Release Reviews: Top Secret: Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy
Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy
Release Date May 7, 2019
Bestselling authors Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy return with their first Male / Male romance in 3 years.
LobsterShorts, 21
Jock. Secretly a science geek. Hot AF.
LobsterShorts: So. Here goes. For her birthday, my girlfriend wants…a threesome.
SinnerThree: Then you’ve come to the right hookup app.
LobsterShorts: Have you done this sort of thing before? With another guy?
SinnerThree: All the time. I'm an equal opportunity player. You?
LobsterShorts: [crickets!]
SinnerThree, 21
Finance major. Secretly a male dancer. Hot AF.
SinnerThree: Well, I’m down if you are. My life is kind of a mess right now. School, work, family stress. Oh, and I live next door to the most annoying dude in the world. I need the distraction. Are you sure you want this?
LobsterShorts: I might want it a little more than I’m willing to admit.
SinnerThree: Hey, nothing wrong with pushing your boundaries...
LobsterShorts: Tell that to my control-freak father. Anyway. What if this threesome is awkward?
SinnerThree: Then it’s awkward. It’s not like we’ll ever have to see each other again. Right? Just promise you won’t fall in love with me.
LobsterShorts: Now wouldn’t that be life-changing...
Q&A about Top Secret:
Q: Have we met these characters before in another book?
A: No! These guys are brand new, and we can’t wait for you to meet them.
Q: Is this story MM? Or is it a MMF / MFM / menage?
A: This book is MM.
Q: Is this a love triangle story?
A: Not really. You’ll see.
View the teaser trailer
Graphic and trailer credit: from Sarina Bowen Facebook page
I was so excited to hear of this secret M/M release from Sarina and Elle! This is a story of opposites, surprises, and an unexpected connection. These two do not even like each other...in fact they are rivals.
Keaton is the typical rich guy that appears to have everything money can buy. But that does not mean he does not have issues. He has a controlling father who wants to mold him in his image, but Keaton has his own dreams. He's smart, funny, charismatic and a bit nerdy. His life has been status quo for a long time, but all of a sudden big changes are happening. And now he is trying to figure out what he needs to do to be happy and how to go navigate that against what is expected of him.
When Keaton's long time girlfriend asks for an unconventional birthday gift, he tries to get it for her. There's an app for everything and being anonymous makes it even easier...easier to get caught up in something he never expected like enjoying messaging with another man.
Luke is kind of a broken boy. His family life is a mess. He's a scholarship kid hustling to make ends meet to keep afloat. He's tired, stubborn, prideful, and used to being used. He is a loner, has major trust issues, and a jaded outlook on life.
Things do not always end up like they are planned and secrets are hard to keep. There is a lot of external stuff going on in their lives while they are also learning things about themselves and each other.
It was a funny, sweet, and sexy opposites-attract, coming-of-age story. I could not help comparing them to my favorites, Wes and Jamie (Him and Us), so it is hard to live up to those expectations. I liked how the authors made the story line work. I just wish there was a bit more emotional and romantic time with them together on page to show the relationship growth and feelings. I also would have loved to have more at the end. I appreciated that they were both struggling with things and undergoing changes, but a lot of that felt separate and not them working on it together. I enjoyed their witty written banter in the beginning, but would have liked to see more of that later as well. I thought the plot and story line were fun and unique, but just felt there was maybe something a bit off with the pacing. But when it was all said and done, I did really like Keaton and Luke and I felt that they were well developed and lovable characters, and I enjoyed it overall.
I will continue to read these two authors and get excited when they co-write books because I know they will always bring characters that touch me in some way.
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Luke Bailey is the outlier in the fraternity. He keeps to himself, chose the smallest room in the house, and is not your typical frat boy, partially because he is also from in town.
These two avoid each other and frankly, can’t stand each other. But when Hayworth’s longtime girlfriend asks him to coordinate a three-some, these two inadvertently make contact, though anonymously.
Much of the development between Keaton and Luke takes place via text in a hook-up app. I loved seeing each of them let their guard down, and couldn’t wait for the ish to hit the fan when they realized who was on the other side of the app. Their face to face animosity only fed steam to the interactions they had over text.
This is a bit of self discovery story for Hayworth. His long term girlfriend thought she wanted something to spice things up. When he found an anonymous hookup nearby that seemed to fit what she wanted, Hayworth found himself questioning everything he thought he was into. Though he may have never questioned his sexuality, he loves his girlfriend, and they have some things to work out as he questions more fully what his feelings mean.
Sarina and Elle together is always a treat. I love the way these two characters develop, and the friendship and relationship that builds via the texts. When the big reveal happens and they have to face who they have been texting, I loved their initial reactions and fears. There is more going on for each of them than just a budding relationship, and I loved watching as each of their storylines developed.
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
After waiting three years for Sarina Bowen to write a new M/M romance—technically her last two M/M books were rereleases I had already read under her alternate pen name, so they don’t count—she and Elle Kennedy decided to keep their fifth collaboration, Top Secret, well, top secret until just a few weeks before its release. Cue the fanboy squeeeee from me! But while I enjoyed the story as a whole, it wasn’t in the same high category of enjoyment I’ve grown to expect from her (or their) work.
Luke Bailey is the lucky townie from a poor, messed-up family on a full-ride scholarship to the prestigious private university in his hometown. He’s also an Alpha Delt, but he didn’t join the fraternity for reasons any of these privileged rich guys would ever understand (nor does he want them to know why... or anything about his life really.) As a result, he fits in about as little as can be expected. He barely tolerates most of his brothers, and pretty much everyone hates him… especially the perfect, gorgeous meathead whose room is across the hall from his in the house. Keaton Hayworth III is a lot who you might expect him to be just from the name: a football jock and frat bro from a wealthy family attending an elite university in New England. Yes, he’s hot. Yes, he’s got a hot girlfriend. Yes, everyone thinks he’s got it together and will follow in his pharmaceutical-CEO father’s footsteps. Now if only he could figure out the best way to tell everyone he’s got a different plan. But before he can do that, he needs to figure out his feelings about a more pressing plan: his hot girlfriend for the past five years has her twenty-first birthday coming up, and she wants a three-way with another man.
The setup for the story is certainly unique and quickly grabbed my attention. As can readily be seen from the book’s blurb, a messaging service, in the form of a kinky hook-up app, serves as a big plot device for the first chunk of the book. Now unless you’ve been living under a rock while in Romancelandia, it shouldn’t come as a surprise (or spoiler) that the candidate Keaton picks from the app to be the other man in the threesome turns out to be none other than the annoying guy across the hall, but of course neither of them realizes it until the moment of truth. Until then, their texting interactions are a pure delightful to read, full of personality and great humor-filled banter. Contrast that with their in-person hate-fest, and it’s the perfect setup for an enemies-to-lovers romance.
Before I go any further, I do want to address the question that might be on your mind. Yes, Keaton has a girlfriend, but no, this isn’t a ménage romance. Telling exactly how this happens would be a spoiler, but rest assured that it’s fine—no cheating and no love triangle—and it adds to the plot in a satisfying manner.
In fact, this is just one of a whole bucket of plot things to be found in the book. I’ll let you see for yourself, but to say these two have full plates of individual issues to deal with is an understatement. Unfortunately, that’s a big part of why I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I had hoped I would. The first half of the story does a great job of establishing these things while doing an even better job building up to the fateful moment they discover the truth about whom they’ve been sexting to. While I loved these two characters and couldn’t wait for them to be together, I never got the big happy I expect out of a romance, because so much of the rest of the book focused on these external issues and their resolutions, largely glossing over the romantic development. They have one memorable romantic scene during that time, but that’s really all until the very end. Worse, though, is the fact that their being a couple played no role that their simply being friends wouldn’t have done in solving any of their individual issues. And without their love being important to their becoming better, I was left disappointed in the same way I am with romantic plot lines in action movies. Sure, they got to their happy-for-now, but their love wasn’t essential to the rest of the plot. And it’s the rest of the plot that was the bigger focus of the book.
Top Secret is still worth reading. From a writing standpoint, it’s still a well-developed and well-told story, as I expect from these two authors. And more importantly, despite my big issue, I really did enjoy the story. Ultimately, though, there is one big promise that all romance novels must fulfill in order to be satisfying: love conquers all. So when I read a romance, it matters less to me what else is going on and how it’s handled so long as the romantic arc yields the reason the couple rises to meet the challenges set before them, regardless of whether they are internal or external. Otherwise, what’s the point of the story being a romance?
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Sarina Bowen is the RITA® Award winning author of over thirty contemporary novels. She most recently hit the USA Today bestseller's list in January, with Overnight Sensation. Formerly a derivatives trader on Wall Street, Sarina holds a BA in economics from Yale University.
Sarina Bowen is a New Englander whose Vermont ancestors cut timber and farmed the north country since the 1760s. Sarina is grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing and wi-fi during the intervening 250 years. On a few wooded acres, she lives with her husband, two boys, and an ungodly amount of ski and hockey gear.
Sarina's books are published in a dozen languages on four continents. In 2016, The Romance Writers of America honored HIM by Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy with a RITA award for Best Contemporary Romance, Mid-Length.
Sarina Bowen is a New Englander whose Vermont ancestors cut timber and farmed the north country since the 1760s. Sarina is grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing and wi-fi during the intervening 250 years. On a few wooded acres, she lives with her husband, two boys, and an ungodly amount of ski and hockey gear.
Sarina's books are published in a dozen languages on four continents. In 2016, The Romance Writers of America honored HIM by Sarina Bowen & Elle Kennedy with a RITA award for Best Contemporary Romance, Mid-Length.
A New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Elle Kennedy grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario, and holds a B.A. in English from York University. From an early age, she knew she wanted to be a writer, and actively began pursuing that dream when she was a teenager.
Elle writes romantic suspense and erotic contemporary romance for various publishers. She loves strong heroines and sexy alpha heroes, and just enough heat and danger to keep things interesting!
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