August Ice

by Dev Bentham

[CrowNoYami]

I want to start this off on a good note. I love the characters and the development is both very real and completely on point. There's so many emotions to go through, that you feel everything with them and that's such a good feeling (even when the emotions portrayed aren't good ones).

There were two reasons why this lost stars.

1) The story is broken up into 3 parts but seemingly for no reason. Somehow that always takes away from the story for me, leading me to believe 'Oh, I can just stop here then'. And at each of those points you -could-. If you're going to break it into parts you -need- make sure it's at a point in the novel where the reader -won't- leave. I didn't, but others would.

2) The sex. This is a major pet peeve of mine when reading gay novels. Anal. Sex. Needs. Prep. Did they use lube? Yes. That's -not- enough. Especially when a character hasn't bottomed in a long time, like more than a few hours ago. The human anus was not designed to 'take it' without prepwork. It doesn't take much to solve this issue; 'unable to hold back, Andre quickly slid his fingers into Max, stretching him for what was to come. Only moments later he was pressing inside of Max's tight heat.' -See? Prep does not need to take paragraphs but it does need to be there. Otherwise; OUCH!