Reviewed by Tara
TITLE: Baja Honeymoon
AUTHOR: Roland Graeme
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 286 pages
BLURB:
When up-and-coming actor Rick Decareau, aka Deke Rowe, learns his fiancée cheated on him with her ex, he immediately breaks off the engagement and all wedding plans… except the honeymoon. Why waste a great road trip up and down the Baja peninsula? To make the time away even better, Rick impulsively invites his friendly neighbor, Ken Bollinger. After all, nothing sexual will happen between two buddies on a trip. The somewhat promiscuous Ken is attracted to open-minded Rick from the start and assumes Rick is straight. So he sets out with no expectations, but on the road, they become close, and step by step, Ken succeeds in seducing Rick, even teaching him how to enjoy three-way sex along the way. Unfortunately, Ken’s getting too much of a good thing: the more serious he becomes about Rick, the more he fears Rick is using him as rebound comfort from his broken engagement. Can Ken protect his heart before he falls too far? Or does Rick have other plans for the two of them?
REVIEW:
In Culver City we are introduced to Rick Decareau and Ken Bollinger. Rick is an actor, although Ken doesn’t know it at first, who moves into Ken’s neighborhood and the two become fast friends. While Rick is engaged to a model named Eva and Ken is an out and proud gay man that doesn’t stand in their way as they spend a few dinners getting to know each other and exploring a new found friendship. Ken is immediately attracted to Rick but seeing as he is engaged, he places himself firmly in the friend zone. When Rick discovers that his future wife has cheated on him, he decides that he should not waste his honeymoon and invites Ken along for the ride. Ken goes with the idea that he would find his “fun” on the side while keeping things platonic with Rick along the way.
The blurb really does tell it all. There are no real secrets to discover and you pretty much can tell right away where the story is going. It was well written but very slow moving in the first few chapters. I tried to really get into the storyline but unfortunately for me the romance was kind of lost and it just turned into an all out sex fest towards the middle and well into the end of the book. I am not a fan of men who sleep around while pursuing a romantic involvement with another. For instance after a hand job that Ken gives to Rick in order to help him sleep, Ken meets a rancher named Efrain. They immediately have a tryst at the campsite and it kills any romantic vibe I had about the book. It made both men just look obsessed about getting laid and not about being interested in anything else. The whole straight turned gay usually interests me greatly. In this book it fell quite flat. It didn’t seem that Rick fell for Ken because of how nice of a person he was, but more for what he made him feel physically.
Overall, the book was well written but at some points I felt as if I was reading a journal entry, or a travel guide and not an actual m/m romance. There were a lot of unbelievable instances pertaining to the amount of easy sex, and also the fear of monogamy that Ken seemed to have without any explanation. Perhaps if we had gotten to see more of an actual romance brew, less sex, not as much of a description of the places they visited, and definitely more one on one time between the characters it could have won me over.
RATING: 
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