Reviewed by Elizabetta
TITLE: Entanglements
AUTHOR: Fae Sutherland & Marguerite Labbe
PUBLISHER: Amber Allure
LENGTH: 113 pages
BLURB: Friends. Lovers. Realists. Up-and-coming rocker Ben Copeland and struggling actor John Calder have an unspoken understanding. Mutual pleasure, no strings attached, no demands made, not to mention chemistry so scorching it needs a warning label. For more than a year they’ve sexed their way from one coast to the other, and Ben’s beginning to think he might just have found the key to a perfect “relationship.”
Except now John’s gone and fallen in love. Ben’s career is finally skyrocketing and the last thing he wants or needs is the complication of too many dangerous emotions. John’s not one to take no for an answer, though, and when the “Scottish Don Juan” puts his mind to something, even a man like Ben had better look out…
REVIEW:
This certainly starts off with a bang. In fact, about ninety-percent of this book is about banging, ahem.
Ben and John are aspiring artists, a rock musician and actor, respectively. Both of them talented, gorgeous, desirable, randy dudes who have a hankering for each other. They are long-term fuck buddies, no strings attached– but long enough to have gotten to the point where they really don’t want to play around with others anymore, no one else will do. But they can’t tell each other that. Yet. And this entanglement is the crux of this novella.
Luckily, the sex scenes are hot enough (I’m fondly recalling a couple exhibitionist/voyeur scenes… these guys really don’t care when, where, or how) but the story only works because we also see the simmering yearning under all the steamy hook-ups and bravado posturing against “commitment”.
If these two weren’t connecting on some deeper level, what would be the point?
I like the guys, too… or mostly. Ben is pushy, arrogant, mouthy (“Damn it… you’re slipping… why’re my pants still on?”); the complete front man package. He’s used to being adored and he likes to top from the bottom, is quite verbal about it, and has the motor mouth to prove it. John, working stage actor with the looks to match his sexy Scots burr, is a god in bed; the topper, he knows just what spurs his rocker on (“… your mouth is like a riding crop…” — insert sexy Scots accent here, please).
But, John wants more from Ben, the flighty wild-child. Is he gonna get it?
The authors write two distinct characters and it’s a nice little story, but I find Ben’s reluctance hard to understand, I don’t know him well enough to know where it comes from. It seems like a manufacturing to stir up some plot tension… when, really, the guys’ careers should be enough to contribute to that… And at the end of the story Ben physically lashes out in anger at an innocent by-stander… this does nothing to win me over to him; it sets me to wonder if it’s only good looks and talent that John needs from his lover.
The ending shapes up to be a HFN for me as I’m not sure how the two will resolve some deep-seeded issues which their nomadic, frenetic careers can only make more difficult. If I only take this as a rocker fairy tale then it all works out well enough.
Elizabetta rates it –
BUY LINKS: Amber Allure :: Amazon :: All Romance eBooks
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Elizabetta is one of the official reviewers on The Blog of Sid Love.
To read all her reviews, click the link: ELIZABETTA’S REVIEWS
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