Title: A Bid for Love
Author: KT Grant
Length: 43 pdf pages, words.
Publisher: Decadent Publishing
Genre: m/m contemporary romance
Rating: D
Blurb:
Anthony Conlin is a forty-one year old workaholic in love with his twenty-nine year old neighbor, Reece Whitmore, who looks like he belongs on the cover of GQ magazine. Anthony longs for Reece to the point of obsession, but doesn’t think he stands a chance because of their difference in age, his graying hair and a less than rock hard physique.
When Anthony’s friend, Jagger Castillo urges Anthony to try the matching services of One Night Stand, Anthony still refuses because of his crush on Reece. But Jagger, along with the help of Madame Evangeline, the owner of the 1NS has something up their sleeves to make certain Anthony and Reece finally get together.
A charity auction sets the stage and rolls into motion a night Anthony and Reece will never forget.
Review:
I wasn’t sure when reading the blurb if A Bid for Love was going to be one of those crazy comic capers that I really enjoyed, or if it would just be over the top melodrama. Unfortunately for me, it fell into the second category, but I’m sure there will be readers out there who disagree.
What particularly attracted me to the story from the blurb was the figure of Anthony Conlin: a slightly pudgy man who believes himself to be over the hill at forty-one. You don’t see many heroes in this age bracket in m/m romance, and having one with a flabby waistline is almost unheard of. In this respect, I think KT Grant is to be applauded, as the less than perfect certainly deserve their shot at love too. Anthony is a rather tragic figure, who despite his success as a financial broker in Vegas, turns into a self-proclaimed “tongue-tied, thirteen-year-old boy” when confronted with the object of his obsession: neighbour Reece Whitmore.
Reece is a freelance graphic designer who also happens to be crushing on his neighbour. Unfortunately, despite his confidence in other areas and amazing good looks, he is utterly incapable of making an obvious enough move on his neighbour – for reasons I never fully grasped. Rather than spelling out his interest in terms that obtuse Anthony couldn’t fail to understand, Reece has been pining after him for a long time. The extent of this is revealed later in the story so I won’t spoil the surprise, but I’m afraid it left me incredulous rather than thinking “how sweet”, as I suspect was intended.
The whole plot of the story is built on interfering friends setting up Reece to appear in a charity auction, which for some reason Anthony not only agrees to attend (which is out of character), but also ends up bidding for the masked Reece. I still don’t understand why the friends thought this plan would work and why Reece played along with it. He says he’s ready to take action and doesn’t want to wait around for Anthony any longer. Why not just march up to his front door and tell him, then?
I felt that the machinations of the plot sprang less from what the characters would really do in that situation, and more from a desire to include a bidding frenzy and a posh hotel bedroom scene. It could have worked for me if the author had played it as more of a screwball comedy, acknowledging the ridiculousness of the situation and making the most of it. Instead there were more angsty moments, as Anthony struggled with not only the sex, but also finding out about the way he’d been played by his so-called friends. I actually thought his performance anxiety and reaction to the betrayal were nice touches, but for me it was too little too late.
The other thing I must mention is the author’s use of pronouns. Admittedly, this was a review copy so it’s possible some of the more confusing instances will have been caught before publication, but I was left scratching my head on several occasions. One memorable sentence used the word “he” three times, twice referring to one character and once to the other (as far as I could work out)
Anyway, for me the confusing pronouns, stilted dialogue, ludicrous plot and out of character actions spoilt the story, but other readers may find their mileage varies. The sex is certainly energetic and the two heroes are sweet enough, so I’m sure there will be many who are perfectly happy with things the way there are. I’m sorry to say that for me, though, it just didn’t work.
I just realized that this story is one of the 1 Night Stand stories, so the whole story is based around the “setup” theme all with the 1NS service and so on. I’ve only read one of the stories (there are like a hundred of them!), so that’s probably why it felt backwards to you. Still, that doesn’t change any of the other stuff, so I’ll probably be very carefully aware if I ever do decide to read this one. Thanks for the review!
I’d figured there were other stories in the series, but I hadn’t really twigged that they were connected by the escort agency motif. That does make sense now – and would explain some of the disconnect I felt with certain characters who must have appeared in the other books.
I wish publishers would make these kinds of shared universe things more obvious in the blurbs!
I don’t think I’ve read any of the m/m books in the 1 Night Stand series that hasn’t been a hot mess of pronoun confusion.
LMAO
Ah, so probably not likely to have been caught in the final proofreading. It’s a shame, because that kind of thing really throws me out of a story and I’m sure it makes me more critical about other elements that I wouldn’t notice if the writing was flowing smoothly.
They are pumping these things out too, so that’s more likely why they’re so messy.
No doubt!