Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: One Good Favor
AUTHOR: J.L. Langley and Dick D.
PUBLISHER: MLR Press
LENGTH: 70 pages
BLURB:
When team roper Evan Marshall’s, horse dies during the middle of the season, he gets more than he bargains for with his replacement horse. Gus is the perfect roping horse, but he’s costing Evan a fortune in cell phones. The horse hates cell phones. As if the addition of Gus into Evan’s life isn’t enough to turn it upside down, Evan has a secret admirer. A secret admirer who is darn good at loving him and leaving him without a hint of who he is.
When shapeshifter Aaron Two Spirits decided to play horse for Evan, he never envisioned falling in love. The plan was to go along for the ride and maybe a fling or two. But when Evan finds himself the target of a couple of bull riders, Aaron stops at nothing, even discovery, to save him.
REVIEW:
I have a bit of a bias in favor of J.L. Langley…and no problem admitting it, either. She was the author that got me sucked into this genre, and as such I tend to love all her stuff no matter what. But there was a reason why I found myself falling so in love with gay romances, and that is because she writes damn good ones. I love her style of writing, and her shifters are a lot of fun. When I first discovered her, I went out and read almost everything by her that I could find.
Everything except this one.
Mostly because of that cover. It is not a horrible cover, but it does nothing for me at all.
So I skipped this story. And kept on skipping it for the next four years, right up until it came up for review on the blog. And while I’ve never read anything by Dick D. before–never even heard of him, to be honest–I thought, might as well give it a chance.
So I did.
And it was good.
Good enough that I’m kinda kicking myself for not reading it before.
It has Langley shifters, which are always a treat, except this time there are horse-shifters, not wolves. And I kinda loved the premise of Aaron falling so smitten with Evan, so he allows himself to be sold to the man as a roping horse. Evan, of course, is in love with his new horse ‘Gus’–in a totally not bestiallity way–though he has to say that it would be nice if Gus would stop killing Evan’s phones. They’re a match made in heaven. In more ways than Evan thinks. Since the guy that Even has been checking out at various bars along the circuit is not only totally gay, but totally his Gus. Just in human form. Delicious, tie me up and ride me hard, human form.
This short story was incredibly hot–even if the thought of being anywhere near that bar’s backroom floor makes me cringe. Not so much because you don’t know what’s on it, but because you know exactly what is on it, and that is something my obsessive-cleaning heart cannot take.
It was still fucking hot, Even bent against the wall taking it from this mystery man in a gray hat–but I really wanted to hand out hazmat suits after all the sexy time was over.
I fully recommend you pick this story up, especially if you are like me and you have been putting it off for so long for one reason or another. It was a great short story, and will help bide you over till Langley’s next book comes out. Hopefully, please please please, soon.
RATING: 
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