Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Doing Valentine
AUTHOR: Blake Santerre
PUBLISHER: Spunk Books
LENGTH: 10,000 Words
BLURB:
Ivan ‘Valentine’ Vaughan, drive-time chick-magnet shock jock has made a career out of his chauvinist hetero persona. He is hosting a six-hour on-air charity fundraiser on New Year’s Eve.
Dashiell Damon, radio morning show queen–and sucker for a good cause–agrees to fill in for Valentine’s co-host, Macy Cohen, against his better judgment.
Between the serious tension between the men on air, the spiking ratings, the mounting charity pledges, the champagne and Macy’s best matchmaker moves–even in her absence–the two men do their damndest to withstand the powerful attraction between them.
But when a caller offers them a thousand dollars for their fundraiser if they pash and post the New Year’s kiss on YouTube, will their off air fireworks finally fly?
REVIEW:
Doing Valentine is a short, fun story that left me feeling a bit uncertain. My problem is I don’t really know what to make of this book.
Let me start with what I know.
The story covers about a six hour period which, as the blurb states, is the length of the live radio charity fundraiser which is being held in the lead up to the clock striking midnight on New Years Eve. Valentine (and for all you Aussies out there I could not get Kyle Sandilands out of my head) is a rather sleazy, inappropriate radio host whose usual co-presenter Macy has ditched him to sneak off and get married. In a rather outlandish matchmaking attempt Macy convinces Dash, the very out and proud morning show presenter to do the on air fundraiser with Valentine.
Dash has been attracted to Valentine from the moment he first saw him and is uncomfortable at spending six hours shut away in the studio together. He decides that the only way to deal with the other man is to give him back a bit of what Valentine dishes out to his pretty, female co-host and suddenly the corny innuendos and OTT flirting is flying thick and fast. Valentine is getting confused and angry and Dash figures maybe he should stop but then the phones start ringing and people are throwing money at the charity, loving the interaction between the two men. Valentine figures he can deal with the teasing for charity but when a woman offers them a thousand dollars if they’ll kiss and post it to YouTube all hell seems to break lose at the station and all sorts of revelations come out.
For a ten thousand word story, I think the author did pretty well plot wise. I liked that the book was confined to that six hour time frame so there is no big gaps left for us to fill in ourselves. It was light and amusing but here is where my uncertainty comes into it.
The sex parts of this story, a rather erotic dream and the actual sex, are completely over the top with all the corny descriptions used. If the author intended them to be rather clichéd, almost to the point of parody then he did a great job because I was highly amused. If it wasn’t intended to sound like a bit of a takeoff then definitely – not so good. It was like the cheesiest adjectives and adverbs just exploded over the pages during the sex scenes and while it made me giggle I don’t know if it was meant to. I can only assume they were intended to be that way because the rest of the story wasn’t like that.
Although, I must add that the author has quite a way with words. I loved the way that both of the MCs were described. Valentine is a big, blond, sexy himbo and Dash is a hardcore homosexual. I was not so impressed that the author used two, not one but two, of my most hated words. Wang and jism. Don’t know why but they just bother me. And actually after reading this book I have a new hated word to add to my list, man-cunt. (Excuse my language.) Not that the presence of these words affected my rating or anything, I don’t object to people using them, they just seem descriptive in a gross way to me. Damn it, now I’m climbing on my soapbox. But seriously, don’t you think it sounds better to say that Valentine’s ass was filled with cum from Dash’s cock rather than Valentine’s man-cunt was filled with jism from Dash’s wang. Mmmhmm, my version is much more wholesome. Not that the author actually wrote that line but I thought I’d borrow his characters to showcase my own writing skills.
Okay somehow I’ve drifted from the point here. Where was I? The ending? Absolutely cute scene. Reminded me of the end of a romcom. If they made it into a movie it would totally require Zac Efron and Chris Hemsworth to Get. It. On. Anyone else want to see that movie?
Like I said before, this book was a bit of light fun and I found it to be a nice pick me up after the horribly angsty book I read previous to this one.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: