Day: May 3, 2019

Core Training (Work Out #3) by Andrew Grey

3 out of 5 stars

Ebook, 86 pages. Published October 20th 2010 by Dreamspinner Press

Blurb:

Hugh Douglas isn’t thrilled about reaching his fortieth birthday. But he gets an unexpected present when a waiter he knows, Max Pierce, flirts hard with him at the gym. They end up going home together and having the hottest sex Hugh can remember… and Max even wants to stick around afterward.

Starting a romance won’t be easy. Hugh can’t help but feel his age compared to the much younger Max, even though Max makes Hugh feel rejuvenated. Max is dealing with daily doses of abuse from his alcoholic father, but Hugh can offer support from his own life experience. If they can help each other, it just might be enough to make a life together work. 

Likes:

• The focus on Hugh’s worries about getting older and dating a younger man.
• Hugh and Max as characters and together.
• Both men grew as people.
• The gym brought the men together but wasn’t a big part of the story.
• Short.

Dislikes:

• The first sex scene had awkward phrasing.
• Max’s dad and friend Lila.
• Max and his life aren’t explained well.
• Important character info was left until halfway through the book.
• Some of the decisions the characters made.
• Some pet peeves.

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I’ll be honest – I thought Max was a hooker at first. The story starts on Hugh’s forty-forth birthday. With the way Max immediately begins to flirt with him completely out of the blue, I thought Hugh’s friends had set up some sort of sexy birthday surprise with Max as the gift. I was wrong, but that wasn’t the only time I felt like there was a lack of clear communication about what exactly was going on in the story. Other instances included Max’s age, which wasn’t revealed until halfway through the book, and the reason behind Hugh’s lack of past relationships, which didn’t come up until the 62% mark.

I liked the focus on how the almost twenty year age gap bothered Hugh. It allowed Hugh to learn to trust both his feelings for Max and Max’s feeling for him. The addition of Max’s abusive father, and how Hugh helped Max get away from the toxic relationship, was Max’s form of growth. Both of which I enjoyed.

I do think the shorter novella format worked well for this story. The instant lust, and jumping into bed, started the relationship off with a spark that never went away. Not much time passed during the story, unlike the others in the series, but I didn’t mind that. Both men felt like they were ready to stop having one night stands and get into a real relationship.

Unfortunately, there were things about the men and their lives that weren’t explained well. Leaving aside how I didn’t know how old Max was for the first half of the book, except that he was young, it was never explained why he was working as a waiter when he’d gone to college. Also, his reasoning for staying with an emotionally abusive alcoholic father who took his money was weak.

New info about the men is continually sprinkled through the book, but most of it had never even been hinted at before and it felt like it came out of left field. I never even thought there was a reason behind Hugh’s lack of past relationships until it came up. And Max liking the orchestra felt really random.

Two tiny pet peeves really stuck out at me as I was reading his book. It’s the second time in the series that a man who was being emotionally honest, aka vulnerable, says they’re acting like a girl. Because real men don’t have feelings or insecurities, I guess. The second was Hugh showing Max how to do pushups and sit-ups. It wasn’t even like he was correcting Max’s form. At the 43%, Hugh “led them back to the mats and showed Max how to do a basic crunch.” I get that Max was physically small, but who doesn’t know how to do a crunch? Gym class is mandatory in the US. Just…ugh.

Overall, I liked the character arcs in this story better than some of the previous books, but the execution was lacking. I think time should have been spent at the beginning developing the characters rather than having them jump straight into bed.