Third week of the month again so that means Theme Week at Love Bytes

This week we center on New Beginnings . Enjoy these theme books with us 🙂

Reviewed by Donna

 

TITLE: Racing for the Sun

AUTHOR: Amy Lane

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 260 Pages

BLURB:

“I’ll do anything.”

Staff Sergeant Jasper “Ace” Atchison takes one look at Private Sonny Daye and knows that every word on paper about him is pure, unadulterated bullshit. But Sonny is desperate, and although Ace isn’t going to take him up on his offer of “anything,” that doesn’t mean he isn’t tempted.

Instead, Ace takes Sonny under his wing, protecting him when they’re in the service and making plans with him when they get out. Together, they’re going to own a garage and build race cars and make their fortune hurtling faster than light across the desert. Together, they’re going to rewrite the past, make Sonny Daye a whole and happy person, and put the ghosts in Ace’s heart to rest.

But not even Sonny can build a car fast enough to escape the ghosts of the past. When Sonny’s ghosts drive them down and run their plans off the road, Ace finds out exactly what he’s made of. Maybe Sonny was the one to promise Ace anything, but there is nothing under the sun Ace won’t do to keep Sonny safe from harm.

 

REVIEW:

You know, that blurb just comes across as way too nice and standard to even begin to give you an idea of the messed up fuckery that goes on within the pages of this book. And sorry about the language but just so you know, there’s a high likelihood that I will drop the old ‘F’ word frequently during the review, and I can tell you now that if you’re easily offended then this probably isn’t the book for you anyway. So I’m going to go ahead and start the review with a quote, the first few sentences of the story. I’ve seen a few other reviewers have begun their reviews of this book the same way, but honestly, these thirty words (yep, I counted) give a perfect idea of what lies ahead.

My name is Jasper Anderson Atchison. People call me Ace. I am a murderer and a thief, but if Sonny still wants me, I will call myself a good man.

The moment Ace claps eyes on Sonny Daye, his life is changed for better or worse, and his focus becomes keeping the obviously damaged man in front of him safe. Which is a challenge in the middle of a war zone where the soldier who is put in command of Sonny seems more intent on hurting him than teaching him to be a soldier. Ace needs to get himself and Sonny back on American soil as soon as possible and create a life for them that will allow him to continue protecting the young man. He finds them a broken down old garage and a broken down car for Sonny to work his magic on so they can make money from illegal street racing. But taking Sonny back to the street racing life that he knows means risking the attention of a person who needed to remain in Sonny’s past, and Ace will do anything, anything, it takes to keep Sonny safe.

So let me count all the ways I love this book! Everyone bemoans the whole insta-love angle some stories take but while it kinda sounds like that’s what happens in this book, that’s not how it came across to me at all. Ace doesn’t look at Sonny and decide “This is my soul mate and I’m going to love him forever”. If Ace’s soul is involved in any way, if there is any sort of instant recognition, it was more along the lines of “This boy needs saving and it needs to be me who does it”. And that so works for me.

Actually, you know what, I don’t think that I would use the words – these men are in love – at any point. Love is just too ordinary a word, in my opinion. What these men have is entirely more intense, extreme and forceful than being in love. To be honest it borders on crazy, fucked up fixation and if I actually knew these men in real life I’d probably be terrified that I’d inadvertently insult Ace and Sonny would slit my throat as I slept. But hey, it’s fiction and I adored Sonny’s psychotic passion for Ace.

“I hurt every minute you didn’t claim me,” Sonny snapped. “This? This is nothing. This is fuckin’ skin, and I don’t give a fuck. Mark me!” He turned to me with the knife in his hand. “Mark me!”

Oh, yeah. Sonny is one fucked up dude but I can never get enough of unapologetically messed up characters and Ace and especially Sonny really take the cake on this one. This book is a hurt-comfort medal winner in my book.

If you haven’t guessed yet, the sex is deliciously hot and rough. It’s all about claiming and owning and belonging to each other. And did I mention hot and rough!? The first time they have sex it’s with Sonny shoved face first into a wall, a smear of lube, no condom and it’s all words like slamming and hard and fast and there’s screaming and clawing and biting and Sonny is left bleeding. And WTF! Normally I’d be thinking, what the hell just happened there? But instead I just wanted them to do it again!

Now I’m going to confess something that may make me unpopular with a whole lot of people. I’m not really a fan of Amy Lane’s books. (Oh shit, did someone just throw something at me!) I absolutely agree with the majority that she is a great writer but most of her books are so damn angsty, and there is no way anyone could honestly argue against that point. See, angst and I don’t do so well together so Amy Lane (for the most part) has been put on my list of authors that sadly, it’s best for me to avoid. Luckily for me, this book was released not long after I started reading m/m, before I started to avoid the angstier authors or I probably wouldn’t have read this one either. And oddly enough, this book doesn’t feel angsty to me. For me, angst is caused by a threat to the relationship between the MCs. It’s caused by threats to their emotional connection. In some ways this might be one of the least angst inducing books that I’ve ever read because despite whatever else is going on in the story, there is nothing on earth that I could believe would come between Ace and Sonny.

So for the few people out there who have yet to read this book, I’m not sure what you were thinking but you should correct that over sight as soon as possible. And for everybody who has already read Racing for the Sun, it’s probably time for a reread, don’t you think?

 

RATING: 

 

BUY LINKS:

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

Amazon.UK

ARe