Reviewed by Vicki

TITLE: Forever Fantasy

AUTHOR: J.R. Shelley

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 90 pages

BLURB: For most people, a life full of sex and debauchery sounds like a dream, but for gay porn star Logan Williams, who lives it, it’s nothing but a nightmare. Left disillusioned and empty by “living the dream,” Logan travels to an exclusive beachside resort to recharge and reevaluate his life. He expects to do this in solitude—instead, he finds RJ Spencer, and their immediate connection fills all of Logan’s empty spaces. But when the vacation ends, so does the fantasy life Logan created for himself and RJ, and he doesn’t think he can return to his empty life without RJ at his side.

REVIEW:

We first meet Logan at a shoot, first photos then porn. He is bored and tired of it all, needing to fantasize to get to the money shot in his scene. He heads home, to his lonely apartment, and finds what he needs. A brochure for a gay only resort! He books a vacation and off he goes. Then along comes RJ, we meet him at the resort, eating strawberry mousse for dessert. He and Logan flirt, and begin to spend time together, getting to know one another. It seemed to me we were going to have a nice vacation fling. But the story gets odd from there.

RJ has finished school post military service and is going in to phychology. He is attracted to Logan, but this odd counseling thing starts up. Logan is like a trained monkey, he only has sex for porn. He wants no part of a fling with RJ, and is adamant about not wanting to have sex. He can’t be intimate with anyone now, because then he’ll miss it when he gets home. RJ wants to help him, promises he doesn’t want anything sexual from him at all. This lasts one day. Then we have insta-love, sex, and RJ moves in to Logan’s bungalow. Logan whines too much, RJ counsels too much. I really didn’t see the chemistry between them, and it was all waaaay too fast. And they sleep in a bed together the first night, no sex, and neither wakes up “happy” in the morning. Really? Logan is 31 and RJ is about to turn 30 and neither has a hard on, while sleeping in briefs, in the same bed, touching all night. And they are fit, healthy men. I find that very hard (snort!) to believe.

So I had some issues with the plot of this book. I’m trying to be careful and not give anything away, but this was a totally unrealistic story. Decisions were made by both of these characters that made no sense to me. Insta-love, sex after both firmly saying there would be no sex, a decision about condom use which really bothered me, and then the whole back in LA thing with Logan was just bizarre. The author also way over uses … in his dialog. It was very annoying after a while!

I hate to do this, I try to like every book I read, or find something in it that I like, but this one was just odd. The writing isn’t bad technically, but the story just didn’t work for me. I didn’t like either of the main characters, I didn’t understand the relationship between them, and Logan really overreacts to everything. I mean he REALLY overreacts! It does have a happily ever after ending though. It starts off ok, and ends ok, it’s just the stuff in the middle I didn’t like.

RATING:

BUY LINKS : Dreamspinner Press