost. No matter what.

Ghost finds out the hard way that people you meet online aren’t always who they seem to be. When he met ‘Zara’ five years ago, they became inseparable. She’s been with him through the rough and the smooth. He’s been there for her when her abusive boyfriend had her in tears.

She is The One, and despite all his friends considering him crazy, Ghost is about to propose.

But ‘Zara’ turns out to be Luca, and Luca is most definitely a guy. Yet Luca is the same person with big dark eyes, so desperate to be saved that Ghost can’t help but fall head first.

Luca’s so-called boyfriend is not just abusive. He is a Sicilian drug lord, a man dangerous and ruthless. If Ghost is to ever save the person who wreaked havoc on his heart, he has to make a deal with the Coffin Nails MC. But being a member is a destiny he’s always tried to avoid. And when a life of violence becomes too much to bear, he might be the one needing Luca to catch him when he falls.

WARNING: Adult content. Explicit gay sex, strong language, violence, potentially triggering sexual abuse scenes. Reader discretion advised.
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Categories: 4 Star Ratings, Book Review, JustJen's Reviews, LGBT, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Honorary Blogger Elizabeth Noble: When Stories Collide + Giveaway!

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When Stories Collide

by Elizabeth Noble

I had the idea for Jewel Cave, along with the title, probably a good year before I wrote Run for the Roses, book 1 of Circles. I’d originally intended to write them as separate, unrelated stories. However, as often happens to me, Wyatt and Val had another story in them to tell. A Barlow Lens (book #2) is actually two books in one, and Wyatt and Val are one set of MCs.

When I was planning out A Barlow Lens I thought having a series of mystery/suspense books would be fun and interesting. At first I thought to keep Wyatt and Val as the main characters. I wrote Griff and Clint in as minor characters. They appear together in one scene. Griff is in a second scene and has phone conversations with Wyatt.

As I was kicking around ideas for the series I decided to have different main characters/different couples in each book. Some of the books are a who-done-it murder mystery type of story. Other stories, such as Jewel Cave, are suspense and the crimes are not murder.

What links all the books in the series is one of the main characters is in some branch of law enforcement. In the United States and Canada there are hundreds to choose from! I realized I could introduce characters as minor players in one book, and then write their story in the following book.

I already have series with the same main characters book to book. I wanted to write a series that would feature different main characters, but had a common theme. I may at some point circle back to some of the characters. That is an option I’m keeping open.

In Jewel Cave we briefly meet Mason Arquette, who is a United States National Park Services Ranger. I was surprised at the varied duties of rangers and Mason will be a main character in book #4, Gone Away.

Another feature of the series in general is they are all romances, but the type of romance varies from book to book. In Run for the Roses it’s a budding romance between Wyatt and Val. Their love affair is further developed in A Barlow Lens, and the second set of main characters meet and fall in love. The story of Philip and Tom is told in A Barlow Lens. In Jewel Cave, Griff and Clint have been together for ten years, so their romance/relationship is well established. The romance part of that story is the two of them remembering why they fell in love in the first place and how deeply they know one another. In Gone Away, the couple know one another, had a brief fling previously and then rekindle their romance.

The final thing that ties all the books in the series are the titles. Each one of the titles tells us something about the book. A common nickname for the Kentucky Derby is ‘run for the roses’, a Barlow lens is a piece of telescope equipment that enhances viewing and in doing so lets us look back in time. Jewel Cave National Monument is a real cave system in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

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About Jewel Cave

SMJewel Cave Final 12614 copyThrough ten wonderful years Griff Diamond and Clint Bishop weathered good times and bad together. Lately they haven’t spent as much time together as they’d like, and their physical relationship is suffering. Then Clint loses his job at the steel mill. Instead of worrying, he sees it as an opportunity to lean on his steady partner, start his writing career, and rekindle the passion they’ve lost.

But a friendly relationship with another author turns to obsession, putting Clint’s life in danger. Taken against his will to the Jewel Cave system in South Dakota, Clint must rely on the skills he’s learned from Griff to survive.

Fearing the worst, Griff tracks Clint across the country. As a US Marshal, Griff’s always been the man who keeps everyone safe, but he doesn’t know how he and Clint will survive this.

Available at: Dreamspinner Press & Amazon

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About Elizabeth Noble

Elizabeth Noble started telling stories before she actually knew how to write, and her family was very happy when she learned to put words on a page. Those words turned into fan fiction that turned into a genuine love of M/M romance fiction. Being able to share her works with Dreamspinner is really a dream come true. She has a real love for a good mystery complete with murder and twisty plots as well as all things sci-fi, futuristic, and supernatural and a bit of an unnatural interest in a super-volcano in Wyoming.

Elizabeth has three grown children and is now happily owned by an adorable mixed breed canine princess named Rosie, and two cats, Murphy and Yeti. She lives in her native northeast Ohio, the perfect place for gardening, winter and summer sports (go Tribe!). When she’s not writing she’s working as a veterinary nurse, so don’t be surprised to see her men with a pet or three who are a very big part of their lives.

Two of Elizabeth’s books have received Honorable Mentions in the Rainbow Awards.

Find out more about Elizabeth on her Website, Facebook, Tsu, Google+ or Twitter.

Blog_Tour_Giveaway

As part of this blog tour, Elizabeth is giving away an eBook copy of Jewel Cave!! To enter, just click the link below!

Rafflecopter Giveaway

Please be aware that the only way to enter the giveaway is to click the Rafflecopter link above. Any comments on this post will not count towards entering the giveaway unless otherwise stated but are still welcome anyway.

Don’t forget to check out Nikyta’s review of Jewel Cave to see what she thought of it!

Good luck!

Categories: Book Promo, Giveaways, Honorary Blogger Post, LGBT, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: Jewel Cave by Elizabeth Noble

Reviewed by Nikyta

SMJewel Cave Final 12614 copyTitle: Jewel Cave
Author: Elizabeth Noble
Series: Circles #3
Heroes: Griff & Clint
Genre: M/M Contemporary
Length: 155 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: April 1, 2015
Available at: Dreamspinner Press & Amazon
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb: Through ten wonderful years Griff Diamond and Clint Bishop weathered good times and bad together. Lately they haven’t spent as much time together as they’d like, and their physical relationship is suffering. Then Clint loses his job at the steel mill. Instead of worrying, he sees it as an opportunity to lean on his steady partner, start his writing career, and rekindle the passion they’ve lost.

But a friendly relationship with another author turns to obsession, putting Clint’s life in danger. Taken against his will to the Jewel Cave system in South Dakota, Clint must rely on the skills he’s learned from Griff to survive.

Fearing the worst, Griff tracks Clint across the country. As a US Marshal, Griff’s always been the man who keeps everyone safe, but he doesn’t know how he and Clint will survive this.
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Categories: 4.5 Star Ratings, Book Review, LGBT, Nikyta's Reviews, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Book Review: Light From the Dark by Mercy Celeste

Reviewed by Susan65

1Title: Light From the Dark
Author: Mercy Celeste
Heroes: Micah Beasley/Christopher Auberon
Genre: MM Contemporary
Length: 246 Pages
Publisher: MJC Press
Release Date: March 6, 2015
Available at: Amazon
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb: After a year of picking up the pieces of his shattered life, former US Marshal Micah Beasley takes a job as body guard for a spoiled rich kid who can’t leave his house. It’s a cupcake assignment. He just needs to get back in the game. What can go wrong?

Brilliant and incredibly talented, Christopher (Kit) Auberon wears tragedy as a second skin. Kit is all that’s left of a powerful family. Seemingly forgotten he’s spent his entire life in seclusion and he likes it that way.

Death threats are a fact of life, but when those threats become real, Micah and Kit are forced to put their differences aside to discover who wants Kit dead. Only to discover that there are monsters in Kit’s closet that should never be disturbed.
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Categories: 4 Star Ratings, Book Review, LGBT, Published in 2015, Susan65's Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: Rock Solid by Riley Hart

Reviewed by JustJen

1Title: Rock Solid
Author: Riley Hart
Series: Rock Solid Construction #1
Heroes: Trevor Dixon/Simon Malone
Genre: MM Contemporary
Length: 271 Pages
Publisher: Riley Hart
Release Date: April 27, 2015
Available at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb:  Trevor Dixon has made too many mistakes to count. Sober for thirteen months, he’s determined to do the right thing: rebuild his relationship with his family, and help his brother get Rock Solid Construction off the ground. Failing them again isn’t an option. Too bad the first estimate Trevor goes on alone is for an uptight doctor with a superiority complex.

A hand injury took away the only important thing in Dr. Simon Malone’s life—performing heart surgery. He doesn’t do well with people and has no family, but being a damn good surgeon? He always had that. Now, he doesn’t know who he is. The last thing he wants to deal with is the young construction worker who blows his shot at remodeling Simon’s home.

Trevor and Simon form an unlikely friendship. The more time they spend together, the more Trevor starts wondering if maybe Simon’s not as straight—or uptight—as he thought…and maybe Trevor’s new attraction for Simon runs both ways.

There are too many reasons they shouldn’t be together: they have little in common, their age difference, Trevor needing to focus on his sobriety…yet there’s something about each other that they just can’t shake. They don’t feel so lost when they’re together. But with their footing so unsteady, forming a relationship that’s rock solid seems impossible. There’s blow after blow, and the last one just might be powerful enough to crack their foundation for good.
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Categories: Book Review, JustJen's Reviews, LGBT, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Honorary Blogger Kate Fierro: From a Fantasy to True Love – A Learning Process + Giveaway!

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From a Fantasy to True Love – A Learning Process

by Kate Fierro

Every relationship has the potential to be a learning experience. We discover things about ourselves and our partners, and we learn to fit together in unique ways that will never be exactly the same in any other relationship. We grow and mature as we learn, and so do our emotions. We may not, technically, learn to love – I believe that’s an ability inherent to human nature – but we do learn about love and relationships. Or, if we flip it: our partners and lovers won’t teach us how to love or how to feel love, but they may just teach us something about our emotions.

Love Starved starts with a simple, yet seemingly impossible request: “Show me what it’s like to feel loved.” Micah, a successful man in his late twenties, doesn’t ask the escort he hires to teach him how to feel love – he just wants one night to experience what he’d always imagined as that perfect romantic state of being “loved, wanted, cared for, like [he’s] the center of someone’s universe.” What he ultimately gets from the whole experiment is so much more than that, and yet not what he’d been picturing at all.

When I was writing Love Starved, I wanted to play with the concept of fantasies – things we imagine, often in great detail; things we dream of, and maybe assume we can never have – and how, if we decide to pursue these fantasies, they can turn out different from what we visualized. It’s true both in regard to sexual fantasies (someone getting aroused by the idea of a BDSM scene or a threesome may not actually enjoy it if they try it in reality) and dreams connected with other areas of our lives. Dreams and fantasies are, after all, subjective, idealized things.

Micah comes into his arrangement with Angel with certain preconceptions about love – beliefs based on literature and pop culture, on observing other relationships around him, as well as on his own limited experiences. He hires Angel, certain he knows what he wants. And he does, in a very narrow way. But during the course of the story, he gets so much more than that, and learns not just about feeling love, but about giving it as well.

So yes, learning and teaching things about love may be considered one of the themes in my book, but I wouldn’t say it’s about teaching anyone how to feel love. Rather, it’s about showing what love can be and how many different forms it can take; that it’s not a one-size-fits-all, unchanging thing. And in the end, the teaching goes both ways. Both men show each other things about love that they’ve never believed possible; things that change them and their lives.

I hoped to capture the personal and emotional growth that comes from all kinds of good, solid relationships between people – not just romantic relationships, but friendships, work and family relations, too. Have I succeeded? I will leave that for the readers to judge.

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About Love Starved

Love Starved FrontCover-WEBMicah Geller considers himself lucky: at 27, he has more money than he needs, a job he loves, a debut book coming out, and a brilliant career in information security before him. What he doesn’t have is a partner to share it with—a fact that’s never bothered him much.

But the romantic in him isn’t entirely dead. When a moment of weakness finds him with a contact to a high-class escort specializing in fulfilling fantasies, Micah asks for only one thing.

Show me what it’s like to feel loved.

Available at: Amazon

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About Kate Fierro

Kate Fierro spent ten years translating, editing, and reviewing other people’s words before making an impulse decision to write down some of her own. She hasn’t been able to stop ever since. Kate lives in Europe and is bilingual, with more love for her adopted language than her native one.

With nearly a million words under her belt, Love Starved is Kate’s debut novel.

Find out more about Kate on her Website or Twitter.

Blog_Tour_Giveaway

As part of this blog tour, Kate is giving away a $25 Interlude Press Gift Card!! To enter, just click the link below!

Rafflecopter Giveaway

Please be aware that the only way to enter the giveaway is to click the Rafflecopter link above. Any comments on this post will not count towards entering the giveaway unless otherwise stated but are still welcome anyway.

Good luck!

Categories: Book Promo, Giveaways, Honorary Blogger Post, LGBT, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

Book Review: Never Too Early: Finding Their Way by Chris Owen and Tory Temple

Reviewed by Susan65

1Title: Never Too Early: Finding Their Way
Authors: Chris Owen and Tory Temple
Series: Never Too Early #2
Heroes: Chance/Tucker and Take/Tor
Genre: MM Contemporary
Length: 172 Pages
Publisher: Torquere Press
Release Date: April 15, 2015
Available at: Amazon
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb: Continuing from the first book in the series (Never Too Early: The Beginning), Chance and Tucker and Jake and Tor find themselves involved in a friendship that goes much deeper than any of them initially suspected.

Jake has been released from the hospital following his fall from the roof, and Chance and Tucker agree to stay in Arkansas for several days to help Tor with Jake’s care. Chance, however, spends much of his time trying to resist the growing attraction he has for Jake. The confusion between the love he has for Tucker and the new feelings for Jake play tricks with Chance’s mind. Is any of this a good idea, or are all of them headed for disaster?

For his part, Jake has to reconcile not only his growing feelings and physical attraction to Chance, but also the promises he and Tor made to each other. They rebuilt their own relationship in the wake of mistakes neither one of them wishes to repeat. How much communication and longing can one — or two — relationships take?
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Categories: 4 Star Ratings, Book Review, LGBT, Published in 2015, Susan65's Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Audio and Book Review: Hoarfrost by Jordan L. Hawk

Reviewed by Heather C

24901214Title: Hoarfrost
Author: Jordan L. Hawk
Narrator: Julian G. Simmons
Series: Whyborne & Griffin #6
Heroes: Whyborne & Griffin
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Historical
Length: 75,000 words
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: April 21, 2015
Available at: Amazon and Audible
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb: Sorcerer Percival Endicott Whyborne and his husband Griffin Flaherty have enjoyed an unprecedented stretch of peace and quiet. Unfortunately, the calm is shattered by the arrival of a package from Griffin’s brother Jack, who has uncovered a strange artifact while digging for gold in Alaska. The discovery of a previously unknown civilization could revive the career of their friend Dr. Christine Putnam—or it might kill them all, if the hints of dark sorcery surrounding the find are true.

With Christine and her fiancé Iskander, Whyborne and Griffin must journey to the farthest reaches of the arctic to stop an ancient evil from claiming the life of Griffin’s brother. But in the rough mining camp of Hoarfrost, secrets fly as thickly as the snow, and Whyborne isn’t the only sorcerer drawn by the rumors of magic. Amidst a wilderness of ice and stone, Griffin must either face his greatest fear—or lose everyone he loves.
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Categories: 5 Star Ratings, Book Review, Heather C's Reviews, LGBT, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: To Be Human by Pearl Love

Reviewed by Nikyta

24226585Title: To Be Human
Author: Pearl Love
Series: To Be Human #1
Heroes: Tim & David
Genre: M/M Contemporary
Length: 326 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: January 9, 2015
Available at: Dreamspinner Press & Amazon
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads

Blurb: TM 05637 was created to be a killer. Genetically engineered for superiority, he was facing a life of missions, blood, and death until his creator decides to set him free. On the run from those holding his leash, he is found by David Conley, an ordinary store owner who stumbles upon a remarkable find. Renaming himself “Tim,” TM 05637 sets out to discover what it means to have a normal life.

Through his friendships with a young boy dealing with a nightmarish family life, and David’s mother, who decides Tim is perfect for her son, Tim slowly discovers his humanity. Even more importantly, David teaches Tim about the power of love. But General Woodard, leader of the project that created Tim, threatens their happiness with his determination to bring his evasive quarry permanently to heel.

As the search net closes ever tighter around him, Tim must find a way to thwart his pursuers so he can stay with David and live out his dream.
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Categories: 3 Star Ratings, Book Review, LGBT, Nikyta's Reviews, Published in 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment