A Big Hunk O’ Love

Title: A Big Hunk O’Love
Author: Hunter Raines
Publisher:  Amber Allure
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: Novella (28K Words,111 PDF pages)
Rating: 3.75 stars out of 5

Summary Review: This story started off great but ultimately disappointed me. **The comments in this post contain spoilers, so be warned**

THE BLURB

Former underwear model and current mechanic Jared Leon always figured his best friend, Aidan, had it easy being gay. Satisfying a man had to be much simpler than trying to figure out how to please a woman, right?

Well, he’s about to find out.

A trip to Alaska to get over his messy divorce sounds like just what Jared needs to put the past behind him. Or at least, it sounds perfect until Jared learns that he and Aidan are spending two weeks at a hunting and fishing lodge exclusively for gay men. That’s fine for Aidan, but Jared is not gay. No way, no how.

Just because he fantasizes about Aidan doesn’t mean anything, right? And neither does lusting after the lodge owner, or casting longing looks at some of the guests. But when one little kiss leads to much more, Jared is forced to confront everything he thought he knew about himself…including the possibility that his relationship with Aidan has always been about something other than good old-fashioned male bonding.

And wouldn’t his ex-wife have a fit if she discovered she was right about him all along…

THE REVIEW

I really, really wanted to like this book and I did like some of it, but parts of the story made me do a double take.

Jared is 28 years old and owns his own business although he’s just barely keeping his head above water. He’s straight, at least that’s what he thought all his life, and he’s been married for 10 years. His wife divorced him recently after cheating on him for quite a few years apparently, and in the end she used the excuse that he was gay even though she had no proof other than the fact that he spent a couple of nights every week with his best friend Aiden watching football and drinking beer. The marriage had been technically over for years, but he is still despondent about the break-up, mainly because his manipulative mother would be disappointed by the lack of grandchildren.  He’s also worried that even though he is convinced he’s straight, he can’t get his friend Aiden out of his mind since he confessed that he was gay all those years ago.

Aiden is single, gay and in love with Jared. Although he told him about his sexual orientation 5 years ago it hadn’t affected their friendship, but it’s a strain on him to be with Jared because of the way he feels about him. Aiden works in Vegas as an Elvis impersonator and the first scene of him in Jared’s garage in his Elvis costume – the white polyester suit and black wig – was very funny. Now that he was free, Aiden wanted Jared to fall in love with him but knew he had to be there for him as a friend while he tried to make sense of the divorce. Jared couldn’t seem to move on, even if he never loved his ex and had been unhappy in the marriage and had only stayed for appearances sake and to make his mother happy.

Determined to help his friend escape his misery Aiden suggested that he go away for a vacation far from the sweltering heat of Las Vegas and he offered to accompany him. Jared loved the idea of a vacation and said that Alaska as a vacation destination would be ideal.  He mentioned an ad he saw in a travel magazine for a two week stay at a hunting and fishing lodge, and the best part was, there would be no women there. Although Alaska wasn’t his idea of a good time Aiden agreed to go with Jared and shortly after they were on their way to cold and snowy Alaska. The owner of the lodge and their pilot, Vance Moore, was even bigger than Jared’s 6 ft frame and Jared felt an immediate attraction to his host. When they arrived at the lodge was the first time that Jared knew the vacation package was for gay men only. He was shocked and dismayed and didn’t know how to tell Aiden, but being smart, Aiden soon figured it out.

From here on I had a few difficulties with the plot and Jared’s characterization. The ad seemed pretty clear so I couldn’t understand how both Aiden and Jared could have missed that the lodge catered to gay men only. Also, when Jared met Vance he was attracted to him – that should have been a big clue that he was at least bi. Aiden was angry initially when he found out that the vacation package was for gay men and I didn’t know why, since sleeping in the same bed with Jared would give him an ideal opportunity to get his friend out of his pants. However, the big kicker was that Jared went from “straight as a board,” to having sex almost immediately upon arrival at the lodge. The scene where he gave it up was not credible for a man who had denied his sexual orientation for years. Also, while it’s no secret that I am a big proponent of no condoms in M/M romances where it makes sense, and I believe that authors have the right to write their sex scenes however they want, I thought that having sex with someone for the first time without a condom and no information about his sexual history might have been a tad risky. No judgment – just saying!

There was some information in A Big Hunk O’ Love about Alaska, which made the story interesting.  While I couldn’t understand why Aiden travelled with his Elvis impersonator costume on vacation, 🙂 I thought that his and Vance’s characterizations were well drawn because the author gave the readers some of Vance’s history. On the other hand, for someone who was unhappy in his marriage for years it seemed Jared focused too much on being ‘unhappily’ divorced. If I didn’t know better I would have thought he was broken up at the thought of his ex dumping him. One element that I missed was that there wasn’t enough of Aiden and Jared together in the story and too much Vance – I would have preferred to spend the time with Aiden and Jared as their new relationship developed.

If you like this author, A Big Hunk O’ Love might appeal to you because the writing was quite good in parts of the story as well as some of the dialogue.