Anne TeninoCritiques

4 stars

synopsis:
sam is a geek and awkward and gay. and he can't really ever be anything else. ian, on the other hand, has been passing as hetero all of his life, although he has recently made a resolution to stop doing that. the first time they meet, sam is laid out by a well thrown rugby ball. ian is one of the guys trying to catch the ball, and sam imagines that they are highlanders chasing him down. oh yeah, and sam reads romance novels. ian turns sam down, but fates conspires to bring them together again in the form of nik and jurgen's house warming party, and ian hooks up with sam, for one night only. 11 days later, fate conspires again, and they face the fact that maybe they are meant to be.

what i liked: pretty much everything. sam was so endearing, but not stupid or naive, although he figures that he must be the TSTL character. ian was gruff and resistant, but something about his awkward hook-up just got to him. when he's given another chance, ian takes it, but walks away again. when he finally realizes that he just might want a relationship with this guy who is "not his type", he is as awkward and bungling as sam ever is. one of my favourite lines is when sam is expounding on his faults, how he's too skinny and tall and awkward and he's not great looking and he's really not ian's type. ian replies that maybe that was true when they first met, but that "now, i just see you, sam." the growth in ian was heartfelt.

what i didn't like: nothing. really well done, and i've re-read it several times since first reading it a couple of weeks ago.

synopsis:
eric is a gay paramedic fireman. collin is a mostly closeted senior in college. they meet when eric goes to the scene of an explosion at his alma matter fraternity. the attraction is pretty much instantaneous for both of them.

what i liked: the coming out scene. the fact that his whole fraternity knew that collin was gay, and then felt like they had to let him know that he was...that whole scene was hilarious. can't-breathe-i'm-laughing-too-much hilarious. also, the scene where collin is trying to make the fraternity understand exactly what it means to be gay, and that "penis is not disgusting" to gay guys was really funny.
the relationship that developed between eric and collin was really quick, but it didn't feel rushed. it felt like a natural progression between to two guys. also, the fact that they didn't bemoan their age differences was refreshing. i also liked the relationships between the guys and their friends.

what i didn't like: everyone was so accepting of collin and him being gay, except his uncle. it felt like his uncle was just thrown in there to balance the good vibes, rather than portray an actual response that some members of some families might have to finding out that someone is gay. it was such a stereotypical reaction that it didn't feel real or natural.

This one did not work for me very well. Granted I did not read the two books between Toppy and the Fratboy and this one but I found Sebastian and Brad fumbling around trying to define themselves. The D/s relationship that they had been playing with in book one never really fell into place even at the end of this short story. Plenty of sex but the story kind of lost its way. I like the characters but there is much more to a D/s relationship than was shown here.

Reviewed on Hearts On Fire... http://heartsonfirereviews.com/

I was happily surprised at how good this book was. I was expecting an over sexed coming out story and got so much more. Brad is a college jock who's trying to play the expected straight life by dating a lot of girls and letting everyone think he's a super stud. His fraternity brothers hold him in awe because of his conquests and girls date him just for the prestige. The truth is that girls really don't melt Brad's butter at all and he is coming to terms with the fact that guys do. Brad has a crush on the kind of geeky TA Sebastian but doesn't know how to act on it. Sebastian has taken notice of Brad and after some angst the two get together and Brad gives up his virginity to Sebastian along with his tender heart after a while. Yes there was plenty of sex in the story but there was a good amount of emotional interplay between Brad and Sebastian and Brad and his family and friends. I enjoyed the way that Brad's parents knew that he was gay even before Brad was sure of it. The drunken night with Brad and his older sisters talking guys was well written. Ms Tenino did a great job creating and filling out the personalities of all of the characters. Brad and Sebastian were just perfect together. Colin, Kyle and Ashley were terrific secondary characters and their support for Brad was great. I found the scene where Brad finally came out to his fraternity to be very funny as none of the guys would believe Brad after all his agonizing. The bit about Brad having Home Ec as a minor was a bit cliche, doesn't every gay man love to cook?, but that was a minor fault in an otherwise wonderfully written story. The ending was no real surprise but a HEA is always welcome. I'd recommend this little gem to anyone looking for a real feel good book.

One of the better short stories I have read lately.

One of the best line(s) ever!! Covert
snuggling was like farting during sex. The best you could hope for was that your partner would
pretend not to notice.

Won this from a blog hop from the lovely Anne Tenino. Really looking forward to reading this book!

Absolutely LOVED the premise of the book! Anne does a wonderful job at both world and character building. The dialogue flowed beautifully and the internal (sometimes not so much if James is near, hehe) struggles of the characters are sincere and believable. Really looking forward to more in this series!

An absolutely delightful read! Lighthearted and fun with just a pinch of angst. A story about finally being comfortable in your own skin! Throw in a quirky but impressively supportive side cast and you can't help but enjoy yourself ;)

A decent read that kept losing points during certain scenes. Good character development around "the big misunderstanding" from their teen years. Thanks to the manipulation of Lucas's best friend (something else that helped the story lose points - I hate that trope), Lucas gets talked into being the Man of Honor at his friend's wedding to his brother Zach and is essentially paired off with Gabe who is Zach Best Man. The plot, of course, is to get these two people together for obvious reasons. Cliche much?

I would have liked some tag warnings myself, so here they are for other readers: Elements of D/s, discussions of spanking, and I got annoyed with Gabe constantly using the term "boy" or "my boy" when referring to or even speaking to Lucas. Babe or honey are bad enough, but boy is going too far and sounds really demeaning even if he meant it as an endearment.

I read this before I added everything on Goodreads and I enjoyed it so much then. In fact I found this in a map called 'faves'.

It did not age well. Upon rereading I found so many things that bothered me... Most of all the horse. Wtf happened to the horse?!

Plus the end scenes were a bit too dramatic for no reason and icky for a very good reason. It brought down a whole star.

In the past I have this story 5 stars.

Yeah not today. I tend to rate erotica different than romance because I love romance more. Also I have to be in a very specific mindset to enjoy erotica. So I was a bit surprised that I enjoyed myself so much with this story. I have to say I don't consider this a romance. The focus is on the sex, not the relationship. That's just a nice bonus to me. I like my erotica with a dash of romance.

The thing is, when I became interested in mm 'romance' I didn't really noticed any difference between the fm romances. Both were very tropey with unrealistic sex scenes that wanted to excite the reader. But back then mm romance were not mainstream. Also they were mostly written by women FOR women (some people will disagree with this). I never had a problem with this. Dude porn for women were rare at the time and I still think is kind of a niche thing. So book porn was a welcome suprise for me.

But then came the discussion that women shouldn't write about the gay men's experience. That gay men were objectified in these kind of books.

Which they are. I just don't have a problem with it. Never had. Women have been objectified for centuries. The problems begin when there are no other sources to go to if you want to read about them. Which women didn't have for centuries. Men did. Even gay men.

What I try to say is that this story was read by me when all those discussions were going on. And I was just happy with reading erotic romance books where the woman wasn't always a virgin, got raped or just always had pain while having sex. I got wary of stories in which the woman had zero agency. Even in contemporaries.

One of the questions I always got was "Why do you like reading about two men getting it on?" To which I would always reply: "Do you like watching beautiful people? Do you like watching two beautiful people get it on? I like watching beautiful men. So two hot men getting it on makes everything better."

And there you go. This story fulfill that need.
Is it hella tropey? It sure is.
Is it a realistic depection of a relationship between men? Nope I don't think so.
Did I enjoy myself? Yessiree.

I absolutely love Anne Tenino’s works. I’ve still not read all of her stuff, but I already know that I will soon run out of her stories, and then I’ll be a very whiny and very impatient Ludo. Tenino just has this ability to combine hilarious humor, gut-wrenching drama and smoking hot sex into stories that grab you by the neck and pull you all the way through them.

Sweet Young Thang is the third book in the Theta Alpha Gamma series I’ve read, and I honestly think that it’s the best in the series so far. Though I might be a bit biased here, because age difference in M/M romance is kind of my thing, and it’s done absolutely beautifully here. Eric is just the kind of caring, sweet older guy that I adore in this kind of romance, and Collin is so full of energy and potential even though his self-esteem has been eroded by a childhood and youth spend under the influence of an extremely controlling authority figure; they just seem to be what the other needs, and I love this kind of relationship in my romance novels. Of course they have some hang-ups – but they also both know when to apologize, even when they weren’t outright being dicks, just disagreeing on something that’s an important part of the life for both of them.

It’s just this beautiful, sweet relationship that starts with a bang and keeps smoldering until both Eric and Collin are burning for each other for good. Both the romance scenes and the sex scenes are absolutely lovely, if a little on the vanilla side (if you read books from Riptide Publishing regularly you might know that this is definitely not true for all of their books), and it’s just incredibly cute how they keep discovering new things about each other. For example, Eric lives in a little house with a working fireplace, and he keeps stoking the fire before Collin comes over so that he can just feed it a log or two and have it going in a minute or so for that extra romantic touch, and it’s just such a cute detail??? I loved this so much. Also, Collin sometimes teasingly calls Eric his cuddle bear, which is just, god – my heart basically melted onto my bedsheets whenever he’d say that.

But even though the romance is awesome, we all know that there has to be conflict in any story. And if the romance plot itself doesn’t give enough conflict, there have to be outside forces. Which leads us to…

THE HOUSE FIRE MYSTERY

The setup for Eric and Collin to meet is a house fire at the TAG frat during which one of Collin’s frat brother’s is hurt. They basically meet over a bone sticking out of another guy’s leg, which is not very romantic. The house fire also isn’t exactly romantic, especially because it is very likely that if somebody started that fire, it was because of homophobic resentment against the TAG’s new member policy of allowing openly gay, bisexual and questioning members into the frat (they’re still working on the trans part of that equation). They already had gay frat members before – the protagonist of the first book in this series, for example, or Eric, back when he was at college – but through this new policy, they have not only become the place to go for queer boys who want to rush for a fraternity, but also a target not only for the other frats, but also for their own Alumni Association, which is headed by Collin’s own homophobic uncle, Monty.

Now, Monty is not your typical kind of homophobe – I guess he doesn’t really care about gay people as long as they don’t affect his career – but he is very displeased by the fact that TAG has now become the ‘gay frat’, which might have a negative impact on the reputation of the Good Old Boys of the Alumni Association. If the fire actually is a result of homophobia, Monty tells his (closeted) nephew that the Alumni Association will stop paying for the frat’s cook, internet, cable and – worst of all – kegerator. So Collin tries to find out who actually started the fire.

Anne Tenino definitely doesn’t just know how to write a good romance novel; the mystery part of this book was quite a bit of fun too. It’s not exactly the kind of mystery that makes you go ‘OH MY GOD’ and reread the entire book, but it is solid and has the kind of surprising solution that makes you think back to earlier parts of the book and think ‘Oh yeah, I should have noticed that, that makes sense’. It also leads to a really cool and really climactic ending for the book, and I’m just SUCH a sucker for well-written endings.

SENSITIVITY-TRAINED FRAT BROTHERS AND INSENSITIVE UNCLES

Romance and mystery aren’t even the extent of Anne Tenino’s bag of tricks. This book made me laugh out loud with all the shit the fraternity brothers get up to (especially when they are trying to prove just HOW acceptant they are of queer people and how well they were listening during the sensitivity training class they all took last year), but it also made me fume in silent, impotent rage at the utter shithead that is Uncle Monty.

Collin’s big internal struggle is to get out of his uncle’s controlling clutches and find out what he actually wants to do, since he never even thought about that before he met Eric. And it’s a good thing that he finally started struggling against his uncle, because Uncle Monty is an unfeeling, self-righteous, homophobic, narcissistic piece of shit. He might have raised Collin, but it is very obvious for the reader (if not for Collin) that this was definitely not a selfless good deed. He has molded the poor baby in his image, but of course he didn’t think about the possibility that his nephew and hopefully heir to his company would be more into hot, prematurely grey firefighter paramedic bears than into sweet high-society sorority sisters.

Collin’s story also includes his mother and his sister, and his relationship, memories and feelings about his dead father, and it’s an absolutely beautiful and heart-wrenching story of letting go of what you always thought was true and right and fighting for the things that you really want, even if you’re not quite sure whether you will be able to get them. Eric, who, at 36, has his priorities pretty well figured out, is a rock in the turbulent sea of Collin’s emotional life, and their relationship eventually helps Collin to stand on his own feet – because suddenly there is somebody else in his life beside Uncle Monty who will make sure he won’t crash if he tries to fly, which is just what Collin, who is so used to solving everybody’s problems but his own, needs in a relationship.

I just really liked this book, like I’ve liked all of Anne Tenino’s books before, and, honestly, if you like fluffy, funny, steamy M/M novels, you really should be devouring her books. Collin’s and Eric’s story was just all I want from a gay romance novel. I felt that this story was a little more serious than the former two books in the series, and I do have the feeling that Tenino is developing a lot with every book she puts out, so I will definitely keep an eye out for the next book she publishes.


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Nik never expects too much excitement when he goes back to visit his parents in the small town where he grew up. He never really fit in there and it never seemed like there was much to offer. But this particular summer, he's surprised to find Trooper Jurgen Dammerung, a well-built state trooper who quickly takes an interest in Nik and isn't willing to just let that all drop when Nik returns to school in the fall. But is Nik ready for what Jurgen wants from him? Can Nik get past the history he associates with his hometown and let Jurgen past that wall? And can they manage to keep something going if they're hours apart?

Generally, I liked this one. The characters are dynamic - even the side characters - and I found myself curious about what was going to happen to them. I feel like Jurgen comes on a bit too strongly at first - it almost made me a bit uncomfortable - but I liked him a lot more as the book went on.

A short sequel to Whitetail Rock, The Fix gives readers a glimpse into life for Nik and Jurgen after the events of the initial book. Nik has moved back to his hometown to be with Jurgen and living together has certainly led to some adjustments needing to be made for both of them.

Personally, I enjoyed The Fix better than Whitetail Rock even though it was shorter. I feel like this installment provides readers with more insight into the characters - Jurgen especially - and focuses more on their relationship than the first book did. I certainly wouldn't mind reading more with these characters, hoping that things would only continue to get better.

Paul is a graduate student who works as a tutor for undergraduates and has a strict "no jocks" policy. But when the new softball coach specifically requests Paul to tutor his players, it looks like that policy might be out the window. To make matters worse, the new coach is Trevor, the guy who broke Paul's heart in high school, the one he has been trying to get over ever since. But Trevor isn't just interested in Paul's services for his players--he's interested in a second chance. And that's something Paul is just not sure he can give.

Well, this was a bit of a roller coaster ride, and I mean that in the best way possible. I really enjoyed reading this. The characters are complex and real, and the pacing of the story kept me simply gripped to every page. It's not overly angsty (though, clearly it's not all bright and shiny happiness, either), but it's honestly a lighter story than one might initially expect.

This is the second in a series, but it can definitely be read as a stand-alone. I wasn't huge fan of the first book, so I'm glad that this one was more enjoyable. It has me considering picking up the third installment...

In a dystopian future where the United States has split into Red States and Blue States, each faction has embraced the more extreme views of their respective ideology. Which is why Agent Matt Tennimore finds himself tasked with not only bringing home special agents who've been stranded in the Confederated Red States but also retrieving gay CRS citizens who are petitioning for asylum. It's not an easy task, but it's one he is proud to do. And generally everything goes fairly well. Until Matt finds his next retrieval is James Ayala, his apparently straight and homophobic high school crush. But Matt's feelings aside, there's something different about James--and apparently the CRS have some idea of this, so they're not going to make their journey home easy. There's a clear chance, in fact, they may not make it at all.

Nothing like a life-threatening journey to bring an unlikely pair together, no? There are some aspects of the story that seem a little thin in terms of the world-building, but the overall plot is interesting enough (as are the characters), that I was able and willing to overlook it and enjoy the book. I'm curious to pick up the next book in the series and give it a read...

Tierney Terrebonne lives by the Terrebonne rules set down by his grandfather. There are things that Terrebonnes just don't do. And being gay is on that list. So there's no way he can be gay. Yes, he makes use of the restroom glory hole. And yes, he has a major crush on his best friend, Ian. But it's just Ian, right? Because Tierney can't be gay. And Ian's not gay, so even if Tierney wanted to act on it, he couldn't. Right?
So when Ian comes out, Tierney's world comes crashing down. How can Ian be gay? And what does that mean for Tierney? He's still not gay, right? But maybe he could have been with Ian this whole time. Except...Terrebonnes can't be gay. But when Grandpa Terrebonne dies suddenly, Tierney wonders if maybe the Terrebonne rules don't really apply anymore. But a lifetime of repressing one's self can't be undone overnight. Especially when years of damage have been done...

But Tierney wonders if it might all be worth it for Dalton. Dalton is Ian's assistant and one of the only people who has shown Tierney kindness despite his status as a perpetual jackass. Tierney may not deserve someone like Dalton, that's for sure. But Dalton likes to help people. There's something about broken men who need him that draws him in. And he knows that there's something underneath the shell that Tierney presents to the world.

But can they work through the baggage that they both bring to the relationship? Can they both get past their issues and find a way to be exactly what the other needs? It won't be easy, that's for sure.

--

Another angst-filled book from Anne Tenino. Don't get me wrong--it's an interesting read. But I always know there will be angst in the things she writes. And there were certainly moments when I did think we were getting really close to the "enough already" point. And when you consider this clocks in at 415 pages, it probably could be shored up and paced just a bit better.

But Dalton makes it worth reading. Even though I think he should have turned and ran at first glance, he's still a great character. It's difficult not to feel for him and let you draw him into the book.

So this gets a recommendation from me. But be prepared for a book that drips with more angst than a room full of emo teenagers...

I thought the Whitetail Rock series was a bit on the average side, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that I'm not thrilled with this one, either. While this is poised as the start of the Romancelandia series, it is spun out of Whitetail Rock and pretty much all the characters show up in that series at some point.

What gets me in this one is the characters. They're so inconsistent and unrealistic, it's hard to even suspend disbelief enough to get into the story - which in itself is a bit more far-fetched than I would expect from a romance novel. I'd definitely say there are better books out there on which to spend your time.

Content warning: manipulation for sex, violence

I don't know that I enjoyed this one as much as other people have. Part of it, though, I'll admit is that I was kind of going through a phase where I'd read so many insta-love stories before this one that I'm sure seeing 'YET ANOTHER' impacted my overall views on this one. I also felt like the story dragged in a few parts and could have moved along a bit more quickly.

That said, I did find myself somewhat liking and connecting with most of the characters and think it would probably be of interest to m/m fans, especially those who like stories in a college setting or with a bit of a teacher-student vibe.

All the stars. This is quite easily my favourite of the series so far.
Adorable. Second chances. First love. Lumberjacks (okay they call them loggers but...).

A good addition to the series.

This book had it all. It was sexy, funny, sweet and so very, very believable. I love Brad and Sebastian. Their characters are just so engaging, you get drawn into their world. I'm not often laughing out loud when I'm reading a book, but this one had me laughing more than once! Add to this the hot sex scenes and you have a story that definitely is going to be on a reread list; especially when I need a 'pick-me-up'!

I really liked the story of Brad and Sebastian. It was great to see Brad discover himself and to see Sebastian realize what love really is. I am looking forward to reading more about these guys and about those in this world.

I was a bit apprehensive about reading this book because I tend not to be a huge fan of sci-fi. I am glad I went with the recommendation to read it. It was very well written. I thought it was a very cool concept breaking the US into red and blue states (though I hope it never turns that way in real life!). I do feel that Matt jumped to forgive and forget very quickly but I suppose being with someone 24-7 in a life threatening situation could do that. I did like these guys together. They really seemed to complement each other. I enjoyed this book very much.