Elin Gregory

Scary night last night 😦

We had heavy rain and it hammered down on the new bit of roof over our derelict kitchen and woke me up. that was about 3.30. So I had a read – as you do – until I felt sleepy and went back to sleep. And THEN I had a nightmare that the museum was on fire, and it was full of school buses and I had a ZZ Top style beard that was singeing. Bloody scary. So I read some more.

But that means I have more than one rec for you this week because I have been inhaling books like a book-breather.

Firstly, How to Train Your Dom in 5 Easy Steps by Josephine Myles. Straight wannabee dominant Jeff’s brusque ‘tell it like it is’ attitude has upset so many potential female subs that the only person he can find is a very cheerful chap called Eddie who is a self described ‘pain-slut’ with an equally high tolerance for butch straight boys who don’t know what they are doing. This story is tender and funny, although some of the descriptions of their play made my eyes water, and the gay-for-you theme of it was handled with care – Jeff fighting it every inch of the way. Yes there’s a lot of sex, yes it’s graphic. Not my usual choice of reading matter but I ALWAYS give Jo the benefit of the doubt and I’ve never been disappointed. Highly recommended if the mere mention of nipple clamps doesn’t send you fleeing for cover.

My next outstanding read this week was Cover Me by L A Witt. This is quite sexy too but since that was part of the personalities of the incredibly stressed protagonists it worked well. EMT Nick meets detective Andrew at a call out that ends tragically with a death and extreme trouble for Nick. Getting a lift home from Andrew the two of them get rid of some on their built up stress by shagging each other silly in a quite startling exhibition of stamina. I got the impression that this was even more fantasy than M/M romance usually is. BUT there was also a really good tense mystery that was resolved in a satisfying manner. Highly recommended. The sequelae, Trust Me and Search Me, respectively follow the adventures of two other protagonists with another mystery, which was fun, and unpacked some of the baggage Nick and Andrew still had to work their way through and was solely about the tensions in their relationship, which didn’t work as well for me. But I think romance readers will get a kick out of them.

My third recommendation, finished around 5am this morning, is Unspeakable Words by Sarah Madison. This is an FBI story. Special Agent Jerry Park is more intelligent than almost everyone else around him but has a habit of showing that he knows this. A superlative number cruncher and data miner he is paired with Special Agent John Flynn who is charismatic, charming and has a special hatred of serial killers, to investigate a possible connection to the Grimm’s Fairy Tale killer, a cold case, that may have new evidence. So far so good, but there’s an unusual paranormal event that adds a whole new dimension to the story. This book is the set up for a new series so while it is a satisfying read and comes to a good conclusion, there are plenty of issues left unresolved to be tackled in future titles. Book 2 is out now and I plan to get on with reading that as soon as I have some reading time! Highly recommended.

So those are my recs for this week. Have you got any recommedations for me?