[S. A. McAuley is giving an ebook copy of “Tread Marks & Trademarks”. Details at the end of the review]

Reviewed By Donna

TITLE: Tread Marks and Trademarks

AUTHOR: S.A. McAuley

PUBLISHER: Wilde City Press

LENGTH: 200 pages

BLURB: Alex Maddox may be a genius. Or not. In thirty-four days he’ll know for sure. The robot he’s been perfecting for the last four years is finally ready. Alex won’t accept anything less than perfection—if he can keep a broken air conditioner, a flaky twin brother, a thirtieth birthday, and falling for the Norse god of advertising from derailing him.

Christian Lawson is an advertising god. A blond hottie with the beautiful brains to match. He’s worked hard to move past the accident that nearly took his legs, but it’s been years since he let any man get close enough to see just how deep his scars really go.

Christian isn’t the advertising executive Alex expected, and Alex isn’t the coolly confident inventor Christian’s had his eye on for years. But what they discover in each other may just be better than what either of them could have hoped for.

REVIEW:

What on earth is a Maker Jock? I’d never heard someone referred to as a ‘maker’ before, so I Googled it. I’m the first to admit that I have a bit of a Google addiction. According to Google there were a couple of possibilities:

1)     The character named Alex is God

2)     The character named Alex is an inventor.

Oh, and look right there in the blurb, Alex is an inventor. That will teach me not to dive into a book before reading the blurb.

So Alex, as we’ve established invents things. For years he’s been working on a project that is set to revolutionize robotics and hopefully help a lot of people. Now he just needs to market it.

Enter Christian, aka the Norse God. He’s an advertising genius and, say what! He hails from Perth in Western Australia! Well so do I Christian, so I’m loving you already.

The two men are instantly attracted to each other and it’s not long before they’re working together on the project andbetween the sheets. (That line works better if you wiggle your eyebrows suggestively while reading it.)

I loved many things about this book and one of those things was Alex. I’d go as far as to say that Alex has definitely gone on my list of all time favorite characters. It didn’t take long upon meeting Alex to form assumptions about his character. He’s a nerdy inventor who’s a bit of a dag, which computes in my head to include- shy, socially awkward, probably a virgin. That’s the stereotype right?

But Alex is not a stereotype. According to Christian, Alex is innocent one second and a dirty flirt the next. That describes him perfectly. He also has a wicked sense of humor, designs motorbikes and can rap karaoke.

I like when an author makes their characters behave in unexpected ways. Each time Alex is a bit of a douche to Christian, or when the good-looking ex shows up I thought, here it comes, “The Breakup”. But shoot, these men talk about their problems instead of breaking up? And apologize when they’re wrong? What a novel concept! And I do so like the way they own their faults. “You are beautiful, successful, intelligent, loyal to a fault, a talented maker of breakfast meats. And I shred you to bits for no good reason, act like a whiny bitch, and yet you not only stick around but you fix my air conditioning and make me piles of said breakfast meats.”

For anybody that may be feeling confused because you think this all sounds a bit familiar, this book was originally published elsewhere as two separate stories. The Maker Jock, which accounts for the first half of this book and is told from Alex’s point of view and Tread Marks and Trademarks, which makes up the second half of the book and is told from Christian’s perspective. It has been rereleased through Wilde City Press as one story and, in my humble opinion, joining the two together was a smart idea. The switch from one point of view to the other isn’t confusing and now we get the whole story in one go.

If someone had asked me, what do you think of S.A. McAuley, I would likely have said, oh yeah, she’s a good writer. However, before I started reading Tread Marks and Trademarks for review I realized that I’d never actually read any of her books. I think perhaps I’d always just seen positive responses from other readers whenever her name was mentioned and had made assumptions based on that. So going into Tread Marks and Trademarks I was expecting a lot, which often leads to disappointment. Luckily for me this book lived up to the author’s reputation.

The books I remember most, out of however many thousand I’ve read, are those that spark an interest in something I previously had no interest in. Tread Marks and Trademarks captured my attention with its maker movement details. So yes, I then spent ages on Google reading about ideas this book had introduced me to. And I found a quote I just have to share because as soon as I read it, it made me realize why I lovedTeam Maker Jock.

We grow up thinking that 100% is all we can achieve and we can only do worse. When you experiment with something and it fails but eventually you succeed, it gives you this resiliency and I think more and more people are just coming awake to the idea that they can change the world. –Bre Pettis, founder of Makerbot.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Amazon  ::  ARe  ::  Wilde City Press

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