Muscling Through starts with a classic romance novel set up: a pretty professor of Art History runs into a scary-looking muscle man in an alley, but instead of finding trouble, he finds love. Al, the muscle man, isn't exactly a gentle giant (he had a tendency to get involved in some bar brawls as a bouncer, which is why he took a job as a punter instead to make his mum happy), but he isn't the homophobic brute Lawrence (or Larry, as Al calls him) was initially afraid of.
The two of them embark on a love affair that is refreshingly drama-free, for one that cuts as far across social and class lines as it does. And for anyone who enjoys some nice size kink, the sex is fantastic--some of the best contemporary sex scenes I've read in a while.
I just really enjoyed this book! It's more of a novella than a novel, but given what the story is about I think it's the perfect length. There's a tiny bit of conflict in the middle, but it's dealt with quickly, and to make the book longer I fear most authors would have turned it into a huge crisis, rather than something that could be resolved once Larry and Al actually had a real conversation. The book is from Al's POV, and I loved the voice; it veered slightly too close to mockery occasionally when Al didn't understand something that both Larry and presumably the reader would, but on the whole I thought it really nailed that balance. And it was always perfectly obvious why Al and Larry were initially attracted to each other, and how their relationship bloomed into something deeper than sex, in a way that isn't always clear in short romances. It was exactly what I wanted from this kind of story.
Grade: A
The two of them embark on a love affair that is refreshingly drama-free, for one that cuts as far across social and class lines as it does. And for anyone who enjoys some nice size kink, the sex is fantastic--some of the best contemporary sex scenes I've read in a while.
I just really enjoyed this book! It's more of a novella than a novel, but given what the story is about I think it's the perfect length. There's a tiny bit of conflict in the middle, but it's dealt with quickly, and to make the book longer I fear most authors would have turned it into a huge crisis, rather than something that could be resolved once Larry and Al actually had a real conversation. The book is from Al's POV, and I loved the voice; it veered slightly too close to mockery occasionally when Al didn't understand something that both Larry and presumably the reader would, but on the whole I thought it really nailed that balance. And it was always perfectly obvious why Al and Larry were initially attracted to each other, and how their relationship bloomed into something deeper than sex, in a way that isn't always clear in short romances. It was exactly what I wanted from this kind of story.
Grade: A
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