Quickie Review: Losing my Josh Lanyon virginity with Adrien English Books 1 & 2

This book falls into my M/M Reading Challenge.

I have heard so much about the Adrien English series I thought I knew what it was all about but these books were not what I expected at all. I guess I didn't expect the stories to focus mainly on the mystery and not so much on Adrien's love life. Don't get me wrong, there was a bit of the sexin' going on, but it wasn't the focus of the stories. I liked them.

Adrien English is an independent bookstore owner who also happens to be gay. He's got a bad heart as the result of a childhood illness, and because of it has a tendancy to pass out when he's excited, surprised, or anxious. He had a bad breakup with a significant other, but apparently that's been over for a while and hasn't had anyone special in his life for a while. The first book, Fatal Shadows, focused on a serial killer. As the book opens, he learns his employee/high-school friend has been murdered. Of course he ends up a suspect, and things aren't looking good when someone else he knows turns up dead. Poor Adrien stumbles around getting more and more involved in the case, and as the clues come together he realizes his life is in danger.

The second book, A Dangerous Thing, has Adrien involved with one of the officers, Jake Riordan, who worked on the case in the first book. Apparently things aren't going well and Adrien spontaneously decides to take a short vacation at the ranch his grandmother left him when she died many years ago. The first thing he runs into, almost literally, is a dead body! He calls the local Sheriff, and when they go back to investigate the body is gone. There's a missing caretaker, a huge field of pot plants, an anthropology group digging on his land with forged approval documents, and to top it all off Riordan shows up! After several attempts on his life and a refusal by the local law to accept Adrien's insistence that his life is in danger, he and Riordan work together (using that term loosely) to solve the mystery. This one kept me guessing until the very end, and I also think I like the turn Adrien and Riordan's romance seems to be taking. (IF Riordan can get over some self-identity issues he needs to address). *

Completely off topic - I don't know why but I keep imagining Adrien as a wiry older guy, (maybe like Hugh Laurie), even though I think he's supposed to be about 32? Riordan I think I'm imagining right, but for some reason my brain refuses to picture Adrien as a younger guy. Oh - and I'm never going to look at a bottle of suntan lotion the same way ever again!

Anyhoo, I thought Fatal Shadows was pretty good, and A Dangerous Thing was great, so I give this compilation 4 stars.

*(Finished book 3, The Hell You Say) this weekend - definitely do NOT like the turn their romance is taking!!!)