REVIEW: Lust by Lola Darling

Amazon

Blurb

Darren Sundry needs salvation. He's fallen into the wilds of despair, beyond where anyone can save him. He finds redemption in the last place he would expect, on his knees.

Paul Kendrick needs control. His faith and his sexuality are warring inside of him. Living a secret life yet still seeking acceptance, he finds release with Darren.

When secrets and past sins are revealed, will their bond be torn apart? Or can two broken men pick up the pieces and save each other?

Review

RATING:

Needless to say, I FLOVE the series that spawned this story! By my recent re-read of that, and as I got more hooked on m/m rom, my thoughts meandered some more on Darren’s side… 

I guess the literary gods have heard my thoughts! 

For a really short read, I have lots of conflicting feelings about this:

1. This kind of taboo caught me off-guard as that wasn’t quite clear on the blurb. If it was, would I have been more interested? Not sure. I’ve been gearing myself up for this theme, so I can actually get to the number of what I was told are well written books I own already, call it a hang-up or whatever, but as it is, I wasn’t quite there yet. So let’s just say that Lola inadvertently forced me to dip my toes on this trope.

2. I’m not usually one for fanfics and when I read them as published works, they’re not of characters that are near and dear to my heart, so kudos to Lola for taking this on.

3. Stories of this length are always tricky. To be fair, I had to buy in some of the emotions really quickly.

4. I’m not sure how I feel about the timeline as it covered a painful part in the Submission series. As nice as it was to see a glimpse of Monica and Jonathan at a crucial part of their relationship, I’m ambivalent about how Darren saw it.

5. Lola gave me a Darren that I did not expect, so that was interesting. Did I like it? I think jury’s still out. This has got nothing to do with Lola’s writing but I just can’t help thinking if this is how CD saw him too, sorry.

6. Too bad about Adam…

7. As much as Paul had all the alpha qualities I like, some of his words threw me off. In my head, someone wants to have his cake and eat it too.

8. Yes, the smexy times are smokin’ hot!

9. While this is not quite a winner in my head, I actually enjoyed the writing, and thank god, for that, because this is a first Lola read for me even though I own some of her other books already. And I was actually looking forward to reading those.

10. The story continues, which I guess I should’ve expected… am I interested enough to find out what happens?

Thanks for dropping by!

~Leftie