Title: Cruce De Caminos
Series: A Rent Boy Tale (Riptide Rentboys: The 2012 Collection)
Author: Heidi Belleau & Violetta Vane
Genre: Horror, Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Length: Short (51pgs)
Publisher: Riptide Publishing (21st May 2011)
Heat Level: Moderate
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥3Hearts
Reviewer: Pixie
Blurb: Addiction drives Sean O’Hara to a critical crossroads. Will he make the right decision, or will the floodwaters bound for New Orleans sweep him away?
Street kid Sean O’Hara never had it easy, but New Orleans has driven him to his knees. His girlfriend’s broken up with him for a sugar daddy, a gun-toting pimp has robbed him of everything but the clothes on his back, and he’s down to his last two OxyContin. Sean’s no seasoned streetwalker, but he’s not above it either, not when he’s already itching for his next fix.
A familiar-seeming stranger named Ángel may be his ticket to some quick cash, but only if Sean’s willing to help him indulge a high-class john’s weird fetish for the night. As Ángel tells him, in this city and this business, you have to get a little weird to survive.
When night falls on the French Quarter, Sean realizes Ángel and the john want more from him than he was expecting to give. What once seemed merely strange soon crosses the line into supernatural and sinister. And Ángel, the man Sean had viewed as a partner and protector, might also be his otherworldly judge and executioner.
Purchase Link: http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/cruce-de-caminos
Author note: “Cruce de Caminos” is erotic horror, not romance, and contains an HFN only by the furthest stretch of the imagination. However, it’s also a prequel to The Druid Stone, coming from Carina in August, which is very much a romance.
Review: Sean is basically living on the streets with his girlfriend and any money they get usually goes towards drugs, food and a bed for the night… in that order. But, then his girl goes off with a sugar daddy and Sean ends up turning tricks for some cash when he loses his belongings. Just when he is beginning to get desperate, Ángel turns up and makes him an offer.
I found this one to be a bit smoky/misty around the edges. As though, you can tell right from the start that this story is going to be different and will have a quality about it that is slightly mystical. Sean comes across as only seeming to do certain things to keep his girl happy. When he meets Ángel, he is given options to maybe turn his life around. But, Sean seems to be on a destruction course, but finally he begins to recognize the signs of his impending doom.
I have to say that I found one or two aspects of this book to be disturbing. Like how Sean was drugged and then he can’t remember anything the next day and then later his girl finds flecks of wax on him… yeah strange. Ángel does pop up a few times seeming to steer Sean, or rather trying to steer Sean in the right direction, but it takes Sean facing his mortality before he takes the first steps.
This isn’t a romance, although there is some m/m aspects in it and some m/m foreplay, there is no sex. This story is actually a prologue for another story for Sean. So, we just get the bit where events change is life and he decides to get clean and do something with his life and obviously it has to do with Ángel and his mystical qualities.
So, I would recommend this to those who like horror, urban fantasy, mystical, the breaking point in a young man’s life and the promise of more in the future.