THE LOVE TRIANGLE GONE WRONG by Rob Rosen

Publisher: Torquere Press
Date published: 12/16/15
ISBN: 978-1-944449-16-2
MM Contemporary
E-book
Reviewed by Helen
Weblink: http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=96&products_id=4561
Obtained via publisher
Rating: 3.5



Gus wanted to be a policeman but ended up as a security guard at the local theater. Steel is one of the actors in the current play. He looks forward to being a mega star one day, meanwhile he’s amusing himself with the other actors as well as the play. Until a cast member is murdered.


Rob Rosen writes a short story each week and his talent and professionalism shows. This 10k story has an entertaining cast, a light handed humor, a murder to solve, and a lot of hot sex including role playing, some light spanking, sex in public spaces, and some very forthright language. Steel doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who is interested in an HEA, but he and Gus are very much into each other right now.
The story is very clean with only a couple of nit-picky errors, the humor is great, the characters are believable, and the plot drags the reader along, with frequent breaks for Gus and Steel to have sex wherever they might happen to be at the time.
A light-hearted fun read, despite the murder and the explicit and harsher than normal language used.


This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

THE PRINCE AND THE FROG by Rob Rosen

Publisher: Torquere Press
Date published: 4/23/14
ISBN: NA
MM Fantasy
E-book
Reviewed by Helen
Weblink: http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=79_187&products_id=4174
Obtained via publisher
Rating: 4

Prince Harold suffers the sad fate of the second born son of a king. While there are plenty of men happy to get up close and personal with him, no one wants to marry him when there’s a chance of marrying his brother and becoming the partner of the ruler of the land. In his sadness his erection dies and his cock ring falls into the pond. A frog appears and I’m sure you can work out roughly what happens thereafter.


Warning. Put down all beverages, before picking up this story.
This is a very short little story and written very much tongue in cheek. It has some brilliant humor and cleverly deprecating lines by some of the cast. The frog is brilliantly portrayed (gotta love a frog!) and his repetitious little ditty does an excellent job of providing humor while drawing a nifty parallel to all those once- upon-a-time stories that seem really cheesy to the adult who has to read them to the enraptured little person. A super quick read but one that you’ll come back to again and again because of the satire. I found myself saying, “Did he really say that? He couldn’t possibly have said that. Yes, he said it.”

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

 

CHECK MATE by Rob Rosen

Publisher: Torquere Press

Date published: 5/1/13

ISBN: NA

Erotic MM, Contemporary

E-book

Reviewed by Helen

weblink: http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=96&products_id=3873

Obtained via publisher

On a very hot day Dan’s car dies in the middle of nowhere. He strips off his clothes in an effort to cool down, and comes across Patrick. All Patrick wants is a game of chess. As his former chess club’s president, Dan agrees. But well, he was naked and…

This is a short, cute, little off-the-wall story, of a man driven slightly crazy by the heat, who meets a man who’s more than prepared to play along with him.

The language of the story is just a little different, and the two men are by no means your average hero, or even your non-average hero, but the craziness is all part of the charm of this story. Puns, clichés, and weird sayings, lead the men deeper and deeper into the game of chess, which in itself becomes the perfect analogy for what happens next.

In some ways this short story reminded me of Russian political allegories I read years ago. There’s the same other-worldly feel about it. Yet on another level it’s just a simple man meets man story. All of which is very clever indeed, and very likely only possible to achieve because of its short length.

If you like to think when you read, this is the perfect short story for you. It’ll stay in your mind all day revealing its deeper layer to you. On the other hand, you can just enjoy it and laugh at the weirdness that might happen in the extreme heat.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.