Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Catch Me
SERIES: Tattoos and Temptation, Book 4
AUTHOR: Mia Monroe
NARRATOR: Kale Williams
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 5 hours and 53 minutes
RELEASE DATE: January 27, 2022
BLURB:
It’s never worked with two. Is three the magic number?
Cairo has been my bestie for years. He’s sexy, charming, and absolutely gorgeous. Even though the attraction is strong, my track record taught me to keep the line between friendship and more intact.
But then Luca entered our world with his Southern drawl, bedroom eyes, and sexy smirk, quickly making a play for not one but both of us. Sounds like a recipe for trouble. I refuse to hand over my heart and get it stomped on again. No matter how hard both of them try to convince me I’m safe.
Luca and Cairo can chase, but they’ll never catch me…
Catch Me is a super-steamy friends-to-lovers MMM story with a charming and determined Southern boy, two friends who can’t see what’s right in front of them, and piercings in fun places. It is book three in the Tattoos and Temptation series featuring hot Miami nights, Latin desserts, and guys with ink.
REVIEW:
Catch Me, the fourth book in Mia’s Monroe’s fabulous Tattoos and Temptation series, is like a spiderweb: unexpected, beautiful, and captivating, catching you in its thrall and not letting go. Luca, Black Heart’s gorgeous, golden-haired, golden-hearted, tattoo artist (look at that drool-worthy guy on the cover 🤤), is at the center of the web that captures Dulce Santo bakers and BFFs, Cairo and Genesis. Gotta give serious props to Luca. He’s a guy who sees what he wants and takes his shot. From the moment he laid eyes on the Cairo/Genesis duo, he knew the three of them could be magical together. So he set out to woo them and hopefully win them over into a poly relationship that they likely never considered before.
Luca gets a picture in his mind of what he wants with Gen and Cairo – a settled life, full of love and laughter with the three of them together. He then goes about creating that dream one thread at a time, with patience, painstaking care, and devotion. He pursues Cai and Gen respectfully and unselfishly.
He’s got his work cut out for him, though, particularly with Gen who has been seriously hurt before and has closed himself off to anything beyond hookups. Cai and Gen are two very different and vulnerable men to capture. Cai initially resists because he believes Luca is interested in only Genesis. Ironically, Gen pushes Cai to give it a shot, intending it to be just hooking up, nothing serious. Yet once Cai is in, he’s all in. He’s not looking for hookups. He’s looking for love and home and family. He wants to be the one someone chooses, not someone who’s disposable. So Gen now finds he’s the one with the cold feet.
Luca astutely sees where Cai and Gen are struggling, so he builds their relationship, individually, as couples, and together as a throuple, by asking questions, seeking to meet their needs, and offering up himself to give them everything they want. Luca focuses on the small things and works at building up Gen and Cairo’s trust day by day, and then connects the three of them in a way that is much bigger and more complex, but overwhelmingly beautiful. The best part is once there, they stick.
I couldn’t help but make the correlation between Ms. Monroe and Luca. She is, in essence, the Luca to her readers in that she painstakingly creates this story with subtlety. She creates small but important pieces of Gen, Cairo, and Luca’s histories and then connects them. She develops that into the idea of these gorgeous men completing each other in a way that only works with three, not two, and Luca is at the center holding them together. She then weaves this beautiful exploration of their needs and scars into their collective journey of figuring out whether they can make this work together, particularly when at least one of them (Cairo) never saw himself in this type of relationship, and another (Gen) thinks he’s too broken to love at all. Ultimately, the reader ends up completely caught up in the story just as Cairo and Gen get caught up in Luca’s love.
If you haven’t read an MMM book before, I encourage you to try Catch Me. It was the very first MMM romance I ever read and, to be honest, when I embarked on it, I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. However, since I love Ms. Monroe’s writing and the Tattoos and Temptation series with its colorful characters and hot romances, I tried it. So glad I did because I was completely caught up in it. None of the steamy scenes are heavy-handed or off-putting – just downright hot AF and emotionally meaningful. More importantly, the MMM love was so authentically developed and portrayed that it made complete sense that these men would be together. In fact, we’d seen Gen and Cairo in prior books and there was the intimation that something would develop between them, yet I never felt it with just the two of them. However, with the Luca in the mix, this throuple is like fire.
I revisited Catch Me upon listening to its audiobook featuring yet another astounding vocal performance from the exceptional Kale Williams, and I am here to tell you Catch Me is even better when channeled through his glorious voice. This is the fourth (fifth if you count the prequel Date Me) superbly crafted romance in this series, following on the heels of Marry Me, Fix Me, and Free Me. Kale Williams outdid himself in his narration of those books, particularly Fix Me with Saint’s gorgeous, delectable Scottish brogue. (In fact, that audio is on my Best of 2021 list.) Mr. Williams unwittingly set himself up as his own tough act to follow, though. But yet again, he rises to the challenge and delivers a master class in vocal performances.
Kale Williams is a rock star narrator and I’m starting to feel like a groupie, fangirling all over his vocal performances time and time again. Maybe I need a t-shirt that says “I 🧡 Kale”. 🤣 All kidding and fawning aside, Mr. Williams delivers seriously impactful, highly accessible, extremely enjoyable performances that, like Catch Me itself, grab on and don’t let go. Not to take the analogy too far (oh, who am I kidding … it’s too good to resist 😜 ), but Mr. Williams crafts his own spiderweb through his honeyed tones and his mellow, warm, textured voice.
There is a scene in the Marry Me audiobook that I call out in my review because it highlights Mr. Williams’ extraordinary talent. There’s a scene in Catch Me that, similarly, provides a mic drop moment in that vein: In the short two-minute, second Genesis chapter in the section “Green-eyed Monsters and Cocktails”, Gen shows up at Dulce Santo for work, sick with a cold. Mr. Williams delivers Genesis’ twinky voice and attitude in the same tone he has throughout but adulterated by the change in resonance due to Gen’s clogged nose and sinuses. Meanwhile, Mr. Williams jumps back and forth between Gen (with a cold), Cairo’s Spanish accent, Tate and Briar who have very similar tempered, even voices, and Saint’s swoony Scottish accent, all in quick succession, hitting his mark with precision for each one. It’s pretty damn impressive.
Catch Me can be listened to as a standalone but I highly recommend you to listen to them all, preferably in order, because it will maximize your appreciation of this sweet, sexy MMM love story of Gen, Cai, and Luca, and of Mr. Williams’ top-notch narration. If you have a credit to spend this month, use it on Catch Me.
RATING: 
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