Title: Catch Me if You Can
Series: Romano and Albright, #1
Author: LB Gregg
Genre: Contemporary/Romantic Comedy
Length: 128 pages
Publisher: Samhain Publishing (2 March 2010)
Heat Level: Moderate
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥3 Hearts
Blurb: The fear of getting caught is half the fun.
Lowly art gallery assistant Caesar Romano is freely out of the closet. Now he’d just like to get out of his Nana’s guest room. Everything—his reputation and his financial freedom—is riding on the success of tonight’s gallery opening. If only he could shake free of the past so easily.
A mysterious gatecrasher, Dan Green, looks like a promising addition to his pending new life—until Caesar’s ex shows up and suddenly the opening disintegrates into a half-naked dance melee. When the glitter settles, a missing sculpture of Justin Timberlake has Caesar up to his eyebrows in extortion, intrigue and a wild sexual adventure underneath, inside, and on top of a variety of furnishings.
As the cast of suspects pile up, so do the questions. Like who’s really blackmailing whom? And what does a stolen paint-by-numbers clown matter when Dan is so outrageously capable of blowing Caesar’s resistance to smithereens?
This book contains graphic language, sex, lies, intrigue, clowns, kleptomania, anal sex, oral sex, mutual masturbation, bad driving, good cooking, and the missing head of a Justin Timberlake statue. Not for the sour of disposition.
ISBN: 9781605049502
Product Link: https://www.samhainpublishing.com/book/2825/catch-me-if-you-can
Reviewer: Prime
Review: Catch Me If You Can is the first book in LB Gregg’s Romano and Albright series.
While I enjoyed it immensely – this hilarious comedy of errors and the most accident prone person who has the weirdest stuff happen to – there were a few things in the story which bugged me.
All the comedy really comes from Caesar, also known as Ce, and the story is being told from his POV. With all the good intentions he is really trying to make his work at an art gallery work – but things just tend to happen to him.
OK, fair enough, he should have called the cops the in the beginning rather than worry about his boss blowing a gasket for doing just that. However, Caesar is completely adorable (both cute and hot, if that makes sense) and when he meets Dan Albright, ex-detective and now a PI, things heat up in a big, bad way between the guys.
So this is one thing that leaves me confused, I was fully invested into Caesar and his never-ending histrionics. But – and this is big – I just didn’t and couldn’t become fully invested into Dan as a main character. Despite being Caesar’s love interest (there could have been more chemistry between them), Dan felt like he was a slightly more important minor character.
The annoying part is that Dan is a fantastic character, it was just that he was used to interpret Caesar’s melodrama to make the story more coherent (though it is easy to follow regardless of melodrama).
Another thing to add, only because I was reading this book soon after listening to a Cracked podcast which discussed this very thing, I became very aware to reaction the other character had with one of the transgender minor characters.
As I heard on the podcast, it felt like the reaction the group of cops had in Ace Venture: Pet Detective had when Ace revealed one of the villains as trans. Speaking about it with a friend, she was deeply offended, but I won’t go into the lengthy explanation she gave me.
Beyond those flaws, in my view, this is funny and zany and convoluted in a pretty pleasing way. It is easy to get lost in the histrionics and melodrama, which for a while allowed me to over look anything that annoyed me in the plot. It’s a fun ride and I’m interested to see what happens next.
* I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through http://mmgoodbookreviews.wordpress.com *