Affairs of M/Men

Cut & Run

2.0 for writing and execution, 5 stars for enjoyment, plot and themes

It's hard to justify that rating because really, this isn't that well written. I mean, the writing itself was okay most of the time, but the way it was written, the execution, ugh. People really need to pay good editors to go over their stuff before they self publish. This is better than most as you can see by my and others ratings but I think with good editing this could have been picked up by a regular press.

I'm going to try to justify my rating but it's hard. I mean, this just was so obviously an M/M romance written by women for women. I don't think any but the most sappy guys would enjoy this, at least none of the guys I know and my friends are definitely far more touchy feely than any guys that you see on t.v. The subjects of sports or cars has never come up in conversation that I have heard, even at big parties. Seriously, some of my friends play D&D. (I plead the fifth. I am WAY too cool for that. Yes, way too cool. Really, I am. Really. Oh go away.)

No guys, especially those in macho jobs like police detectives talk this much about their feelings, especially not to each other when they've only known one another a few days. At a couple of points the dialog got too long even for me, who loves to hear men talk about their feelings. I think one conversation went at least 20 pages. At many points, the words didn't even sound like things men would say. And the most absurd part is that they don't really ever learn anything about each other because they keep asking the wrong questions.

In addition, there is WAY too much holding each other cheek to check, foreheads pressed together, or nose pressed to hair for guys who barely know each other, are macho, and who have agreed to just have lots of hard sex. they are just too tender too fast for their words and they say they feel to themselves. 

There was more that was wrong with it, lots more:

-- The two weren't equal characters at all. Ty is made out to be a god and a genius who solves pretty much everything and Zane, although allegedly smarter, is really just a weak loser. There are a couple of scenes that help paint Zane better but not really.

-- Despite being written by and for women, it is not the most feminist work. With the exception of an EMT who is in only a few pages, the women are bitchy and rude. Ty fights with one and Zane only tells the woman to stop the fighting by saying things like, "Behave," and, "That's enough," like she were a child and Ty completely justified. (Okay he mostly was but not completely and he needed to back down, too.) There are hardly any women characters. But Zane nearly explodes when someone says something about two girls being responsible for their own rapes and deaths because of their behavior. This is both good and bad: good because it's the right attitude, bad because this one positive reaction toward women is kind of caveman-y. 

-- There are pages and pages of pithy dialog, pages and pages in a row, whose only purpose is comic relief and sexual tension. While fun, it does not further the myster and it interferes with the pacing majorly.

-- Almost every paragraph swaps POV between the two sometimes mid-paragraph. Other scenes happen without our main characters and those swap POV, too. It's just so jarring.

-- There are a lot of behaviors they repeat over and over. For example, they stretch A LOT. 

-- Once a character talks to a police officer about how close someone is to another person. She says, "like a partner, or even a friend," as if a friend would be closer than a partner. Everyone who's watched t.v. knows that partners are like brothers/sisters, that they have to trust the other with their lives and become so close spouses become jealous.

-- The mystery was good but the method to the madness of the killings became clear to me much earlier than to them. I don't know if it would for everyone as it's fairly clever but I usually am the one reading too fast to even clue in until it's explained to me by the characters. Perhaps I was reading slowly enough this time because, well, yum. About some of it, they were complete and total idiots,

-- At one point a character who has been drinking many shots a night and popping pills all day longs stops cold turkey and just has severe cravings. Um, no, they would have d.t.s, and depending on what drugs, they would have other symptoms including visual, auditory or physical hallucinations, difficulty breathing, sweats, shaking, and so forth. It would have made a great scene, too, and I waited for it to come and it never did.

--There are two contrived emotional separations, the first which tugged at my heart and the second which was really quite unnecessary. (But still tugged at  my heart, okay? Leave me alone.)

BUT, I ate it up like a rescuee from a deserted moon who's only been eating freezedried astronaut food who is presented with the schmorgazbord from an ocean cruise. (How's that for an analogy?) l love this crap because I am a woman and it was written for me. I loved the constant danger and the injuries and them worrying about the other all the time. I love the angst and the passion and the emotional fears and the hidden love amongst the blatant lust. Some of the additional reasons are:

-- The completely unexpected twist halfway through. 

-- The creative way um, I'll l have to hide this: the men seem to switch personalities,  although that's not the whole of it either.

-- The sex isn't particulary original, nor sufficient (MORE MORE MORE) but it was still hot. The authors got the lust down very well.

 So did I do it? Did I justify my love of this book, my obsession, my need to read the next one RIGHT NOW but my book budget is blown for this month and sicne it's an ebook only I can't get it from the library so I have to wait two more weeks until my next paycheck to buy and read the next one?

If you are a literature snob and require a clean, solid, tight story, then give this one a miss. However, if you are a sap like I am and love M/M romances and the melodrama of police procedurals, as they call them on t.v., then I think you'll love this. Go buy it. Right now. I'll wait.