Craven

Title: Craven
Author: Eden Cole
Cover Artist: N/A
Publisher: Risky Ink 
Amazon:
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: 29,232 Words, 86 PDF pages
Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Review Summary: I couldn’t connect with either protagonist consequently this book didn’t work for me.

THE BLURB

Craven is a sexy tattooed and pierced musician. He, his friend, and his sister all know and have accepted that he’s gay, but he’s never slept with another man.

He’s just returned to his hometown after failing to get his music career off the ground. He’s decided he will do what everyone else is doing, get a regular office job. His best friend has agreed to help him. But now that Craven is back home, he can’t avoid the feelings he’s had for Trevor all these years.

Craven and Trevor are opposites. Trevor’s idea of dressing down is unbuttoning his suit jacket. Craven has lived in ratty jeans and tees all his life. He’s got a pierced tongue, eyebrow, lip, and both ears. His tattoos extend all over his chest, down his arms, and onto his fingers. He thinks they don’t fit, but he wants Trevor so bad.

But no matter what Trevor will be there to help Craven find out where he belongs. And just maybe Craven will discover he’s been wrong about his heterosexual friend all these years.

THE REVIEW

Craven is broke, his music career such as it was ended after trying to make it in L.A., and his only option was to go back home and start over. Naturally he called Trevor his best friend and the man he loved for a long time to ask for help. Trevor was happy to hear from him after 2 years of no communication and sent him the bus fare with an offer of free accommodation until he was back on his feet. The only fly in the ointment was Craven’s sister who was also staying at the house with Trevor. Craven and his sister Connie had a complicated and volatile relationship as she loved to tell him what to do and how he should live his life, and in addition she and Trevor had dated in the past, but Trevor made it clear that they were no longer together and she was just staying in his house temporarily.

When Craven arrived from L.A. he was met by Trevor who seemed inordinately happy to see him and went out of his way to make him feel welcome, even finding a job for him at his firm, but working in the same office had its downside. Every time he was around Trevor he became aroused and he knew it was only a matter of time before Trevor noticed. Shortly after he came back home he had a fight with Connie and went out that evening to escape her nagging. He ended up at a bar which used to be his old hangout, however he managed to annoy the lead singer of the band that was performing that night and he quit. To make it up to the manager Craven offered to finish the set, and he was such a hit  the manager proposed that he should be the permanent singer, not just a temporary replacement. Trevor had shown up while Craven was performing and after his set he took on the job of negotiating a contract that would allow him to play on the weekends. On the way home he and Trevor had a celebratory drink and then Trevor dropped a bombshell when Craven asked him why he had always been so good to him.

The characters all seemed problematic. Craven is 28 years old and knew most of his life that he was gay but never acted on it.  The only time he had had sex was over ten years ago with a girl in high school who had a bet with her friends that she could get a gay guy into bed. When she boasted about this to him afterward he was so humiliated he ran to Trevor who kissed him and made everything better. Thus his love for Trevor apparently was born and continued to the present day. An almost virgin at age 28 required some suspension of disbelief since Craven was a musician, with groupies, male and female, probably throwing themselves at him every night, yet he resisted. Although he knew he was gay since he was a teen he never sampled any of the bodies thrown his way during his music career in L.A or before, which seemed strange. Trevor in the meantime had relationships over the years with women but not men even though he was bi. He claimed that he had never had sex with a man before, yet he seemed very experienced in oral sex when he and Craven got together – maybe he watched a lot of gay porn. 🙂 

As for Connie, she nagged Craven about being more ambitious and building his future rather than working at dead end jobs, yet it turned out that she was the worst example of how to screw up your life since hers was a can of worms. Then there was John, a friend of Connie’s who she thought would be a great boyfriend for Craven, but he  was so needy and lacked any sense of self worth that he kept telling Craven he had a trust fund and was rich, hoping to make himself attractive to him so that Craven would date him. I guess he thought Craven was a gold digger. A lot of the  time Trevor didn’t appear to know what he wanted with respect to Craven and he seemed superficial; Craven was almost as inconsistent. Trevor was flippant about his feelings for Craven and didn’t treat him as someone he loved but rather as a fuckbuddy, and he suggested that they date other people and not have an exclusive relationship. Even the sex didn’t work for me as Trevor’s attempts at commanding Craven in bed just seemed silly.  There were also editorial errors including name switches referring to Trevor as Devin, in addition to spelling  mistakes, which pulled me out of the story. I had other issues with the story which had a few more silly sidebars but they weren’t major.

Here’s one line from the book which gives you a sense of the prose

His cock, which had gone down, hardened immediately, and rushed over to his side of the car.

 I bought this book because I had enjoyed another one by this author, but the characters and the plot of Craven just didn’t do it for me and at times the protagonists seemed underdeveloped. Most of the time they didn’t appear to be in love, (even though Craven kept saying he was), until everything came together for the big finish. For me this cast of characters was definitely not playing with a winning hand.