Swipe Stories from Plenty, California
MM Romance
Dreamspinner Press
December 31, 2019
226
As one of the top trauma surgeons in Plenty’s ER, Dr. Taggart Hayes knows how to fix broken things—fractured legs, ruptured spleens, allergies, and traumatic brain injuries. He can put them back together good as new.
A broken heart, though? That’s a bit trickier. Especially when it’s his own.
When Tag swipes on the photo of the hot man in the dating app, he just wants a distraction from the wreck that used to be his life. A one-night stand with a safely inappropriate stranger, no names, no feelings, and no complications.
But the headless photo on the app belongs to a man who isn’t so easy to forget the next day... or the next week. And it becomes increasingly clear that Bass is neither safe nor uncomplicated. Drawn into the dark, criminal underworld his lover inhabits, Tag has to decide if the cure for his broken heart is worse than the disease.
Menage ReviewReviewed by Melissa Brus
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Swipe – T. A. Moore
She Said – Melissa Brus/ She Said – Gloria Lakritz/ He Said – Ulysses Dietz
She Said
Reviewed by Melissa Brus
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
This book is more than Plenty. Fans of TA Moore will know that Plenty, California is the home to some of our favorite characters. There is even a cameo of one of my personal favorites (even if she is not named).
This book is a superb start to a new series. It is gritty, it is sexy as hell, it is fun, and it is jam packed with action and surprises. Tag and Bass have the hottest chemistry I have seen on page in a while. I love that their one- night-stand, no strings, no attachments plan gets all blown to heck. We all have those decisions that we know are not the smartest, but do anyway.
Watching these two fight through their circumstances to keep finding each other is fascinating. Moore leaves enough unknown and adds interesting side characters to make the reader want the next book in the series now. Plenty, California and the readers better hang on because TA Moore is gonna make this an interesting adventure to say the least.
She Said
Reviewed by Gloria Lakritz Review Chair and Sr Reviewer
Happy Birthday to me…Thank you Ms. Moore for your newest release on my birthday!!!
I have been loving your Bone Series which happened to find us in Plenty, California. I guess you did like the area as well, being from over the pond. Hopefully we can now see we might have more stories from that town.
The Bone series gave us Cloister Witte working for the San Diego police department with his K-9 Bourneville. His work and his new ‘friend’ Special Agent Javi Merlo make quite a team. We sorta had hints of them in this story as well as officer Tancredi.
The swipe to the right hook up was supposed to be a One and Done for both these men.
Ahh fate…….
Tag is an ER Surgeon……Recently been cheated on by his 5 year long partner. Tag is at a Hospital event all dressed in his tuxedo when his ex enters with a new man on his arm. Tag leaves and swipes right, having the taxi take him to a terribly trashy part of town.
Bas opens his front door and is stunned at the beautiful man standing there. It is definitely lust at first sight, between the doctor and the biker
I love Ms. Moore’s crisp writing. I also love her stories. It is never a waste of my time to get and read her work….It is a pleasure…No spoilers here….Just 5 stars and happy reading.
He Said
Reviewed by Ulysses Dietz, Member of The Paranormal Guild Review Team
My second book by the UK-based TA Moore, Swipe demonstrates all the sharp writing skills and careful plot construction that I hoped for. The set-up is just what the m/m world expects: a hot one-night stand between a young ER doctor, Taggart Hayes (Tag) and a bad boy with a motorcycle, Nico Sebastiani (Bass). What follows, of course, is a series of complications and plot reveals that actually surprised me, along with letting me see into the main characters’ psyches. The reader expects Tag to be complicated (although, oddly, I was sorry not to get more of his deep back-story, other than the one event that leaves him physically scarred). Bass, a short crude nickname that masks a rather beautiful full name (as well as a beautiful person), is the surprise, and Moore leads the reader on with great skill in regard to this character.
Both men begin with every intention of keeping the other distant from their day-to-day life, even as circumstances converge to make that more and more difficult. Both men have good, vividly painted reasons to shy away from any sort of emotional intimacy; but that is the nature of romance fiction. The best laid plans, etc., etc. Both Tag and Bass see each other as stereotypes, and only with time begin to understand what lies beneath the surface.
If I have a quibble, I’d say that the scenes of physical intimacy, while very well written, are too copious at the beginning of the book for my taste. Even though the premise of the book is based on a triggering sexual one-off, it’s lengthy play-out up front is a distraction. This will forever be the Achilles heel of the m/m genre, I feel. As an elder gay man, I’m really over wanting extended sex scenes in my romantic fiction. This should be a spice in a novel, not a sauce that covers everything. This book’s story line is so engaging and exciting that even the best-written physical encounters end up seeming (to me, and maybe only to me) like speed bumps that interrupt my appreciation of the flow of the narrative.
Although Moore seems to be using the fictional town of Plenty, California, as a setting for stand-alone novels, I could imagine seeing Tag and Bass again. These are three-dimensional men who don’t have to beat each other up to express emotion. They are not simply macho fantasies. The mayhem that spatters their lives is part of their jobs, not part of their personalities. That detail alone made this book particularly enjoyable for me.
