When I attended the Chicago Spring Fling hosted by the Chicago-North RWA chapter I got to meet Damon Suede. I'd never heard of him before or read anything by him before but his electric personality and penchant for swearing intrigued me greatly. One day of the conference we walked into the conference room and discovered one of his books sitting on each seat. I snagged Hot Head and when I got home placed it on my shelf towards the end of my TBR.
Well, I finally reached near the end of that list and this afternoon scooped up Hot Head with the hopes that I could kill a couple hours with some spicy gay romance. I was not disappointed.
Blurb: Since 9/11, Brooklyn firefighter Griff Muir has wrestled with impossible feelings for his best friend and partner at Ladder 181, Dante Anastagio. Unfortunately, Dante is strictly a ladies’ man, and the FDNY isn’t exactly gay-friendly. For ten years, Griff has hidden his heart in a half-life of public heroics and private anguish.
Griff’s caution and Dante’s cockiness make them an unbeatable team. To protect his buddy, there’s nothing Griff wouldn’t do… until a nearly bankrupt Dante proposes the worst possible solution: HotHead. com, a gay porn website where uniformed hunks get down and dirty. And Dante wants them to appear there—together. Griff may have to guard his heart and live out his darkest fantasies on camera. Can he rescue the man he loves without wrecking their careers, their families, or their friendship?
Review: I was a little hesitant about the gay porn website aspect of the novel, but oh boy, did it work... I think there are few sex scenes hotter than when Griff and Dante appear on screen together. I could hardly read the book for more than a few pages at a time without having to put it down for a second and breathe. Things were getting a little overheated.
The novel is entirely from Griff's point of view which is rather rare in the romance world (I find most book I read are dual POV these days), but I loved knowing what was going on in Griff's tortured mind the entire time with no breaks. Seeing everything through his eyes--seeing Dante through his eyes--was a wonderful experience that was hot, romantic, and obsessive all at the same time.
The romantic scenes are entirely out of this world. I'm telling you, you'll be huffing and puffing through this book trying to keep from passing out while reading. It was a hard book to get through with all those breaks, but man was the journey worth it.
You can tell that some of the dialogue and scenes are a little beginner--not in a bad way, just in a "I can tell this book is an author's early work" but the book is also from 2011 which means that Damon Suede's amazing talent has probably gotten even more intense over these last seven years. I cannot wait to scoop up the rest of his work and get to fanning myself.