Original read: 4 stars
2nd read: 4.5 stars
3rd read: 4.75 stars
4th read: 5 stars. (I honestly love Dex and Kane and how their relationship grows.)

Synopsis: David is in high school and he and his best friend Dex have their first homosexual sexual experience. On their way home, they have an accident, and Dex is killed. David goes away to college, but he feels lost. His girlfriend at the time suggests that he do gay porn to make some money in order to keep going to college, and David does, taking the porn name of Dex. A few years later, Dex is still working at Johnnies, and hires Carlos.
Carlos is in high school, and while he isn't doing well in school, his dick is in demand by the girls. Unfortunately, once they use it, they go back to their boyfriends the next day and pretend that the encounters never happened. Carlos is advised by his favourite teacher to put a higher price on himself, and Carlos takes that to mean that he should do porn, so he finds the closest porn production place, which happens to be gay porn. After he is hired, he chooses the name Kane as his porn name.
A few years later, Dex has admitted that he is gay, and has had a relationship with one of the models who works for Johnnies. When Dex figured out that he was never going to leave his girlfriend, since she liked him working at Johnnies, he left him, but keeps getting calls from him. He heads to his house to confront the ex, and Kane is there because he got kicked out of his own house. Kane's sister has left her abusive husband and brought her sick daughter to live at Kane's house, but doesn't approve of him doing gay porn, even though that is what paid for her daughter's cancer treatment. Kane helps Dex get rid of his ex, and asks to stay with him. Dex agrees, and they start living together.
Kane and Dex go to collect his animals the next day, because his sister doesn't want them living in the house with her either, since they are snakes, iguanas and turtles. The animals get the spare bedroom, and Kane is sharing a bed with Dex. When they get a call in the middle of the night that Chase has tried to commit suicide, all the Johnnies models go to the hospital, and Kane is the one who holds Dex together. As they start having sex on a regular basis, Kane keeps saying that he isn't gay, but that he doesn't want a hetero relationship while he is making porn, since it's hard to explain.
After Dex and Kane have a confrontation about the status of their relationship, Dex invites Kane home with him for Christmas. They have to go on the down-low, since Dex isn't out at home. He knows that his family will not be accepting. Kane still goes, pretending to be Dex's friend, and when things go sideways, he is there for Dex.

What I liked: Honestly, I really, really like this book. I love both Kane and Dex. I like that Kane, who doesn't think that he is the smartest tool in the shed, knows exactly what Dex needs in order to be Dex. Dex doesn't think that Kane is stupid, and he encourages him to go to college so that he doesn't have to do porn for the rest of his life, especially since it's getting harder for both of them to deal with the other one shooting scenes. I liked that they stood by each other and up for each other when the situation called for it. Dex and Kane became possessive of each other really quickly, and Kane quickly comes to the realization that anything that makes them sleep in separate beds is the wrong thing to do.

What I didn't like: nothing. ( )

Re-read review: When I first read this series, this one was my favorite. It's fascinating how different parts of it hit me this time through (four years later). I love that. I wonder how the next re-read will feel. What an amazingly good, complex series. I have no idea how anyone manages to write such things, but I am grateful. I needed comfort reading today, and this delivered.

Original review (2017):
#1 was such an emotional ride, I expected this one to be, I don't know, lighter.

No. It's less harrowing. But not lighter. What it does is come at the story from two other directions, and holy heck that is hella-effective, both awesome and deep. Complicated. I loved it, loved what Kane is to Dex. Loved what Dex is to Kane. Loved their mis-steps, even, which is rare!

These are 'found family' stories, one of my favorite themes. ( )

This review was written for Hearts on Fire Reviews Blog located here - http://heartsonfirereviews.com/

Summary:


Dex in Blue is a story about finding the one person who loves all of you, the good and the ugly and learning that sex can be just sex, until you find that one special person and then it’s so much more than just sex. It’s about learning that not talking about your pain and keeping it all in your head until you want to scream, can either kill you or deaden you to the world. You need to scream the pain out in order to survive and then allow someone to catch you when you fall.

David Calvin Worrall is only eighteen when a horrific event opens this story and changes the course of David’s life driving him far away to attend college in Sacramento. Running out of money he turns to making gay-for-pay porn under his new porn name ‘Dex.’ Eventually he stops going to classes to give all his time to help run Johnnies, the studio that produces the porn movies. David’s life revolves around Johnnies and the other models and employees all in a desperate attempt to forget what happened in Montana and the belief that he can escape the loneliness that’s settled deep into his soul.



Review:


Dex in Blue is the second book in the Johnnies series. The first was Chase in Shadowwhich I haven’t read. Sometimes I like to read the second book in a series first to see if it can stand on its own. I believe that Dex in Blue can. There are characters from the first book that appear in this one and the incident with Chase from the first book is also covered in the second book. But the author gives enough information throughout the second book for it to tie together with the first without the feeling that I was missing something and wondering who the other characters were. I can usually see a tie in to the story with the title, but I do wonder why this book was called Dex in Blue. The only reason I could think of was that this Dex/David has blue eyes, different from the original Dex and that’s why the distinction of the blue in the title.

I would consider Dex in Blue to be a ‘heavy’ story. By heavy, I mean there is a lot going on in this book. At two hundred and eighty pages on my NOOK it took longer to read than most books of the same length. I’m guessing this is because the text spacing is smaller and the font size is also smaller than most other books I’ve read, even though I adjusted the size and spacing. There is also a lot that happens in this book, making it seem more action packed and there’s also a lot of emotional entanglements happening between the characters. We are introduced to many people from Johnnies and we’re pulled into some of their stories. This book is not just about Dex and Kane. It’s also about how other people with their problems affect Dex and Kane and how the two MCs resolve and grow from the trials. Sure that is normal conflict for stories, but the author writes it in a realistic way. The characters don’t have epiphanies that happen all at once. Sometimes there’s one step forward and two steps back and sometimes the steps are so tiny and slow, that you wonder if there is any advancement going on at all. Developing the relationships and character growth is what I think the author did best in this story.

David or Dex, is twenty-eight. He has a need to look after people to be sure they are taken care of and he also has a great head for business. He practically runs Johnnies by himself even though John owns it. But Dex also has a need to plan and control. I think after what happened to the original Dex that David did whatever he could to make sure that he had control over events so nothing disastrous ever happened again. David loses himself in his schooling, his relationship with woman who never satisfy him and finally in Johnnies so that he can forget about the kind of relationship he had and could have had, with Dex in Montana. Eventually Dex admits to himself that he is gay and that brings some him some peace. But despite that, David leads a lonely life amidst all the people around him and the care he gives to them.

Carlos, full name Jose Carlos Richardo Ramirez, porn name Kane, is twenty, gentle, generous to a fault toward his sister and his niece and very perceptive about people. One thing I didn’t care for were the comments throughout the story that Kane was ‘slow.’ After a while it made me wonder if Kane was that slow, why wasn’t he enrolled in special education classes while in high school? Because the repetition was making him come across as a bit mentally handicapped. So I was perplexed to exactly why the author wrote him this way, I didn’t see the point. Kane had a big heart when it came to caring for people and animals, but a person doesn’t have to be slow to be kind. For me Kane came across as uneducated but very tuned into people and animals. Kane is able to touch David in a way that no man or woman has been able to reach him since Dex back in Montana. Kane sees David for David even when David is Dex and knows they are one and the same, the good and the ugly and it doesn’t matter to Kane. And Kane’s willing to do whatever it takes to make things work for him and Dex, to always be there for him.

One of the things that had me confused at first was David’s use of the name Dex. I understand that porn stars don’t always use their real names, so David chose Dex. But I couldn’t understand why he was known as Dex instead of David outside his work. It was like he was trying to be someone else, he was trying to be Dex and leave David behind. But as the story went on, and especially during Dex’s and Kane’s trip to Montana for Christmas, it began to make sense. David used Dex’s name for many reasons. One was that he still held onto Dex’s memory and what had happened, he couldn’t let go and it was also a way to distance himself from who he’d been in Montana. David took on Dex’s name to become the Dex he remembered so that he could relate to men without guilt and become fearless. But after the trip to Montana, David put a lot of old memories to rest and I think in the end the name Dex came to symbolize the fearlessness and strength that had been the first Dex rather than a sad homage to the lover David had lost. It took Kane’s love to show David that he was just as strong as the original Dex had ever been. In the end Dex was the name Dex used to keep people at a distance and David or Davy was reserved for those he considered closest to him, the people he trusted the most with his vulnerability.

I think Dex and Kane are a good pairing. Dex likes to organize and is into every little detail, he’s complicated. Whereas Kane keeps things simple, he cuts to the chase and doesn’t dance around a subject. Kane doesn’t mind Dex taking charge in everyday life and Kane is the only one who can get Dex to calm down and let go of the pressure he can put on himself to make sure everything is under control. He grounds Dex when events are overwhelming. Kane is also the only one that Dex lets take care of him and tell him what to do. The two complement each other and alternated being the strong one in the relationship when the other needed support. Their love didn’t feel like it was insta-love even though they had been together for only a few months.

I loved how the author conveyed the developing feelings between Dex and Kane, how they were becoming their own world, their own family. Here’s one example:

“In that moment, that shared movement, it was like they were in their own little bubble, their own little Dex-and-Kane planet, like the moon. Yeah, they could see changes on the Earth’s surface, but they were cold changes, far away, and had nothing to do with planet Dex-and-Kane, which would weather all those changes with equanimity. Dex wasn’t startle or even surprised when Kane grasped his hand and moved closer, shoulder to shoulder, as his family ties were savaged and mutilated in one painful moment.”

Dex and Kane had moments of these kinds of thoughts, like the one above, interspersed at the beginning of the story. But as the two grew closer, these insights into what they meant to each other and how they had each other’s backs grew and lengthened as the story went along. I loved seeing the love grow between them and how the author had us feel that love.

The secondary characters were easy to imagine as shown through Dex and Kane’s eyes. The author often repeated physical and emotional characteristics of the characters and I found that to be helpful because there were so many people in the story. The author didn’t describe the characteristics to a large extent when she repeated them, but on a small scale to remind the reader of attributes that are an important part of each person. There are some characters that I would love to see have stories of their own, like Ethan, he is such a sweet and cuddly guy. And I would even like John to find his HEA. He was another instance of one of this book’s themes of holding his thoughts inside until he wanted to scream, but instead took drugs to deaden those screams.

I loved that the author made distinct point of view changes. She neatly designated each chapter with either Dex’s or Kane’s name making it simple to keep the POVs straight. One of the problems I had with the story were the internal monologues of both MCs. Normally it’s clear which character is speaking, but at times the internal monologue read more like a narrator telling what the character was thinking rather than feeling what they were feeling. This always drew me out of the story and made it seem like there was another character’s pov rather than just Dex and Kane’s. I found this invisible third character to be distracting and it made me feel distanced from the MCs. The other thing I didn’t like about the monologue was that it often felt like run-on sentences. They weren’t, but the thoughts of the characters were so rapid-fire that they ran one into the other. And lastly was the jumping back and forth in time with memories that are real, wished for outcomes or dreamed events. I found it confusing. The story may have been written this way on purpose by the author or just her writing style, but I didn’t care for it because it came across more as telling than showing and I couldn’t delve into the MCs emotions as much as I wanted.

What I really liked was that the author created many different subplots and these subplots were not easily solved. People and life are complicated and the author did a good job of creating a story with realistic complications and a realistic pace at which the problems were solved. I loved each subplot that happened in the book. They were fleshed out and none of them felt rushed or underdeveloped. Having many intermingling events with other characters easily held my attention and didn’t overwhelm me. The story had angst but not so much angst that I couldn’t handle it and I don’t like lots of angst in stories.

This is a story that can be read as a stand-alone because the author did a good job of filling in enough information about the characters and situations from the first book to keep me from feeling lost. I enjoyed Dex in Blue mostly for the relationship between Dex and Kane and for the relationships that all the characters had with each other. The interactions were complicated and often troubled, but the theme that ran throughout the book was that if someone was in trouble, they could count on a friend to help them. What I didn’t like was the ‘invisible third character pov' that cropped up during the internal monologues that was distracting enough to pull me out of the story, the jumping around in time and the telling rather than showing me how the characters felt during the monologues. That takes off almost a full two stars. But because of the great relationships and the subplots that carry this story, I give Dex in Blue 4.25 stars, rounded down to the closest number for 4 stars.
( )

David, Dex) was without a doubt, the sweetest, most big-hearted character that I have found in a story in quiet some time. You can't help but love how he stands up for and helps all the people that work for Johnnies. Then Kane comes into his life with all his reptiles and his insecurities. Dex had just got out of a toxic relationship and needed someone solid in his life. Together he and Kane began to build a life in spite of David's (Dex) homophobic family and Kane's free-loading sister. This is a story you can sink your teeth into with a great plot, memorable characters and always hopeful in its outlook. I love how Kane, who calls himself stupid and is often viewed by others as a bit dim, isn't. He's just different. He thinks differently and wears his big heart on his sleeve, yet he comes up with more accurate epiphanies on things than Dex can imagine. Dex acknowledges this and appreciates and loves him for it. They're different but they complement each other so well. If you want a great story and don't mind that the sex is very graphic, you might want to try this one. You even get a few critters thrown in but they do not have fur. Be sure not to miss the part where Tomas gets very up close and personal with Dex...and no, Tomas sure ain't a guy!

A word of Explanation
Dex was David's best friend in their Montana hometown and his first love interest, but Dex was killed when the car he was driving hit a deer. David spent weeks in the hospital and then ran from his home in Montana for California after seeing how his family responded to anything resembling gay. When he went to work at Johnnies, a "gay-for pay" movie studio, he took Dex's name as his stage name as a way to keep Dex's memory alive for him ( )

David had a bright plan for his life, but that was all blown up after a tragic accident that took away the things that held the most meaning for him in his life. He found his way to California and reinvented himself as Dex, a top model for Johnnies, a porn company. He presents an image of normalcy to his coworkers, hiding the turmoil in his life that he's never been able to resolve. But when one of his fellow models is kicked out of his home, Dex offers him a place to stay and soon discovers that they might just have more to offer each other than he thought at first glance.

This is the second book in a series, but I have not read the first one and had no problems following what was going on. It's a largely self-contained story. The characters and story come across as very authentic and Amy Lane, as always, has written a story that it's easy to get lost in while you're reading. The emotions and complexity of the characters really shines through.

The only slight drawback I saw was that it probably could be just a bit shorter. There are a few places where I felt things dragged just a bit, but overall, it wasn't enough to detract from my enjoyment of the story. ( )