ARC REVIEW: On the Clock (Market Garden, #8) By L.A. Witt, Aleksandr Voinov

Genre:

MM Erotic Romance/ Contemporary

Buy The Book:

AMAZON / B & N / KOBO

Connect With The Authors:

A. Voinov's Blog / A. Voinov's Twitter

L. A. Witt's Blog / L. A. Witt on GR

Synopsis On Goodreads:

When Blake Raleigh’s favorite rentboys retire from Market Garden, they’re sure their friend Jason will be a perfect replacement. Though Tristan and Jared are a tough act to follow, Blake returns to London to test out their recommendation.

Jason is right on the money. Negotiations turn him on. Getting paid turns him on. The higher the stakes, the hotter things get. Each trip to London is more expensive than the last, and the webcam sessions don’t run cheap, but Jason is well worth the sticker shock.

The more time they spend together, the more Blake wants, and not just sex and transactions. But Jason’s been burned before by men who thought they were in love with him, and he’s not making that mistake again. When the lines between personal and professional start to blur, it’s going to take more than money, jewelry, and sports cars to keep Jason from clocking out and walking away.

RATING: 2.5/5 stars

*** REVIEW ***

Rent-boys were never the characters I prefer reading about. In fact this is the only book series I read and enjoyed with them as the MCs. The main reasons I even gave these books a shot were:

~ A. Voinov being one of my fav mm authors

~ the series started out as short, fast-paced, fun and way-too-hot stories with book 5, 7 and now 8 being full length novels (around 220 pages.)

I had my doubts when I saw that book 5 and 7 will be full-length novels, because sex takes a major part of the plot and that can easily become boring and repetitive for me if not done right. Those type of stories were usually a hit or miss in my reading history, but luckily I ended up enjoying both of those books. The short stories with Tristan, Jared & Blake a.k.a Rolex are my favorite among this series, so since in this installment we finally get Rolex' story I was positive that I'm gonna love it, BUT I was wrong.

~ 3 main reason why I'm disappointed with this installment:

Reason No. 1 : Who are you Blake and what have you done with Rolex??? I don't know about you guys, but after reading those short stories I obviously had a totally another picture of Rolex than this version of him we got in this book. I imagined him as this cool, sensual, provocative, confident and a bit bossy dirty-talker who knows what he wants and how to get it and not this confused, quite insecure and regular guy he turned out to be. The whole time I was like: Seriously, this is the famous Rolex? O.O

Btw. to be honest, I wasn't overly impressed with Jason too. He was fun and all, but since the whole book is written from Rolex' pov, I feel like we kind of didn't get to meet Jason that good, at least not outside the bedroom. 

Reason No. 2 : Where is the chemistry??? I don't know, maybe it's because I couldn't quite warm up to the MCs til' the very ending of the book, but I wasn't feeling any chemistry or sparks between them since the moment they met, and that's why most of the sex scenes (and there were too much of a lot of them) or even more emotional moments felt pretty impersonal and the ending with some sappy statements pretty unconvincing.

Reason No. 3 : So, that's it??? This refers to the plot of the story which was, aside some parts, quite plain in my opinion. 

The writing was good as always and there were some parts I've enjoyed, like f.e. the scenes when Tristan and Jared showed up and later on Zach and Raul, but basically that's it. Maybe this was the wrong book at the wrong time, maybe my expectations were too big since this is the story of my fav Market Garden sugar-daddy Rolex or maybe I had my fill of mm romances with rent-boys and it's time to move on, but I just wasn't feeling this story or the characters it revolves around.

I expected this installment to end up being my favorite of the series, but sadly, it ended up just the opposite. Either way, I've seen and read a lot of positive reviews from the majority of fans, so I guess this is one one of those not-my-cup-of-tea reads.

xoxo,

Purple