I received Searching for Shelter through the Don’t Buy My Love review program for an honest and unbiased opinion. Rich is twenty-six, works at a coffee shop and volunteers at an LGBTQ center. He’s lusting after one of the coffee shop regulars, a hot man named Diego. Diego is thirty-seven, rock climbs and is a search and rescuer. This story is told in third person through the eyes of both Rich and Diego.

2.5 Stars



This is the sixth book the the Sin City series. It’s also the first one I've read by this author, so I don’t know if this is her usual style of writing, but I have to be honest and say I didn’t find it easy to read this story.

The blurb does a good job of describing what the story is about, so I won’t repeat it here. There are also other reviews that talk about the plot. I would however like to talk and point out the numerous spots in the book where I think opportunities were missed to fix obvious glaring holes and lack of emotional impact.

First I found that there was too much unnecessary description from the beginning. For example:

He picked his way over the stained carpet, worried that he’d step in something gross in his brand-new Converses as he left. The likelihood was high. It was the first pair of new shoes he’d purchased for himself in two years, so he wanted to take extra good care of them.

I can tell you that I really don’t care about Rich’s Converses and how many he bought within the last two years and how he’s going to take care of them. I noticed what happened was the author would introduce a topic, then go on to explain or give extra detail about the topic. Once she did that it was like clicking on a link on wiki, there was another connected topic and she went on to that topic with random info. It was a patchwork of topics that I found difficult to follow. This ‘habit’ mostly happened for the first half of the book but wasn’t so evident in the second half.

At one point, Rich is thinking about some people he knew, who have jobs and where they worked and their job positions. But the author introduced so many people with too much info at the same time and I had no idea who or what these people were. I was overwhelmed and must have read the section over three times but still didn’t understand everything about the people, so I gave up.

There was another instance where Rich is talking to the hot guy (Diego) in the shop and Diego asks Rich questions: “Rich? You with me still?” Maybe it’s me, but I find that sentence awkward to read. My mind would’ve found it easier to read it as, “You still with me?” I found many, what I would call “backward” sentences, which pulled me out of the story. I’d have to reconfigure the sentences in my head to have them make sense and more pleasurable to read.

The events and actions that occur in the story happen, to me, too quickly. For instance, one second Diego is thinking hot thoughts about Rich and the next he’s wiping sweat from his upper lip. There is no smooth segue of heating up, just instantaneous sweat. Another point, Rich and Diego are hot for each other and within a week or so, they’re in love. I suppose that’s a preference of whether or not someone likes someone falling in love quickly. For me I’d like it to be believable and I didn’t find their love connection plausible.

There are many such instances of events happening too quickly, not all around sex. There’s no nice gradual buildup or segue into the next action or thought. One second we’re being told one thing and before we know it, another action takes place. I don’t know if it’s the author’s intention to keep the pace moving, but it doesn’t work. It’s not smooth writing, and doesn’t allow the reader time to immerse themselves in the scene or emotion before being yanked out of it. The story ended up feeling flat and I couldn’t get into Rich and Diego as a couple. I suppose it was because there was a lot of telling rather than showing too.

Another thing I found irritating was the dropping of plot lines, which logically would’ve had an emotional impact, and plot holes, where the scene could’ve been easily fixed. For instance in this scene: Rich sees a woman’s body dumped from a limousine. He finds out she has a bullet through the head. He isn’t all that shocked and he’s more concerned about the soda spilled in his car because he didn’t get a chance to drink it. That is truly unbelievable. Not only that, throughout the book, Rich doesn’t ruminate about the murder, get anxious about it, or even fear that someone might come after him. It’s like he shrugs his shoulders and thinks, “Oh well, another day in Vegas,” then goes about his job. The lack of emotional reaction on Rich’s part is bizarre. Issues like this pop up throughout the story. Not only that, but when the murdered woman is brought up again near the end of the story, Rich hadn’t thought anything about her at all throughout the story, nothing about her was brought up on his part, not even when Diego talks about his climbing incident and the guy who died. Furthermore, later it’s brought up that two characters were in the car, Andy and the chauffeur. The killer went and killed one of the witnesses who saw the women get dumped from the car. Tell me why the killer didn’t kill Andy in the car at the same time and dump him out? And I don’t remember anything about the killer or Andy running away from the car after it crashed. Next, when Andy was badly injured in the climbing accident, the author never explained who tried to kill Andy in the accident. The rescue climber died, so that means there was a third mystery climber hidden away at the top. Why no speculation about a third climber later in the story and was the killer also a climber? From his description he wasn’t that type of person. There were so many ‘dropped balls,’ such as this that it really cut down on my enjoyment of the story. I kept thinking ahead wondering what other hole would crop up to taint the story. At the end I found another one, although not as severe as the lack of impact of the murder. For the final sex scene, Rich prepped himself in the bathroom. As he did so Diego set everything up on the bed, including the butt plug. Nothing is mentioned about the ropes tied to the bed when Rich comes into the bedroom the first time to get plugged. But after he goes back into the bedroom with Diego after watching TV he notices the rope. How did he miss the rope the first time around? That should have been mentioned when he came out of the bathroom! Why didn’t the betas, proofers and the editor catch all this stuff? The author seriously needs to find more betas or an editor willing to point out these issues that a reader can easily find. I’d like to know what happened and why issues like these slipped through. They are very obvious and bothersome.

I did like Diego more than Rich. Rich was a guy waiting for his Prince Charming to come a long and take him away from his life, just like a damsel from a Harlequin romance. When he and Diego finally get together, Rich waffles constantly between, “does he really like me? He’ll get tired of me,” etc. To “Diego is so wonderful. I should quit thinking I don’t deserve someone like him.” And then swinging back to, “what does he see in me?” The repetitious thoughts, only in different words, went on throughout the book and grew increasingly annoying.

Diego on the other hand was a sexy character, I would’ve liked knowing more about him. He was caring and protective. But he was also too good to be true. A regular “Gary-Stu.” Diego seemed to have no flaws at all. But his redeeming quality was that he was hot, and boy did he love to play with Rich’s ass. Very nice sex scenes when the two got down to it.

I have to be honest, the inconsistency in Searching for Shelter had a huge effect on my enjoyment of this story. It distracted me enough to lower the stars down to two. My advice to the author is find either better, or more betas, and try-out a different editor. If a reader can find so many issues in the finished copy of a book, then something isn’t working in the editing process.

Anyway in the end, I raise the stars to 3 Stars because Diego is sexy and the sex scenes between Rich and Diego were hot!



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I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review

Wow. I absolutely loved this book! This series has been wonderful and I have loved all of them, but Diego and Rich were just wonderful. There was some drama in the book, but it played a relatively minor part and we were able to watch Diego and Rich come together and fall in love. They were so sweet together and both deserved such happiness. They warmed my heart.

Rich is one of the shelter volunteers that we met in previous books. He always seemed like such a nice guy, and it was great to see that he remained that way. He has a good heart and cares about others. Diego saw Rich at the coffee shop he worked at and wanted to ask him out but was too shy. Finally he breaks through his barriers and goes for it. I absolutely loved Rich and Diego's 'not first date'. They were cute together and funny, and Diego was the perfect match for Rich. This is very close to a 5 star book for me. ( )