Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: Hard Sell
AUTHOR: Kendall Morgan
PUBLISHER: Tulabella Ruby Press
LENGTH: 52 pages
BLURB:
What if the porn star you always adored was secretly living right under your nose?
Wes Mitchell, 49, is the best real estate agent in Urlack, a small Midwestern town. He has political ambitions, but he has secrets he thinks will destroy his life and his business. To protect all he has, he keeps his personal life private and his heart locked away.
When Jesse Ekstrom, 32, meets Wes he slowly realizes why the handsome older man looks so familiar. Wes Mitchell is Wes Western, the hunky star of the porn videos that helped Jesse come out and deal with a rocky adolescence. Meeting Wes is like meeting his hero.
Although Wes finds Jesse very attractive, he is leery of the younger man, unsure of what he wants from him. All Jesse wants is for Wes to open his heart. Jesse’s initial attempts to date Wes go well but mean becoming another one of his secrets. That is not good enough for Jesse. Wes has to decide whether he is willing to risk a life that is good enough for a love that is beyond his wildest dreams.
This gay contemporary erotic romance love story includes graphic sex and is intended for adults only.
REVIEW:
Wes has a secret past, one that really could come back to haunt him. Which means it is probably a good thing that no one in his town is likely to be putting two and two together and coming up with retired porn star. While he might be able to handle people finding out he is gay, finding out that he used to be a star in the shadier side of the movie business is not exactly going to flow with the people of his home town.
Then he meets Jesse. Let’s just say Jesse is very good at adding things up–and coming up with the porn star of his teenage wank fantasies. But while Jesse doesn’t care about Wes’ past, he does care about their future. Which is going nowhere fast if Wes refuses to come out of the closet. But if Wes discloses Big Secret #1…will it only be time before big #2 comes out to wreck his life in his quiet home town?
I really don’t know how to put this nicely…but for an erotic romance that story was just damn boring. There was like zero chemistry between the two MCs. And even less chemistry between the MCs and me. Watching paint dry would have been a better use of my time than reading this book. At least at the end of that I get a nicely painted wall. Here I just got an hour of my life sucked into the void and I ain’t never gettin it back.
There is just some essential element to this story that is lacking. I can’t quite pinpoint what the hell it is, but it sure is not there. I don’t feel any connection to these characters at all. And when you are reading an erotic romance that is not a good thing.
Also, glory holes make me want to douse my body in hand sanitizer. I don’t find them at all sexy. Maybe because I have a horror show going thru my head, every time I read about one, about all the ways it can go horribly horribly wrong.
For all that this was only 50 odd pages, it was a grind to get thru. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with the characters or the plot, they never seem to come to life and that made for one tough read.
RATING:
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