Review - "Fierce & Fabulous"

Fierce & Fabulous Sassy Boyz #1
by Elizabeth Varlet
rating:☆
published: 27th June 2016
spoilers? yes

Goodreads

Where do I start with this trainwreck of a book? Firstly, it's probably worrying that the series is called Sassy Boyz (with a Z). That doesn't bode well. Secondly, the title, Fierce & Fabulous. I'm going to hazard a guess that we're going for all the stereotypes of gay men here.

And, lo and behold, we did.

The book opened up with a straight man in a gay bar. And this straight man was pretty homophobic. Not a promising start to say the least. Then the dancers (who I assume are the sassy boyz or whatever) come out and start dancing, and they are so effeminate that he thinks they are women and subsequently gets turned on. Wonderful. (Not to mention the fact that he's also misogynistic... It just gets better and better.)

Anyway, he gets a lapdance from one of them etc, etc and then obviously can't stop thinking about this (effeminate, camp) gay man who is causing him to question his sexuality. Skip ahead a bit, and this guy's having to go back to the club to pick up a purse for his sister, and he walks in on their practice. At which point he rather randomly ends up kissing the one who'd given him a lapdance.

I actually can't remember a lot of the plot after this, but for the fact that they start going out and the lapdance guy has low self esteem and starts pushing the not-so-straight guy away, there's angst, they end up together. I wanted to slap someone a few times. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary, really.

The writing however was terrible. Take these quotes, for example:

Their mouths fused together in a carnal liplock that could probably make the devil blush, it was so fucking vulgar.

He'd never imagined balls could be so delicious.

And then there's that hinky little thing that all M/M romance authors seem to do, is have someone say they don't like labels. In this case it was along the lines of we're all humans so why bother with labels? Great. Then later, there was the lovely comment along the lines of I can't possibly be bi, because I only like one man. Needless to say, that didn't endear this book to me any.