Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Last Chance Tattoo 

AUTHOR:  Karenna Colcroft

PUBLISHER:  Loose Id

LENGTH: 144 pages

BLURB:  

After “failing” to make a life and a drag career in Boston, Rad Morris has returned home to Ludington, Michigan, where his primary goal is to avoid his disapproving family. Only his grandmother accepts him, and Rad feels guilty for taking her support and money. Tattoo artist Dorsey Bellamy moved to Ludington three years ago after the death of his lover in a gay-bashing gone too far. Until Dorsey meets Rad, he keeps to himself, but something about Rad catches Dorsey’s attention. They form a friendship, which soon turns sexual, and then emotions enter the picture. But after confrontations with family members, Rad wants to leave town again, and Dorsey can only try to persuade him to stay.

REVIEW:  

Failure shouldn’t have been an option, but Rad had failed. He saw no other way to put it. Five years after leaving home for a great life and drag career in Boston , all he had was some new outfits, a decent makeup kit, and a broken heart.

And now he’d come home to lick his wounds and pretend his life didn’t suck.

Rad was never going to get the Hallmark family reunion when he came back to Ludington, Michigan. He knew that. Still, it would have been nice, after everything, to come home to a family that didn’t hate his gay ass. And the rest of his bits, gay or not.  That’s a pipedream, though, so he’ll have to settle for living in a town he’d do just about anything to escape, with a grandmother that is going to have to take the family shit for letting him live there, and absolutely no idea what to do with this life…now that he has screwed it all up. This was not the life he was looking for.

But, then again, he wasn’t looking for a tattoo, a lover, or a new chance at life when he ducked into the Last Chance Tattoo parlor, so maybe what he should have been looking for all along was the very thing he had no idea was there for the finding.

Despite my pretty much constant fear of pain, I have always wanted a tattoo. I have no idea if I’ll ever get the balls to get one, but I have, in the back of my mind, a pretty good idea of what I’d get.  And yes, it has everything to do with Doctor Who (and can I just take a brief moment to sigh over the awesome that is Peter Capaldi?…*le sigh*…ok, now we can get back to the review).  So a few week back, when I was wandering around our book vault/massive list of all the books you might/might not want to read, and came across Last Chance Tattoo, I thought it sounded interesting. I enjoy looking at tattoos, and books about tattoos, and guys who like to put tattoos on other people and themselves…so it seemed like a pretty good fit to me.

And I did like the tattoo aspect of this book (though I was really beginning to wonder how this place was able to stay afloat since there never seemed to be any customers there to tattoo).  I liked how the accidental meeting (i.e. Rad scampering into the shop to evade homophobic brethren) led to a kind of friendship between Dorsey and Rad. And I really liked how Rad stuck to his guns about his tattoo, and even when Dorsey wasn’t sure it was ‘strong enough,’ Rad knew that it was right because it represented who he was/wanted to be and not some tough-guy image that Dorsey seemed to want to push.

I did take a bit of issue with the fact that ‘feminine’ seemed to mean ‘weak’ in this book, though. Not only with Dorsey, but with all the characters themselves. Yeah, Rad’s grandma was pretty awesome for sticking up for Rad and making sure he was taken care of when the rest of the family wanted to kick him out, but she also came across as some frail that needed to be protected and coddled. Which, seeing as she is like pretty old, I get, sort of, but it seemed like it was more along the lines of don’t upset the lady, she’ll get all emotional and cry all over you. Not that over-masculine men were something to be desired in this book, either.

Maybe my problem is that character stereotypes seemed to be turned up to maximum in this book. Or maybe it was just that everything was a bit too melodramatic. Or it could be that I just found Rad’s constant self-flagellation a bit tiresome. But no matter the reason, this book seemed to drag on for me. The sex–especially the masturbation scenes–seemed routine and not all that attention grabbing, so I ended up skimming most of it. Although maybe that was just because with clothes or without them, I never really connected to these characters. They were not bad…just a tad bit flat.  And I needed more than just the fluffed-up drama that was being thrown around to give me a reason to care about these guys–but I never really got it.

RATING:  

BUY LINKS:

Loose Id

Amazon

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