Hot Head

When I first saw the description for this, I laughed. Really, a firefighter who has to help his friend make porn because the mortgage is overdue? It sounded like such a setup. This is my formal apology to Damon Suede. I was ignorant. I saw the light, and Hot Head will always stand as the romance novel that sold me on reading romance novels.SO if you have not read it, you should know that Hot Head is a gorgeously written exploration of the grief that is unrequited love - and by love, I mean actual, full-fledged love developed over a decade, not a crush, not infatuation. Firefighter Griff Muir loves his straight coworker and best friend Dante Anastagio, the man who got him through anxiety, depression, and divorce after they both worked the horror of 9/11. There's literally nothing Griff wouldn't do for Dante. So when Dante needs Griff's help to save his beloved fixer-upper, and Griff can't come up with a better solution, Griff agrees to twist the knife in his heart just a little bit more by doing a porn video with Dante.For a book about two big, tough guys, this is one of the most emotional romances I have read so far. Watching Griff struggle to move on from the stuck-ness of his personal life while also working to figure out who he is if he loves Dante... oof. So much going on here! Possibly the best first kiss scene ever, too, and a happy ending that's to die for.

3.5 stars rounded down.Ah, this book. Clearly I love it because I keep re-listening. (Even though I detest this narrator in every other book he's narrated because he is unable to pronounce the easiest of words correctly.) And it is a gorgeous friends to lovers story that is crazy sexy.But it is problematic in a lot of ways. This is partially because it is one of the first MM romances that a lot of us read, this book is eight years old after all, and things that are noticeable now probably weren't then. As an example, there is a scene where a person gets bashed, and it's horrible and painful and sad, but the secondary character is a "chubby" girl in a bee costume. This character is the only female in ninety-nine percent of the scene, this character is the only character dressed as a bee, this character is a good samaritan, or at least she is the only person that alerts Grif to what is happening. She is mentioned eight times in all, seven of those times she is referred to as "chubby", the other time her legs are referred to as "sturdy". Now I'll grant that Suede has never met an adjective that he won't reuse ad nauseam, but there are many ways he could have referenced her, including just using "she", that didn't have to call out her weight. It's not exactly fat shaming, but it definitely skirts the edge. Another example is that even though Dante and Grif have been with woman the rest of their lives, including Dante's apparent "banging" "most of Brooklyn" and the fact that Grif was married they don't consider or even mention the possibility of being bi. There are some great female secondary characters, but a lot are not the best. The editing could be overhauled as well, really adjectives are varied and plenty, look into them.Having said that, and knowing there is more that I could say, I still love them and their story. This is a very moving story, and it's also a love story about New York and the FDNY, so it's easy to overlook a lot, but the further I get from my initial read the more things pop out.I will always love Grif and Dante, and the love they find in their best friend. Dante's wonderful, nutty family is nothing to overlook either. The weaknesses don't overshadow that.Audio: David does his best work here, but PLEASE editors, call out narrators when they destroy words, isn't that why you exist? He does bring Grif ,and Dante, and NYC to life so I forgive most of it in this book, but I can not with him in any other audio.

I usually avoid MxM books with covers like this (bare chest, semi naked hot men) because they end up being just about sex with no care for complex characters and profound stories. Well, I wasn't half-wrong about this one. We got plenty of sex but we also got a sweet story with great characters. Not very profound but good enough to pass a good time. I laughed a lot and my heart ached with happiness when our two main characters finally spoke their hearts out. Their romance, fears and anxiety felt so real, nothing felt forced or fake and the sex wasn't just sex, it was love and I had to read it twice because it was hot as hell but so lovely at the same time.I wasn't disappointed this time and I'm glad I gave it a chance (don't judge a book by its cover? haha).

Like the author's "Lickety Split," this one has a third-person narrative from the view of one of the main characters--and it is frustrating from that point of view. Here we have most of the tale being told by Griffin, a big, stunning, ginger-haired firefighter of Scottish descent who occasionally wears kilts (for what reasons, read the book), who steadily and with great angst comes to the conclusion that not only does he love his sterrotypically Italian hot head sex god best friend Dante, but also that he might be gay. Not just G4U, but gay.And like "Lickety Split," where Tucker comes to terms with who he is and why he feels about Patch the way he does (and for no other man), Dante's hidden demons come through toward the last part of the book. Here author Suede is exceptional in bringing together the missing pieces of a totally impossible, but almost incredibly plausible, love story that challenges you every step of the way to keep going.Dante's family is so stereotypically Brooklyn (and Queens) Italian-American that if you are one of them (and I am) you could take offense at the way they, and he, are portrayed. But Suede's gift is the idiomatic--he infused Tucker in "Lickety Split" with a deep-down, unabashed, uneducated east Texas dialect and attitude. He does the same here with Dante, and it covers a potential host of ills.But the hero here is Griffin Muir. You will never, ever, meet a man like this, and you will never forget him--or his story. Well done.