Review: Conversation Hearts by Avon Gale

It’s Valentine’s Day, and grad student—and male escort—Levi Barron expects to spend his evening with a client who’s paying him for his services in bed… not an assassin who needs to borrow the view from his hotel room in the morning.

With nothing to do but endure the company of his unwanted guest, Levi and the assassin, Sinjin, spend some time bonding over HGTV, minibar beverages, Flannery O’Connor short stories, terrible Valentine’s candy, and the necessity of lying about their jobs.

Their evening takes an unexpected turn when they decide to indulge in their mutual attraction, and in the morning Levi doesn’t know if he’s spent the night with a hired killer or a hydraulic engineer with a very specific fantasy. Either way, the two have enough chemistry—in and out of bed—that Levi isn’t sure one night with Sinjin will be enough.

And a message left in candy suggests the feeling is mutual.

Know what's better than a Fresca? Oh wait, everything.  

A web of LIES!

I took the wind out of my own opening. Damn.

The blurb says it all but what the blurb does not include is the hotness of a bossy top and assassin who takes the lemon of finding an unexpected rent boy in his designated hotel room to pound the hell out of it into lemonade. 

He gripped the edges of the blankets in his fingers and held on while Sinjin rode him hard, as hard as Levi wanted, hard like he could never quite manage to convince anyone to give it to him.

PRAISE JEEZUS!

The minifridge picnic and associated banter are just part of what I've come to expect from this author and what makes this short such an enjoyable little diversion.

For the most part...  

The whole "hating the Red Sox" bit was, I feel, a bit heavy handed not to mention harsh, thus I've mobilized all of RSN to come to your house, Avon, for an intervention. We briefly discussed other options but ruled them out since "educating" fictional characters proved to be a problematic sell. However, in the sequel I expect Levi to have seen the error of his ways. 

In all seriousness, this story is fun and hot and I loved the ambiguity we're left with regarding Sinjin. I got a kick out of the whole "Ironic" Alanis Morissette schtick and the other pop culture and literature references.

For only thirty some pages it packs a punch and is definitely worth a read.

An ARC was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Find out more on Goodreads or Dreamspinner Press.