Reviewed by Elizabetta

TITLE: The Dark Angels: With Wings

AUTHOR: Z Allora

PUBLISHER: Rocky Ridge Books

LENGTH: 190 pages

BLURB:  

The lights go down and stage lights up. The Dark Angels have arrived. With his come-hither voice and body made for sin, lead singer Angel Luv draws lovers like a magnet. And when he caresses and taunts shy guitarist Darius Stone on stage, well…it’s an act, right? But every touch lights a fire, and every flirtatious glance chips away at Dare’s certainty that he’s straight. No one else has so captured his imagination.

Temptation beckons. It’s hard not to notice the want in Dare’s eyes, the way he stares when he thinks Angel’s not watching. One wrong move might scare him away, but a work trip to exotic Bali might be the perfect place to let Dare explore his sexuality, with none to be the wiser. But their “friends with benefits” pact has an expiration date, that just might sour their friendship.

REVIEW: 

I’m a sucker for rocker romances: beautiful, talented people making great music and earning fame and fortune, sexy guys strutting their stuff (insert tight, form-fitting leather over hard bodies), and all the angsty drama on and offstage (insert lots of sweaty sex). 

Sex and rock ’n roll, it goes together like bread ’n buttah.  

In M/M romance, rock bands with one gay musician seem to spawn a flurry of gay players. If you aren’t gay, give it a sec, you’ll be playing for the same team before you know it. With Wings doesn’t disappoint here, nor in following that other well-worn trope: the straight (insert quiet, studious and extremely talented) lead guitarist versus the gay (insert extremely confident, extroverted and sexy) lead singer or front guy. Also insert lots of flirtation, innuendo, and is he/isn’t he?? angst.

The Dark Angels is the band. Darius Stone, the lead guitarist, faces off against Angel Luv, the lead singer. Two guys predestined to hit the sheets… erm, the stage together. As soon as Angel sees Darius (Dare) performing with another band he has to have him. In his band, of course, but, hey, he’ll take whatever else may develop between them too.

I immediately think of one of my favorite rocker series, Heaven Sent by Jet Mykles, about another band made up of randy gay men. That series has a certain charm and the guys are charismatic. What I really like about it is that it doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s good, light and fluffy bubblegum fun. It’s what we daydream the rocker celebrity world should be like… lots of gorg guys, lots of sexy hook-ups, lots of booze and cash to burn. It’s a daydream.

With Wings doesn’t quite get there, though. While Dare and Angel are nice enough guys, I can’t but help feel removed from them as a couple. Dare spends most of the story protesting that he’s straight and Angel just seems to hang around waiting for Dare to ‘get with the program’. Which, of course, he does. 

It’s all so easy and pat. The story hops, skips, and jumps ahead as the band has an instant and meteoric rise to success with a first album that rockets them to fame. At which point these two take off by themselves for a dragged out, month-long vacay to Bali to ‘write music’ together for the second album. And we are treated to long sex scenes with lots of toys.  (Actually, the most fun is watching Dare try to reconcile all the diddling with his constant ‘but I’m not gay’ insistence even as he slowly falls for Angel.)

Of course, eventually there is the ‘big misunderstanding’, and we watch these two wallow and lose weight and worry their friends and band mates. Until the inevitable make up phase. Other than this, there is no real tension in the story. Problem is, neither does it achieve the light and fluffy bubblegum fun which could have helped. 

There are issues in the writing which keep me from cozying up to Dare and Angel too. As mentioned before, there are jumps in time, especially in the beginning of the story. There is also a lot of telling versus showing: “Darius was impressed with Angel’s keen business sense and his intellect. Angel was a talented writer and composer, and was funny as hell when he got going. To top it off, he was one of the nicest guys Darius had ever met.”  A lot of that. And as this is the second edition, I would have expected a lot fewer edit errors. Lots of those, too.

But, if you want an easy, fairly tension-free rocker story, then this is the read for you. Dare and Angel have some great loud sex, for sure, on and offstage. But, for me, With Wings makes just a little beep, about a 2.5 on the knock-my-socks-off rocker meter. There isn’t enough here to make them or their story stand apart from all the other rockers out there.

RATING:  

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