Fractured Men – Hunt&Cam4Ever #6 by Adira August

262 pages

Release Date: November 28, 2019

Buy links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Available to read in Kindle Unlimited

I’m so very happy to welcome Adira August and her latest Hunt&Cam4Ever mystery to my blog. The book, as always is fabulous and Hunt and Cam are still the deliciously sexy, incendiary hot, and swoon-inducing men we’ve come to know and adore.

Talking about Hunt, he dropped in for an interview I’m delighted to share with you:

HUNTER: Where is she?

ADDI: Helena? She’ll be along in a minute. Cam’s not coming?

HUNTER: You know, Cam. He’ll just sit in the corner and smile and nod. I should bring Mike to these things. Or Twee.

ADDI: You could, if they were in this book. Besides, Twee is quite enough for an interview all by herself. You guys glad to be back at work?

TWSR: Hello, sorry I’m late.

HUNTER (stands and leans down to give Helena a kiss on the cheek): I think we were early. How have you been?

TWSR: I was going to ask you. I’d love to hear the answer to Addi’s question, though.

HUNTER: Cam’s constantly busy between the Foundation, the New York show coming up, and the book coming out.

TWSR: You mean Fractured Men?

ADDI: No. Cam’s working on a book about Alpine skiing with another writer.

TWSR: What about you, Hunter? You seemed to be getting disenchanted with being a homicide detective.

HUNTER: There’s always a point in an investigation when I wish I’d entered some scholarly field. Or become groundskeeper at a golf course. But I’m good at this. The work is critical. There are parts that are satisfying.

TWSR: What about this case in Fractured Men?

HUNTER: (Looks out at the wintery back garden.) No. It was just one more private tragedy in a sea of private tragedies. (shrugs) But I suppose that’s what murder always is, isn’t it?

TWSR: How do you survive that?

HUNTER: Addi’s been making that clear from the beginning. There’s also courage, commitment, duty, sacrifice … That’s love. It always wins.

Did you like that? I sure did. And I’m never washing that cheek again. Js

Blurb

Sometimes what you never thought would happen, does. All at once. A furnace explodes taking your house with it. A cop at the door says your father’s dead. Or lightning stirkes from the ice-blue eyes of a much-too-you-for-you man you pass in a doorway.

One year to the day later, the young man was my husband.

I slid onto a counter stool and Cam handed me a mug of coffee. A big slice of his grandmother Dee’s apple pie waited on a brick red ceramic dish. Our cell phones lay on Cam’s side of the breakfast bar.

He made quite the ceremony of turning my phone off and dropping it into the silverware drawer. “For the seven days of our honeymoon, you are not a homicide detective.”

Somebody should’ve told the killer.

THE BOYS ARE BACK in a ‘cozy mystery’ done Hunt&Cam style that would give Agatha Christie the vapors! Love, sex and murder at an isolated canyon resort with our fave BDSM honeymoon couple. Cam really wants to get Hunt away from his job and onto a horse—God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.

Only then it started raining. … And something popped up.

For adults who like puzzles and power dynamics.

Review

This was where they truly lived for one another, in the power of surrender and safety of control. In the trust that allowed them to use each other, by which they gave to each other. In the absolute joy of mutual lust.

If you’ve been following my reviews at all you won’t be surprised when I say that I’m a HUGE fan of the Hunt&Cam4Ever series. I’ve been raving about these two men since I met them for the very first time in On His Knees/Matchstick Men and have only fallen deeper in love with them with every subsequent book. Fractured Men, the latest instalment, is a very welcome, totally delicious, and very compelling addition to the series.

The fabulousness starts in the very first chapter with a rather short but sublime description of Cam and Hunts wedding and it is EVERYTHING. The glimpse we get is as perfect in its simplicity as it is meaningful and an exquisite portrayal of who these two men are together. A few pages in and I was a blubbering mess while smiling hugely.

Their honeymoon, which should have taken the form of a BDSM dreamtime far away from crimes and interruptions, goes off to a good and, of course, very hot start. But even before there are any signs of trouble, Hunt’s instincts kick in, telling him something isn’t quite right. But, because he is on his honeymoon, he pushes those feelings aside to concentrate on what should be and is his main focus: Cam, his Dom and husband.

Of course, there are a few things we can be sure about when it comes to Cam and Hunt. For starters, there is no doubt that they will be hot as f**k and always manage to come up with something new and exciting while exploring the dynamic between them. The second certainty is that they will, invariably, run into a crime in need of solving.

Their peaceful hideaway turns into a prison of sorts when the rains come and the river and canyon flood, sealing Hunt, Cam, and the other guests in the canyon off from the rest of the world. Of course, that’s also the moment Hunt discovers a corpse who, as far as Hunt can tell, didn’t die from natural causes.

Thus begins yet another investigation. But this one is different from their earlier exploits because due to their isolation, there is only a very limited pool of suspects, which turns Fractured Men into the sort of mystery that reminded me of Agatha Christie and other ‘manor house’ or ‘locked room’ crime stories. Although I suspect the Grande Dame of Mystery might have raised a few eyebrows while reading this book. 😊

I’m not saying anything else about the crime or its solution. Read it and figure it out with Hunt and Cam as they investigate. What I do want to say is that this story came with a fabulous cast of secondary characters, one a blast from Cam’s past. I will also say that while the solution to the mystery was flawless and convincing, it also left me somewhat heartbroken. Then again, it wouldn’t be a Hunt&Cam4Ever story if it didn’t arouse an endless stream of emotions.

As always, these two men are arresting (pun intended), unique, and an absolute joy to read about. Cam in Dom mode is magnificent, almost larger than life, and pretty much a polar opposite to the Cam who’s ‘just’ Hunt’s husband and still young and often shy. While Hunt remains the best example of power in submission I have ever read, as well as one of the most intriguing and complex characters I have encountered.

I’ll end on a bit of advice. If you haven’t read these books yet, do yourself a huge favour and pick up Matchstick Men. I challenge anyone to read that book and not obsessively read all the sequels in quick succession. Just make sure you have a fair bit of time on your hands when you start one of these books. Putting it down once you’ve started reading is all but impossible.

Related Reviews

 On His Knees | Matchstick Men | Dancing Men | Snowed In | Psychic Men | Secret Men

(Please note that On His Knees and Matchstick Men have since been combined into one book, which can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XKLP8PF)

Winter Tales by Tiffany Reisz

(Original Sinners 8.7)

Buy links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Blurb

An Original Sinners Christmas Anthology

Return to USA Today bestseller Tiffany Reisz's Original Sinners series with Winter Tales, a collection of three fan-favorite Christmas novellas plus a brand-new novella exclusive to this anthology.

In December Wine, the long-awaited story of Nora Sutherlin's first meeting with Nico can finally be told. Nora enlists her editor (and sometimes lover) Zach Easton on a mission to track down Kingsley's long-lost son. Nicolas "Nico" Delacroix turns out to be young, strikingly handsome, and very French. He wants nothing to do with his father...but everything to do with Nora.

This special holiday-themed collection also includes the novellas Poinsettia, The Christmas Truce, and The Scent of Winter (previously available only as ebooks). A bonus short story starring Søren rounds out the Winter Tales anthology.

Review

It won’t surprise anybody when I say I’m a die-hard Tiffany Reisz fan. In many ways she was my gateway drug to erotic romance as well as MM and up to a point she’s also responsible for me writing my own books. All of which means I’m probably stating the obvious when I declare that reading Winter Tales was a pure and utter delight.

As the blurb states, this book contains five novellas/short stories, three of which were previously published. If like me you’re not in the habit of re-reading books, the fact that The Christmas Truce, Poinsettia, and The Scent of Winter have been published before won’t matter; to me they read almost like new stories. Besides, there’s obviously no such thing as a bad time to reconnect with any of the Original Sinners.

The thing I love most about these shorter stories, apart from the opportunity to reconnect with my favourite Sinners, is that they fill in the gaps, those moments that were only hinted at in the novels. And, in doing so, they also give us the opportunity to get to know these characters we love, and think no longer hold secrets for us, even better than we did before we opened the book.

If I had to categorize these tales, I’d say that, despite being stand-alone shorts set at different times over the Original Sinner’s timeline they all have one theme in common: children and the (often fraught) relationships between parents and their offspring. And, as always it does so with a wonderful message hidden beneath the touching, sometimes painful reality the Sinners have to deal with—the sins of the father don’t condemn their offspring.

1.    December Wine

“It didn’t take much to get on Nora’s good side—all she ever wanted was a little abject devotion and total erotic surrender…the simple things in life.”

December Wine is basically wall to wall emotions. Nora meets and holds Fionn, Søren’s son with Grace. for the first time and gets to have her last (kinky) encounter with Zach before they all start behaving like reasonable adults.

That, however, is only where the emotional journey starts…and ends. In between Nora finds and meets Nicholas, who is Kingsley’s son although Kingsley has no idea he exists. She gets to tell Nico about Kingsley, the man he never knew existed, the man who fathered him. The timing couldn’t have been worse, since Nico has recently lost the man who raised him, the man he believed to be his father and deeply loved.

While I have (of course) read all Original Sinner’s stories and therefore knew what will happen to Nora and Nico next, I still read the descriptions of their first encounter with my heart in my throat and, at times, tears in my eyes.

A most wonderful combination of kinky delights and deep emotions, delivered in a way only Tiffany Reisz can.

2.    The Christmas Truce – a story in two parts

A story set first from Nora’s and then from Kingsley’s point of few, cumulating in an encounter between them and Søren on Christmas Eve but not before Nora and Kingsley exchange memories about previous Christmas’s with their priest.

3.    Poinsettia

“You’re much like a poinsettia, Bambi. You really are.”

He furrowed his brow at her. “How so?”

“Because everyone has this erroneous idea that you’re poisonous. And you’re not. You’re not at all.”

This story is set at a time when Søren is twenty-three, in Rome, and going by Marcus. In between classes in seminary, he spends time in a brothel where Magdalena, a renowned sadist, instructs him, basically by being truly sadistic with him.

We get to see Søren at a time when he was no longer the borderline out of control young sadist we met in The Angel, but not yet the collected, unflappable, and cruel task master he’d become later.

The interactions between Magdalena and Søren were a delight, especially the way they try to ‘out-sadist’ each other. But, as always with Tiffany Reisz, underneath the snark, the smart retorts, and cruel comments hides a deep layer of care, which comes in to brightly sparkling focus when Søren gifts Magdalena something for Christmas she was sure she could never have again.  

4.    The Scent of Winter

While there is a flashback to an earlier encounter between Kingsley and Søren in this story, the main part of it deals with two days they spent together in the ‘present’. Of course it involves sex and a lot of enticing pain, but the centre point of this story for me was the moment when Kingsley gives Søren the same advice Father Ballard gave Magdalena decades earlier. I just love it when stories come full circle.

5.    Blood & Snow – Bonus Short Story

Søren returns to Magdalena, who’s no longer young but still a sadist in charge of a brothel. And, as in the past, Søren visits her because he needs help, advice, or, to be precise, he needs her sadistic streak to put his world back into perspective and take away fears he has never been able to shed completely.

“Joy and terror—they’re twins, you know. Joy is born first. Then terror a few minutes later. Joy arrives when you recognize what you have. Terror comes on its heels, terror that you’ll lose the thing that gave you all that joy.”

Long story, very short: Winter Tales is magnificent and an utter delight.

The Wolf and the Pear by Alex Jane

Buy links: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Available to read with Kindle Unlimited

Blurb

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Lev.
He didn’t have skin as white as snow or hair that fell in golden ropes. But he was quick witted and braver than he knew. And he would need to be.

When Lev goes to live with his uncle in the little village nestled against the deep dark forest at the foot of the mountains, the place seems pleasant enough. But Lev soon starts to wonder about things that don’t quite make sense—dark looks on people’s faces, cries in the night that go unanswered and secrets whispered. But it isn’t until the first full moon that he truly understands why his parents left their families and never wanted to return. Or why they never spoke of Grandmother who lives in the forest. Or the Big Bad Wolf who lives with her.

Until one day Lev is sent into the forest to Grandmother’s house.
Then all he wonders is whether he’ll ever make it out of the forest again.

“Lev. Be a good boy, dear. Don’t run. It’s so much worse if you run.”

This is a dark fairytale told in the traditional style, with talking animals, violence and sexual content. Definitely not for children.

Review

I’m going to keep this review short, mainly because your really, really don’t want to know a whole lot more about the story than what you can find in the blurb.

But, I do have a few thoughts I would like to share.

Fairytales, when they were first collected and/or imagined, were very far removed from the stories Disney produces these days. Those original fairytales were dark, cautionary tales, which didn’t necessarily come with a happy or positive ending. In fact, they could be cruel and horrifying. The Wolf and the Pear is very much like one of those original stories.

Having said that, what made The Wolf and the Pear such an intriguing and captivating read was the wonderful and perfectly balanced mix of light and dark—a most delightful tale of opposites. Horror and affection overlap and flow into each other, leaving the reader gasping and turning the pages, eager to find out what will happen next and wondering if the story can possibly end on a positive, happy note. (No, I have no intention of telling you whether it does or not.)

Suffice to say that Lev was a wonderfully human and modest hero and the Wolf a lot more, but also less, than he initially appears to be. The horrid scenes are truly monstrous while the gentle parts will melt your heart and the descriptions of both are so vivid you may want to look away at times.

Long story short, Alex Jane had produced a memorable dark (fairy) tale and left me in awe of her imagination and storytelling prowess. If you’re not afraid of the occasional shock and a few scenes that will make you flinch, I highly recommend The Wolf and the Pear. Stories as original as this are few and far between, and I’m delighted I caught this one.