Leave aside for the moment that no-one in their right mind would give Mischa this job ( he has no experience and has to Google how to make coffee). He gets a job working as a live-in housekeeper for Donovan Holloway, a 40 year old advertising exec who has just bought a house but is too busy to do anything in it. A trust fund baby, 20 year old Mischa accepts a dare from his 3 older brothers to support himself for one year.

The more I think about it, the grumpier I am. I was still in a m/m mood, so I started on this one – a book I bought a while back but could remember nothing about when I got started. Keeping House by Lee Brazil – D I wasn’t sure what to read next so I went for something short. I’d happily read a full story about them – I know they are married by the time the events of Power Play occur and I know that they don’t live “the lifestyle” 24/7 but I don’t know really how that works (at least for them) and I don’t know how Nicky’s career fits in (in Awakening he said that Devon “let him out” to play occasionally – I thought that meant Nicky doesn’t work much?) and I don’t know how they came to get married. The grades for these 2 stories reflect that I’m a romance reader first and foremost and the emotional depth was a bit lacking for me here. While the stories themselves were interesting and well written, they didn’t satisfy my craving to get to know these two men better. There were, for me, hints of character growth, but only hints. Many of the scenes felt incomplete in that they sometimes stop in the middle of the action. SUBlime – Collected Shorts (Master Class #2) by Rachel Haimowitz – C/C- This is a short (45 pages) collection of even shorter “scenes”. In fact, I felt I knew them better from their scenes in Power Play. Devon is a big time movie star and Dom/sadist but we really learn very little about him. Nicky is a Broadway actor/singer and submissive/masochist who has come from money and feels guilty for things having come so easily to him. But it was really just the beginning of their story and there seemed a lot more to tell.

I found both men fascinating and as with the Power Play books, I liked the writing style. I found myself dissatisfied because I didn’t get to know either character well enough. Unfortunately, the characterisation you can savor in a 290 page book such as either of the Power Play books cannot be found in anywhere the same degree in a novella. I already had SUBlime on my TBR having won it in a blog giveaway a while back but I wanted to start at number 1, so I went and bought Master Class. Master Class by Rachel Haimowitz – C After a smallish cameo by Devon and Nicky in Power Play: Awakening, I was curious to read their story.

Just Like Santa by J.L. Merrow