Reviewed by Valerie
TITLE: Crave Me
SERIES: Geek Ink #2
AUTHOR: R. Cayden
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 189 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 5, 2021
BLURB:
Desire thrusts them together, but can two men who are so different really make love work?
There’s no way my tattoo artist is interested in a geeky botanist like me.
I came in to get my first tattoo, a flower, after my friends convinced me it would help build my confidence.
But as soon as I’m under Joey’s hands, as soon as he’s marking me with his ink, all these other desires come alive.
I try to ignore it. He’s quiet and gruff, with a stony expression I can’t read, no matter how hard I try.
I think we couldn’t be more different, but after a blizzard passes through Chicago one fateful night, something joins us.
I need him, and my heart insists that Joey needs me, too
REVIEW:
Milo is the sweet ex-boyfriend of Matty from Geek Tattoo, the first book in the Geek Ink series. He’s a geeky cutie pie graduate student studying botany. After a bad breakup he decides to get a “fresh start” tattoo to empower himself. He goes to Blade Tattoo where Matty’s boyfriend Stone works. Milo is dumbstruck by Joey, the artist who will be inking him. Joey is quiet and intimidating, a rough around the edges kind of guy, but he’s sexy in ways that tick all of Milo’s boxes. He’s a loner, for good reason it turns out, as he has a dark past that could come back to haunt him at any time. Additionally, he was severely betrayed by a former lover. Now, Joey’s built walls around himself so no one can get close to him and it’s made him lonely. Milo is hard to resist, though. He’s so darn cute and doesn’t stop babbling when he’s nervous, which is all the time when he’s around Joey. And Joey thinks the babbling is hot.
One night after a long tattooing session, Milo is snowed in at Blade. Conveniently, Joey lives in an apartment upstairs where they spend the night. Together. There’s intense, raw energy boomeranging around the apartment and they can’t resist each other. Joey makes it very clear, though, that it’s just a one time thing and he absolutely doesn’t do relationships.
I adored Milo until the nineteenth chapter when he starts to become overly dramatic and even a bit bratty. He is incredibly naïve and can’t conceive of the enormous danger he could be facing just by being associated with Joey. He seems to think he can fight Joey’s past with him as a queer botany graduate student with no street smarts. The dialogue became childish at times at this point. While I found Milo to be likable for most of the story, he was starting to grate on my nerves. I wasn’t feeling much chemistry between Milo and Joey so for the last twenty percent of the book I was doing more skimming than reading. Again, the dialogue took a downturn, this time becoming corny and too sickly sweet. Also, when Joey finally divulges his past to Milo, he implores Milo to not share the information with anyone because of the inherent danger. The very next morning Milo blabs it to Matty, showing complete disregard for Joey’s safety and a lack of respect for his request.
The big conflict regarding Joey’s past could easily be drawn out into a full-length novel of its own, so the author had to condense it quite a bit. At first glance, the solution seems too simplistic but in actuality it is logical, probable, and therefore satisfying. It appears Milo is the impetus Joey needs to face his demons.
I didn’t care for Crave Me as much as Geek Tattoo, but I’m trying to not judge the whole book based on a couple of chapters. As readers we all interpret written work differently so you might enjoy the book quite a bit and not be distracted by the same things.
RATING: 
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