Title: Hot Head
Author: Damon Suede
Cover Art: Anne Cain
Genre: mm, romance
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
ISBN:9781615819485
Source: Scribd subscription
Description from Dreamspinner Press: 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?
Purchase links: Amazon, Dreamspinner Press.
During a party for the ten year anniversary of 9/11, Griff realizes there’s something going on with his buddy Dante, who he has secret feelings for. After a bit of a confrontation, he finds out that Dante has squandered all of his money and is about to lose his house. Griff is willing to loan him money, but Dante needs more than Griff can afford.
Enter Alek, a Russian that runs a gay porn website that caters to the fetish of straight men in uniform. Griff is reluctant, but he’s willing to do anything to help his buddy out, which is how he ends up in front of the camera with the man he loves.
This was a surprisingly good story. Seriously, this kind of thing isn’t usually my kink, but Damon Suede did a great job with this one and I give it a solid 4-1/2. My only complaint was sometimes Griff seemed a bit too down on himself and Dante seemed a bit too manipulative. There was a long section of will-he-or-won’t he where the angst could have been curtailed with a bit of honesty and open communication. Still, I enjoyed this book a lot. The writing was excellent and I liked the HEA at the end.
All that aside, I feel like this story could have gone in an altogether horrible direction. Dante could have manipulated Griff, who could have really been straight, and things could have gone awful for the both of them. There are just some things you don’t do to someone that’s supposed to be your friend, especially one that’s cool enough to get into gay porn to keep you from losing your house. Just saying, that seemed a bit skeazy to me, and Griff was such a sweet guy that for a while there I was giving Dante the side-eye for being a bad best friend.
Instead things turned out happily, the porn industry was not romanticized as some m/m stories tend to do, and I like to think that Dante realized how lucky he was to have such a great guy in his life. The story left me with a hopeful feeling for their future and I could have read even longer about Griff and Dante — washing dishes, doing laundry, having even more hot sex, anything.
