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Review: Sweet Summer Sweat by Clare London

When you find a place where lust and sex rule life, and your every desire can be fulfilled, why would you ever want to leave?

Young runaway Scot and his boyfriend Jerry escape their deadbeat homes and families, hoping to leave prejudice behind them and travel to a new life in Las Vegas. Unprepared and naive, they're lost almost at once, and shelter at a run-down, deserted motel in the middle of the scorching hot Nevada desert. A place with secrets, run by staff both gorgeous and uninhibited, and driven by a mysterious sexual connection Scot’s never even dared to dream.

All but drugged by the lazy heat and the hedonism around him, Scot watches as Jerry is seduced away and realizes their relationship was nothing more than shared lust. Restless, Scot knows he wants true love and real understanding. Could he find it with the mysterious and elusive owner of the motel, Connor Maxwell? Connor seems to think so, every time he appears and pursues Scot for his own. But where does Connor come from? It seems the passion calls him into being at its own whim.

Eventually, what binds Connor and his friends to the motel may be too strong for Scot to break through. Scot has ambitions to travel, to make something of his life – but is his only option to embrace life at the motel in his true lover’s arms?

Or will that love be strong enough to release them both …


I have a confession. You see, I do this thing where I skim a blurb and get all excited about reading a book. Then time passes and I actually read the book and forget what it’s about so I have to go back and read the blurb. I totally did this with Sweet Summer Sweat and goodness. I was all kinds of lost but then it clicked… this is fantasy/paranormal and not real life at all. Once I wrapped my head around that fact, I slid into this book like a warm glove. Mmm Hmm.
Scot and Jerry are escaping their lives. We are told from the beginning they basically left with what little they had and are trekking across the desert to a new life in Las Vegas,  When they are both hot, exhausted and hungry, the see a building in the dark of night and decide it’s a good place to rest. Little did they know, resting would not be only one thing the young men would do.
He wondered why he’d never considered their vulnerability out here—no other people or habitation for miles, no idea of who or what might be living here. And he and his companion, just walking in with their life’s dreams and belongings, expecting welcome and civilization, and 21st century services…
Things begin to change and become blurry once Scot and Jerry enter a motel, the only place they seem to find to stay the night. Scot and Jerry are so lost once they pass through the doors of Maxwell’s. Scot has always seen Jerry as the stronger man between them. He looks to him to make decisions for them both and trusts him but with the new voices he hears once in the walls of the motel,  the new things he feels and how he sees Jerry react, Scot doesn’t know who to trust. He doesn’t even know if he can trust himself yet the boys who fled for a better life, still turn to one another.
Man, this book! This review is gonna be all over the place because my brain is broken from the story.
This book was really interesting and then kinda confusing but what it really was? HOT AF! I can’t lie. The air within the Maxwell hotel is definitively turned up to 11 with sexuality. Goodness. Between Scot and Jerry, Jerry and Vincent, Oliver and Scot and the mysterious voice in Scots head that took its sweet time to appear. The dry humping of desks may have happened while I read. I had major moments of WTAF is going on but then sex would happen or Psychokinetic sex would try to happen and it was hot and my lizard brain got comfortable.

*shrugs* 

Did I mention the sex? Now, there is a lot of sex in this book but there is also a lot of sensuality. London creates this thick air of want and need at the primal level and weaves it with profound intimacy. It’s there and it’s pretty amazing the way she works them together. It’s almost an afterthought when I think about it but sex is like that; you get lost in the moment of pure pleasure, and the drive for release that deeper thoughts get pushed to the background and it’s in the afterglow that you reflect on what you felt. Does that even make sense? I hope so.

“You can hear me, all the time, can’t you? I never found anyone like that. All this time, waiting, thinking it was just me, I was—”
Connor Maxwell is something else, literally but what he might be is the real question. This book… I really don’t know how to describe it. Wait I do. This is a total cross between The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Shinning, a popular song written by Don Henley and Glenn Fry and every cheesy gay porn film from the mid 80's and it's fantastic. I couldn’t stop reading if I wanted to and I honestly didn’t want to. How could I when I finally had the chance to meet Connor and with four other hot and horny men locked into a motel with no internet and no access except to one another.

Yup. I was reading. And then I was getting lost, but I kept reading.

The first half of the book was really interesting and had me on the edge of my seat wondering who the voice in Scot’s head was and then it stalled with all the “You know you want to” and “NO! I don’t! But maybe I do?” with Scot and Connor. There was an odd mix of subconscious dub con going on in this story and I am not sure it was intended. But, I was unsure if I liked where the story was going with Jerry and man, there was even more sex to be read. Again, the sex is ridiculously hot but the story began to drag for me and I was ready for the end.

So. Yeah, so this was different but if you remember it’s fantasy/paranormal and that there is a lot of sex to tell the story, you’ll be fine. Maybe? 





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