Behaving Badly (Action! 4) by G.A. Hauser
With this last book, G.A. Hauser pushed a bit the boundaries between romance and erotica, and also between reality and fantasy. Her characters are actually behaving badly, walking even more on the border, edging on the verge of a nervous breakdown; if before her characters were "bad" and too emotional, in this last book they reach the final step, they go all crazy, but it's a craziness for love, and so, again, I can forgive them. I actually don't read a G.A. Hauser to have a true and accurate book on gay life, I read one of her books for the glitter of the show business, for the hotness of cops in uniform, for reading of a man that is unsteady and emotional like and more than a woman, who makes mistake, and cries, and in all his craziness, can admit that he is a wrench, but his man loves him all the same, or maybe right for that reason.
Mark has made a descending parabola from the first books in which he appeared. He is still handsome and loved, but he starts to feel the weight of his age. First he had to prove himself having first a threesome and than a foursome with his partner and two very young actor (Acting 2). The he had to be sure of Jack's undying love for him, and to do so, he involved Jack and his partner Adam in another foursome with Steve (Action 3). Actually, this last experiment, other than confirming him that he has a lot of men loving him, served to Mark to convince him that he is still desirable, same reason why he started to modelling at the age of 38. After a youth and young age spent trying to force himself to love women, Mark now seems to not have boundaries, he is becoming all gay, and a bottom, arriving to refuse to top in bed. He has still big issue of self-esteem, and sex is the only way for him to bond people to him. It's not a chance that everytime he fights with Steve, he then enticed him to bed parading himself all naked in front of his lover.
Mark has barely started to regain a bit of self-esteem and stability with his partner Steve, than another brick falls on his head: a 18 years old boy knocks at his door claiming to be his son. And since Alexander is the spitting image of his father, there is no doubt of it. For Mark is both a dream and a nightmare: he is fiercely protective of his new found son, he wants to give him everything he lacked, above all the love of a father, even more when he discovers that also his son is gay, but at the same time he is scared; Alex represents everything he is losing, youth and beauty, and having him in the same house with Steve is a torture. On the contrary of Mark, Alex retorts to his stepfather's refusal of his sexuality flaunting it, emphasizing all his twinky trait... in a word, Alex is a born teaser and a sex fiend.
If at first Alex comes out like an unpleasant boy, with all his teasing toward Steve and Jack, little by little the reader understands that he is really very young and in deep need of love. And that probably he has not the right perspective on sex; in the past he used sex to "buy" love, now that he doesn't need it to gain the affection from the people around him, Alex is lost. But he will find a young boy, a virgin, that will teach him that sex without real love means nothing. After all, this is a romance ;-)
Amazon: Behaving Badly
Series:
1) The Physician and the Actor: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/154682.html
2) For Love and Money: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/101976.html
3) A Question of Sex
4) Miller's Tale
5) Capital Games: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/210160.html
6) Love You, Loveday by G.A. Hauser: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/288895.html
7) When Adam met Jack: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/300519.html
8) Acting Naughty (Action! 1): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/493312.html
9) Playing Dirty (Action! 2): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/520179.html
10) Getting It in the End (Action! 3): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/656487.html
11) Man to Man (Heroes 1): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/891687.html
12) Two In, Two Out (Heroes 2): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/932718.html
13) Top Men (Heroes 3): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/945549.html
14) Behaving Badly (Action! 4)
Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle