| Genre | Gay / Contemporary / Escorts/Porn Stars/Strippers / Military/Former Military / Romance / Action/Adventure / Mystery/Suspense/Thriller |
| Reviewed by | Christy Duke on 02-August-2023 |
When Jason Constance rescued a busload of kidnapped children, he didn’t expect a parade. He didn’t expect to be hunted by mobsters and the military either. Wounded and half out of his mind, Jason finds himself at the tender mercies of an angel-faced nurse named Cotton.
Cotton has just flunked out of porn, and as far as he can tell, he’s flunking life too. Having an injured colonel in his bed seems par for the course, but he’s too busy keeping Jason alive to question how fate brought him there.
But fate isn’t done with them. When they go on the run from the mobsters who shot Jason, there should be no time to fall in love, but neither man seems suited for an average life—or relationship. Jason and Cotton can probably survive homicidal mobsters and rogue military operations. The question is, can they survive the work they’ll have to do to forge a place just for them?
A man, a lonely man, disillusioned by life and his part in it, and a young man trying to figure out who he is amongst a lifetime of pain, make up this second novel in Amy Lane’s ‘The Flophouse’ series. Jason and Cotton shouldn’t work, to be honest. At least at first glance. Jason is a Marine Corps colonel who leads a group of covert agents against the worst that is out there. Cotton is a retired porn model trying to figure out who he is and what he wants out of life. And yet, together, these two broken men find depths of strength neither even knew they possessed.
“Jason hadn’t had the nerve to ask where exactly he’d been taken to recover, but he was really close to having a heart-to-heart with God and inquiring pointedly to see if the big guy was having him on.
He’d been celibate for ten years and he woke up here? Wherever here was, if it wasn’t a cosmic joke, it should have been.”
Jason is severely injured rescuing a busload of young children on their way to Las Vegas to be sold. He careens into Sacramento at the buttcrack of dawn in a stolen church bus that is all shot to hell being chased by mobsters and members of his own military. He is quickly and quietly taken to the flophouse to be treated by Lance and nursed by the young men living there. The bulk of the work falls on Cotton as he is no longer doing scenes for Johnnies and when Jason finally regains consciousness, he thinks this beautiful man is his angel. Well, Cotton doesn’t feel like much of an angel, more like a useless human being with no value to anyone.
As expected, there is plenty of mystery, intrigue, suspense, bad guys, and a number of familiar faces. It wouldn’t be a book in this series if there wasn’t. But, the main part of this story, the part that sucked me in and had me coming back for more, is the love story between Jason and Cotton. Two broken men, for different reasons, who discover what love really means when you finally find the person who makes you want to live. Not for them, but for yourself.
“He had so much time to get his life together, and after the last couple of weeks of taking care of another human being when he was at his lowest, Cotton thought he might be up to the job of taking care of himself.”
I fell in love with Jason and again with Cotton. Watching them made my heart flutter and I’m pretty sure I was oozing happy pheromones from all of the feel-goods. In fact, this time of the year is hard for me, but reading ‘Constantly Cotton’ reminded me of all the good things in my life. Thank you, Amy. As usual, you hit it out of the ballpark and my review can’t possibly do it justice.
DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been purchased by the reviewer.
| Format | ebook |
| Length | Novel, 269 pages/102907 words |
| Heat Level | |
| Publication Date | 05-April-2022 |
| Price | $6.99 ebook |
| Buy Link | https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/constantly-cotton-by-amy-lane-12092-b |
