The Guy from Glamour

Uneven Lead Characters But Still a SOLID Read…

Special ops pilot Dean Pierce is plucked from his life of piloting rescue missions into hot zones and plopped into small town Arizona life when his sister dies unexpectedly and he is left with the responsibility of his young niece, Nicki. Anthony Carrino is not only Nicki’s school guidance counselor, but his family is also her temporary host as they attempt to navigate how best to handle Nicki’s uncertain future. The eventual romance between emotionally unavailable Dean and “If you date me you date my entire crazy family” Anthony is set against this premise which is given every bit as much importance as the romance itself completely saving it from the usual homoclausterphobia where only two characters speak to each other or the reader for the entire novel. The large cast of supporting characters range from basically drawn all the way to superbly well drawn (I want to go out drinking with Anthony’s sisters Mia and Gina!!!) which in turn helps fully paint the picture of who Anthony is, where he comes from and why we should care.

As a former Marine, it was nice to see Cates give his protagonist Dean other reasons to be emotionally deficient aside from the fact that he’s military. Authors often write us military men (and women) as completely stoic, humorless, emotionally crippled robots and while his pilot Dean certainly fits that profile initially, we learn that he was already like that before he signed up (and with good reason) making the Army a perfect career choice. Unfortunately, because we are treated to very limited information about Dean’s past and he arrives in the town of Glamour with no friends or family in tow, he is automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to his character’s development. Seeing Dean’s arc from completely closed off to fully invested in Anthony would be far more satisfying if Cates had given us (at the very least) a flashback or three that allowed us to see Dean trying to be the emotionally available person he really longs to be which would make him far more sympathetic and make us root for him just a little bit more.

I’m not sure Cates has ever actually met a special forces soldier for she also seems to to be unaware of one incredibly obvious trait all soldiers share with several other professions with direct links to danger and death (including cops, detectives, firemen, EMT’s etc..) and that is the fact that we learn to cope with the harsh and ugly realities of our jobs by developing a wickedly dark sense of humor. It’s truly the only thing that allows us to survive in battle and at home. Deans’ utter lack of humor (combined with an almost total lack of social skills) rings false to someone who truly knows what seasoned soldiers like him are really like. I certainly liked him a lot more after he stared to open up but it took quite a long while to get there.

Lastly, I’d like to commend Cates on something she did get very right and that’s the handling of Dean’s sexuality. Instead of giving us a tortured gay soldier forced to hide his desires or another “totally straight” man who is suddenly forced to confront his secret desires after meeting the “right guy”, Dean is instead a sexually well adjusted, totally bad ass dude that just happens to also like dick. While I have met and served with more than a few soldiers that fit both my initial descriptions, most of the gay/bi soldiers I knew were total Alpha bros first, and the fact that they liked guys was not super high on their list of priorities nor was it the currency they used to identify themselves with. While DADT may be a thing of the past, military culture is bound to traditions and still does not allow openly gay/bi men and women to freely be themselves. People like Dean are the product of such a culture and I know because I’m one of them.

I’m looking forward to reading and reviewing Cate’s sequel “The Only Guy” next!

THE GUY FROM GLAMOUR is the first book in The Guy series, and we start off with a tragedy. Dean is in the army, serving as a Night Stalker, when he finds out his sister has been killed in a car accident, leaving behind a thirteen-year-old daughter, Nikki. He leaves Afghanistan and heads to the US where he meets Anthony. Anthony is Nikki’s school Guidance Councillor and also the son of the couple who has been looking after Nikki. The story is basically about Dean, Nikki, and Anthony. They figure out what they’re doing, how to work together, and what expectations they should, or shouldn’t, have.

I was completely engrossed with this story, loving every word of it. I loved how Dean has his ‘tutoring’ with Anthony, plus Nikki’s easy acceptance of them as a couple. All the characters in this book, whether main or secondary, add something to the story. The pacing was perfect, and I found it very hard to put down.

I definitely want to return to Glamour as there are simply so many characters I want to pair up! Loved this as a first book, and can’t wait to read more. Highly recommended by me.

Stunned by the balance. Between the stoic, secretly scared, badass Night Stalker and the puppy dog, yearning for love guidance counselor; between Dean and his niece and between both men; and between the steam and the more tame aspects of building a relationship. So yeah, in a word, what made me love this book was balance. Almost all of the interactions in this story were really well-written and real and so memorable. And when you add two men who were really made for one another and had a whole lot of chemistry, you’ve got the makings of a great story.

Dean’s insistence that he just doesn’t do human interaction could have been a turn-off, and while I think it could have been made into something more endearing rather than just a quirk, I felt it was well-done. It didn’t feel like an affectation due to arrogance or even social anxiety, it was just a part of who Dean is. His fear over doing or saying the wrong thing for his niece was cute and actually believable. And once he made the connection with her, his freak out was even more adorable. It was so hard not to love this man.

Anthony was cute and I wanted so much for his happiness. I was really glad that he found it with Dean. While I wasn’t a fan of him lying to himself or his caving into his ex’s requests or actions, he was overall a likable character that was well-matched to Dean. He wasn’t as compelling, but he was a calm, positive, optimistic, and caring counterpart to a man who didn’t understand how to connect with others with his whole self.

Maybe half of the book was devoted to both men navigating the relationship between Dean and his niece. Their relationship was allowed to get on fairly solid ground before anything really began between both men. So often you have stories that have guardianship thrust on the MC’s, adoptions or fostering, single parents, or any other permutation of those kinds of situations and the connections between the kids and MC’s feel forced, rushed, or too easy. In this story it was absolutely honest, a bit slow-going, and exactly what I hoped for. And then you got the tenderness and steam between the two men and I’m just gone. This was a whole story, one I’d gladly recommend and will absolutely come back for more of when the rest of the series is available.

Very slow moving and poorly executed.