Dripping Hot (Action! 5) by G.A. Hauser
Officially this is the last in the Action! series, and so it should be also the last about Mark Ritchfield, but, as all the books in this series, it closes a story but it's open to be further developed if the author will like it.
As expected from a closing book in a series, it's almost a get together books, with all the characters from the previous books that make an cameo appearance. Plus there are some secondary characters, most of them from the new Heroes series, that as planned was to be started in parallel to the Action! series, and that instead saw its first book just coming out this week from Phaze Books, and also Danny and Donny, identical twins that will be the main characters in Double Trouble, coming soon. So maybe the reader is a little overwhelmed, but in the end, the main reaction I had was to have more than a passing interest in these new characters, and will look forward for their books, above all for the twins.
Dripping Hot takes up from where the previous book ended: Mark is coping with the novelty to have a son, and above all a 19 years old son, who has no intention to be treated like a child. And for a man like Mark, who is all sweetness and paranoia, it's not simple to let his young bird fly away from the cage (no pun intended). Plus Alex has emotional issues for his own, maybe not so deep and rooted like his father, but still he is not a balanced young man you can trust. The lucky of these two wrecked men is to have found partners who compensate their lack, Steve and Oliver.
Mark is facing the middle age; it's not yet there, he is 38 turning 39 years old, but for a man that has always heard about his beauty, it's hard to let that beauty go. Plus, Mark has the complex of who is too beautiful: he doesn't think to be something more than an image. He is like one of those female models married to a good man who start to wonder if their husbands are cheating on them, not since they have some proof, but since they can't stand their image on the mirror, and on the other hand, think that even their men think the same. Most of the people, male or female, who think like that, end to be sour and nasty, but Mark has no bad bone on him, and most of the time, this attitude only does bad only to himself. He is always ready to self-blame if something is wrong, even when it's not his fault.
For a man as faulty as Mark, pairing him with a perfect one would be dangerous. And so it's only right that Steve is not a perfect man. He is without doubt a little more balanced and steady of Mark, but he is not perfect. He has an average courage, more when the danger is real and recognizable than when it regards his feelings. Look at how he deals with his parents, trying to dely the confrontation: a perfect man would have faced them as soon as possible, above all when he decided to marry Mark. And instead Steve decides to ignore the issue, hoping that it will magically disappear.
Then there is Alex. He is now happy living with Mark and Steve, who wouldn't be? he has everything he wants, without fighting to much, and it's only natural that he wants more. Even if he has a good boyfriend in Oliver, Angel Loveday's son, he wants more. He wants to be the centre of everyone love, being them parents, relatives or totally strangers. Alex's issue is with older men, he is almost obsessed; it's not difficult to read in that a reaction to the lack of a father figure during his childhood: missing the love of a father, he now is searching to gain it using sex.
And in the end there is Oliver. Of all the men above, he is probably the best of all; he is steady, good, well-thought, self-confident. Oliver is the boy every mother or father will choose for their son / daughter. He doesn't talk much, but when he does that, it's with wise and knowledge. For what I said before, that being Mark so faulty he needs a not perfect man, I don't know if Oliver is the right man for Alex, I believe that in the pair, it's Oliver who is losing something. But being him so good, and being Alex so young, they can work out the problem together, Oliver is not yet a full man, and he can learn to be a little less perfect; and Alex is not yet a total wreck like his father.
All in all, if the author will decide to end here this series, I will miss Mark. But maybe she can consider to continue it following Alex's evolution from boy to man.
Amazon: Dripping Hot
Series:
1) For Love and Money: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/101976.html
2) A Question of Sex
3) Miller's Tale
4) Secrets and Misdemeanors: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/180102.html
5) Capital Games: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/210160.html
6) Love You, Loveday: 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): http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/700268.html
15) Double Trouble: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/871851.html
16) Going Deep
17) Mark Antonious deMontford: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/463899.html
18) The Wedding Planner: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/934254.html
19) Dripping Hot (Action! 5)
Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle