Review: Heart Doctor

Title: Heart Doctor
Series: City Hospital
Author: Drew Zachary
Publisher: Torquere Press
Publication Date: May 2009
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 132 pages

Rating: 2 out of 5

Blurb:
Drey Banerjee, head nurse on the cardiac floor at City Hospital, loves his job. He loves it even more when heart doctor Brady MacDonald joins the team. Brady is cute, good at his job, and also gay. Soon the two are flirting like crazy and Drey's showing Brady the ropes, the local diner, his bedroom...

Brady's got rules, though, about not dating his co-workers. Not to mention the hospital frowns on fraternization between employees who work the same floor. Where does that leave Drey and Brady when innocent flirting begins leading to much, much more? With a cast of secondary characters egging Drey and Brady on, Heart Doctor is a heartwarming and delightful tale of falling in love.

Review:

Main Characters:
Drey is out and proud, loving his job as head nurse in the cardiac floor at which Brady is a new arrival. He's half-Indian and loves to cook... and that's about the extent of what we know about him. He's sassy and upbeat, but in a rather generic way; there's nothing in particular that makes him stand out as anything but half of an erotic equation.

Brady is equally difficult to get a hold on. Although he's initially more interested in circumspection than Drey, his rules quickly fly out the window. Beyond those rules and his relationships with Drey and, to a lesser extent, Eve, we're never really shown much about him. We know he likes to work out and doesn't cook, but we know nothing about his actual life--does he have friends? family? past lovers?--and that leaves him decidedly hollow, a vehicle for smut and not much else.

Chemistry:
Drey and Brady spend the vast majority of the book having sex in one form or another, but I never really felt drawn into it. Their lack of individual personalities made the depicted sex kind of sterile to me, like watching digital wire models going at it, unfinished and unsatisfying. I would've been much happier to have some character development to go with the smut, as the lack of it is definitely noticeable.

Secondary Characters:
Honestly, I strongly disliked most of the supporting cast. They were limited primarily to women--Brady's neighbor/friend Eve, the other nurses on Drey's floor--and the women were embarrassingly unrelenting fag hags. The nurses ran pools around Brady and Drey's relationship and took notes when pressing Drey for intimate details, then shot sly looks at Brady whenever they saw him. (This bothers me for another reason entirely, too: we're told that Drey is head nurse, which is a position of some authority. How can his authority be believed at all when we're never shown that the other nurses feel even a hint of respect for him? Friendship I could buy, if a particularly haggy friendship, but respect? No.) Eve pressed for details and, from the sound of it, listened avidly and shamelessly when Brady had Drey over for Chinese and loud sex. Some variety in the secondary characters and less of the fag hag stereotype would've helped my enjoyment quite a bit.

Story:
This is a book in which not a lot happens. They meet, they have sex, they move in together, the end. Things that might have been conflicts (the aforementioned fraternization being revealed) were neatly nipped in the bud, addressed quickly and forgotten. I get that conflict distracts from the sex, but a little more distraction couldn't have hurt.

Writing:
I was unfortunately not terribly impressed technically. The writing tended toward awkward, with conversations going on in parallel threads that were all too-neatly addressed in response. Some things were inserted for, I'm guessing, the sake of being cute, but where they were inserted didn't always make sense. (For example, while looking at an apartment, the manager has to leave Brady and Drey to attend to a matter. Brady tells him that the manager can trust him, he's a doctor. I get where the author was trying to go, but I don't think the situation was one where the destination was a possibility.) There's a lot of awkward phrasing, too, which makes the characters sound a lot younger than they're supposed to be (I still can't buy Brady as mid-30s), and a fair number of typographical errors.

Other Thoughts:
In addition to being a stereotype, Eve as a concept and as a character pushed a number of my other dislike buttons. First, she met Brady when he'd moved in next door to her, about a week before the story picks up... and the first conversation we're shown with her is Brady going on about how hot Drey is, in detail. I can't believe that anyone would share that much information with someone who is at best an acquaintance at that point. She also tends to come up with nicknames that strike me as intended to be cute and that come across as rather more insulting: Gay Drey and Drey the Fey and the Screamer. Way to trivialize a guy.

Overall:
Weak characterization and a lack of plot left me cold. Developing the main characters more, working in some secondary characters that weren't unrelenting stereotypes, and adding a touch of conflict could only have helped make this a more appealing story. Instead, it's a flat story with too much sex and not enough of anything else.

Review: Indigo: The Cat's Meow

Title: Indigo: The Cat's Meow
Author: Lucius Parhelion
Publisher: Torquere Press
Publication Date: 27 December 2011
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 72 pages

Rating: 4 out of 5

Blurb:
Good jobs were hard to come by in 1930, even in booming Southern California, even in Hollywood. Fred Doyle was relieved when the chores his brother Charlie conned him into taking over, serving as handyman and cat sitter for their landlady's son, accidentally led to decent work with Carl Belasco, youngest and sharpest of the Production Heads at Metropolitan Pictures.

But now Fred and Carl are being drawn together by more than painting woodwork on weekends, trying to keep track of Mr. Flurry the cat, or even correcting errant movie directors. They're realizing that a more intimate and illegal taste they share is turning them toward each other. Too bad that onlookers, including the ever-conniving Charlie, may notice the growing attraction before Fred and Carl do.

Given this tangle, a quick trip to buy decorating supplies on romantic Catalina Island is likely not the wisest of ideas...

Review:

Main Characters:
Fred is a soon-to-be-CPA sleeping on his brother's couch. Seeking hourly work to avoid taking a job with the family construction company, he's pleasantly surprised to find regular work as Carl's personal assistant, something at which it quickly becomes apparent he excels. He's grounded and knows how to get done what needs to be done, but he's not above irreverence and doesn't take himself too seriously. His narration gives the story a decidedly light-hearted air and casts him as quite a likable guy.

Carl is a bit harder to get a read on, filtered through Fred's point of view. He's a powerful producer with a bad habit of keeping potential paramours--those of a lavender hue--close at hand in any way that fits. I rather liked him, though I can't pin down his character enough to determine why.

Chemistry:
So much of what is between Fred and Carl is in what is not said that it was hard to see their interest in each other at all until quite late in the story. Once it came out, it was a slow slide into acting upon that attraction, and much is still left in the spaces between; what sex there is in the end is tastefully implied, rather than splashed across the page. It's easy for me to see Fred and Carl together for the long haul, too, which never hurts.

Secondary Characters:
Although there is a decently-sized secondary cast, the one who steals the scenes is naturally Mr. Flurry. His frantic pawing under the bathroom door at bath time is downright adorable. Fred's brother, Charlie, is fun as well, especially when he rides to defend Fred's virtue, much to Fred's chagrin. Even the incidental characters are breathed with unique life that makes them a pleasant, integral part to Fred and Carl's world.

Story:
Much of the plot revolves around the work Fred and Carl are doing to Carl's mother's house while she is away. The development of their relationship, both personal and professional, falls into the cracks and comes out in relief, shown in its absence.

Writing:
The writing itself is an absolute delight, lyrical and dreamy. Things flow so beautifully from point A to point B that it's easy to get lost in it.

Overall:
You don't need to love historical romances to love this story, but it's an added bonus if you do. Excellent writing and impressively-drawn characters lend a timelessness that makes it easily accessible to anyone looking for a lovely, light romance.

Review: Downed Fences

Title: Downed Fences
Author: Kate Roman
Publisher: Torquere Press
Publication Date: 5 May 2010
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 68 pages

Rating: 3 out of 5

Review: All Cody has going for him is horses; he's trapped between an overbearing father and sadistic trainer/lover with no way out. That all changes one day when a flighty mare throws him into a fence at a show, when a small kindness shown by a steward opens his world to new options. Will Cody be able to find it within himself to take the chance at a new life or will he remain trapped in his own private Hell?

Cody is not quite broken, but not too far removed from it. Fearing every session with his trainer--both in the ring and after hours--he tries to convince himself that it's love that keeps him going back. His reactions to the abuse are heart-wrenching, but I can't help questioning just how it began, or when. A little history would have helped to flesh Cody out a bit, rather than just defining him by his abuse. It was nice to see things changing for him in the end, but they seemed to almost happen on their own; his handling of most situations was to avoid them. It would have been nice to see him step up a bit more.

Troy was a fairly generic Good Guy. Ignorant of Cody's abuse but knowing that something was wrong, he tries to do what he can to help Cody, though even once he's aware of the abuse his action too is mostly inaction.

The baggage of Cody's abuse is inescapable between him and Troy, which makes their intimacy vaguely bittersweet. Although it was a welcome change for Cody from his abuser, I felt somehow as though the time he spent with Troy was too private; I ended up skimming most of the last sex scene. This isn't to say that the smut wasn't done well--it was--but to me the relationship between them called for a bit more discretion on my part.

The supporting cast was comprised mostly of horses, Cody's father, and Cody's trainer, Gary. Cody's father was stereotypically overbearing, focused more on wins in the show ring than anything else. Gary was almost cartoonish in his villainy; all he needed was a pencil moustache and a black cape, and he'd have been made. A little more development of him wouldn't have hurt.

The story focuses primarily on Cody's relationship with Gary, both with and without horses, and Cody's growing feelings for Troy. It's fairly predictable though not in a bad way, but I would've liked to see some things first-hand, rather than getting a recap after the fact. (I'm referring here specifically to the resolution with Gary. There's actually not even really any resolution, just a throwaway line about him. I would've liked to have seen Cody actually dealing with it, instead of the cards just falling where they would.)

For a sweet little romance, this isn't bad. It was easy to root for Cody to escape his situation, but ultimately a little anti-climactic in the end. It could have benefitted from a little more character development and growth, but it still went a long way toward satisfying my craving for horse stories.

Review: Midnight Dalliance

Title: Midnight Dalliance
Author: S.J. Frost
Publisher: Torquere Press
Publication Date: February 2010
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 29 pages

Rating: 3 out of 5

Review: Dalton sank everything he had into his Grand Prix dreams and a stallion named Midnight Dalliance. He may be in over his head, though--until his hero in a beige cowboy hat arrives on the scene.

Given that this was a short story, it's perhaps not terribly surprising that character development was thin on the ground. Dalton and Kelvin (the aforementioned cowboy hat-wearing hero) each have a voice, though thankfully not at the same time. Dalton's is the stronger of the two, but not enough to give much of an impression of his personality. This isn't a bad thing for the format, but a longer story would have been interesting to see, with more exploration of who Dalton and Kelvin were, both separately and together.

The supporting cast was comprised of one, plus the horses. Again, there's not much of a way around this with the story length, and really wasn't necessary; the horses were enough to carry the story along.

The chemistry between Dalton and Kelvin was well-done (again, given the story length). It was naturally a bit rushed from meeting to sex to commitment, but not so much as to be terrible. The sex (most of the point of a short story) was hot, which was a bonus.

There was a little drama in the story beyond the sex, mostly in the form of horses and an ex-boyfriend, but, really, it was just a vehicle for the sex. It's certainly an adequate vehicle, though, and enjoyable enough in and of itself.

Although I wish it had been longer, this was still a nice bite of story. It definitely helps satisfy a craving for horse stories with a dash of romance (or romance with a dash of horses).

Review: 911

Title: 911
Author: Chris Owen
Publisher: Torquere Press
Publication Date: 13 December 2006
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 339 Pages

Rating: 4 out of 5

Review: Firefighter Drew and doctor Scott meet thanks to a hazmat scare.  In short order, they're roommates and, before too much longer, lovers.  Life is good.  They toy with the idea of adding a third to their relationship, but it's purely speculation until they meet EMT Eric.  Two becomes three as they struggle to overcome injuries, addictions, and the reactions of those around them.

I like Drew.  I like Scott.  I like Drew-and-Scott.  If the entire book had been about their relationship, I would've been happy.  This isn't to say that I don't like Eric, too--though his insecurity occasionally grates.  I even like the dynamic of their threesome.

What I like a little bit less is the pacing (though it's pretty standard for the genre).  By chapter 3, Drew and Scott are sleeping together.  By chapter 6, they're professing their love for each other.  It's a bit too compressed for my tastes, especially the declarations of love; there just isn't enough build-up to make it believable.

And then there's the sex.  There's a lot of it.  A lot.  There are 51 chapters in this book, and probably fewer than a half-dozen of them don't involve graphic sex.  It's hot sex, granted, but it's still a lot of sex.  The evolution of the various relationships between the characters is sometimes lacking, as it seems that they do most of their communicating with their penises.

I also didn't much care for the reactions of Drew and Scott's parents when their duo became a trio.  It just didn't jive for me with how their parents had behaved up to that point; it seemed like melodrama for the sake of melodrama.

Despite my quibbles, I really do rather like this book. The characters are mostly likeable, the sex is fantastic, and the ending is satisfying.  I wish that neighbor James had gotten his own spin-off, but, self-contained, this book is a definite keeper.