Rating: 2.5 Stars

Publisher: Leslie McAdam

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Emotional, Psychological, Sexual, and Physical abuse, Romance, Series, Suicidal Ideation – See warnings below.

Length: 378 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

Picking up your favorite adult film star at a bar in Vegas is a bad idea—especially when you wake up the next morning married to him. Ask me how I know.

Before I met Velvet the Cowboy, the public knew me as an innocuous guy who was running for office.

Now I’ve gone from boring to notorious in twenty-four hours.

The hot stranger’s ring on my finger puts a damper on my political ambitions, since his day job isn’t voter-friendly. An annulment is a no-go, and a quickie divorce would make me look unreliable.

In any case, when I find out Velvet’s dark plans, I know I can’t let him out of my sight. Which means I’m taking a gorgeous, 6’6”, slow-talking cowboy home with me to protect him from himself.

Being with him might light my career on fire. I’m just not expecting it to do the same to my heart.

Notorious is a stand-alone contemporary romance about Johnny Haskell, a cowboy turned adult star who stops to pet every good dog (and they’re all good dogs), and Kurt Delmont, a senatorial candidate who wants to save the world. It features recovery from a mental health crisis, healing from old wounds, and love that takes these two by surprise. This book contains sensitive themes; a detailed description of the contents is in the author’s note in the book preview. Happily ever after guaranteed.

Review –

Take note of trigger warnings if you’re interested in reading this book. They can be found just inside the preview on Amazon in the author’s note. This contains graphic violence, suicide ideation, graphic descriptions of sexual assault, as well as several other things that might trigger some readers. This is not light reading like the other books! If in doubt, please don’t read this book.

Also note that the author used her own mental health journey to tell Johnny’s story. I have nothing but respect for her coming out on the other side, and being able write what I know was a difficult book based on what she went through. Nothing I say in my review minimalizes her experiences, nor does it minimalize those struggling with mental health issues.

With that being said, I have to say something before I get into my other thoughts about the book. I apologize in advance for my rant, and for the length of this review.

The word Y’ALL is plural. It means YOU ALL, not YOU. If you use it correctly in a sentence, you’re referring to more than one person. If you use it speaking to one person in place of the word YOU, you are using it incorrectly.

One of many examples: “What are y’all going to do with my gun?” He was speaking only to Kurt. Again, y’all means you all. It does not mean you.

One of my biggest pet peeves is southern speak in books, as most of our followers know. It’s been on every bio I’ve ever had as a reviewer.

For the record, had I known this was full of the southern talk, I’d never have started the series. By the time I got to this one, it was too late because I’d already read the others.

As a southern girl from lower Alabama, it irks the hell out of me. Some authors get it right. Others, like in Notorious, are horribly wrong and in some ways offensive. Johnny may as well have been described as stupid and uneducated, simply because of the way he spoke. The classic southern stereotype. No, we do NOT say shucks, or havta, yes’m, yessir, or any of the other silly words used in this book. His sister was even named May Ella. Not Ellie May, but close. Can we be more stereotypical?

The author states very clearly in all of her books that I’ve read so far – which is all the 6 books in this series, plus the short story in between – that the reader should leave reality at the door. And you really have to while reading the books, and I have. No problem at all there. But this is different. Surprisingly, not all southerners – even if they worked on a ranch or didn’t finish high school – are ignorant.

I wish authors would quit going by what they see on TV and in movies and at least attempt to get it right. It’s not cute. It’s not funny. It just makes us look stupid.

I guess I should be thankful there were no incorrect ‘bless your hearts’ thrown out. That one would’ve probably had me DNFing, something I almost did anyway. I didn’t because I wanted to finish out the series.

Rant over. For now.

Johnny – aka Velvet the Cowboy – is a popular porn star. I’ve seen him several times in the books leading up to this one.

Kurt was introduced in the first book, Ambiguous, as Sam’s fake boyfriend. They pretended for political reasons. This, of course, ended when Julian Hill came into the picture, and now he and Sam are a couple.

Kurt is running for the senate, and the numbers aren’t looking too great. He’s in Vegas for a fundraising event when he ends up in a nice bar sitting next to none other than his favorite porn star, Velvet the Cowboy, whose real name is Johnny. They start drinking and end up leaving together, going to Fremont Street, and drinking more… and more… and more. Everywhere they go, they drink, and there are a lot of places to do it on Fremont Street, one of my favorite places in Vegas. It’s one big party.

After way too much alcohol, Kurt and Johnny end up in front of an officiant in a cheesy wedding chapel getting married. The book starts with them waking up next to each other, not knowing what had happened the night before. Only this isn’t your typical ‘woke up married in Vegas’ story, Far from it.

Before meeting Kurt the night before, Johnny had just received a lifetime achievement award for his work in porn. He’d also just surprised everybody by saying he was retiring. Not that he’d been working for months anyway, but he was seriously done. I mean that in more ways than one.

Here are where the trigger warnings come in.

Johnny was going to kill himself that night. Everything was planned, including suicide notes, videos scheduled to be posted on social media after, and the pills he planned to take to make it happen. If the pills didn’t work, he had another way. One of the reasons was so his life insurance policy would pay for his mother a kidney transplant. He wouldn’t have to stress his mother’s health so much had the corrupt insurance company not denied the claim. Another reason he was going to end it all was because of something that happened during his last film shoot – something that was in no way consensual. This explains why he’d been in and out of Weston & Ramirez Law Firm in the other books. He was suing for sexual harassment.

Super long story short, Johnny and Kurt decide not to end their quickie marriage. This is in part because Kurt learns of Johnny’s plans, and is determined to prevent it from happening. He’d lost a high school boyfriend to suicide, and he’s felt guilt over it ever since. And anyway, the press has already gotten wind of the marriage between the gay porn star and the senate candidate.

The entire book, mostly, is Johnny battling his issues and getting the mental help he needs, including an in-patient stay. I was glad to see that none of his issues were glossed over, and the help, including extensive therapy, was stressed through it all. It also didn’t have Johnny ‘fixed’ just simply because Kurt was in his life. Kurt was a huge help, but he couldn’t fix it. He was there for the hard times, including during therapy, and later, the trial against the director, but Johnny’s issues didn’t simply go away like they’d never been there.

From the very beginning, even if it could hurt Kurt’s chances of getting elected, there was never any real thought about the two guys ending the marriage. It takes a while to say they love each other, but they both show it on every single page.

There’s kind of a slow burn as far as sex is concerned, as it should be. They play around some, but they hold off on doing more than blowjobs and handjobs. You’d think there would be a ton of sex in this book because of Johnny’s profession, but that’s not the case at all. It’s there, and it’s written well, but it’s not all over the place. It didn’t need to be.

This is a very emotional book, and as I mentioned, the subjects discussed are extremely hard to read. There was next to no ‘happy’ in this book, other than a few sweet moments when Kurt and Johnny realized they loved each other. As glad as I was to see the author not playing down the mental health issues, I do feel that parts went on for way too many pages, which brings me to one of the reasons I’m not rating it higher.

It was simply too long. Every bit of Johnny’s part could’ve been told in a sensitive way without the book being almost 400 pages long.

Another issue I had is Rowan from Ferocious, the 6th book in the series. He’s introduced in this one, and those parts obviously take place after he and Charlie came together. All that was great. What wasn’t so great was that there is a spoiler about Rowan in this book if you’re paying attention. I read Ferocious first, so I was able to learn it on my own. Had I read this one first, I’d likely be a little angry to have had it spoiled for me before their story was told.

I liked Johnny and Kurt together for the most part. They were good for each other, and my opinion of Kurt improved greatly after reading his book. I wasn’t much of a fan in Ambiguous. And I loved seeing all the others from the previous books, expecially Jules and Sam.

I liked the book okay, but the southern speak and other issues I mentioned had me dropping 2 stars in my rating. I’m glad I read it. I just wish the author would’ve done a better job when it came to the way Johnny spoke. If they were slight…  no big deal. I would’ve overlooked it without saying anything. I’ve done that dozens of times over the years. This was literally every time he opened his mouth. Some may not have noticed it, but I guarantee all southerners who have read it have. I did, however, like the endearments because we are all about endearments. Precious, Darlin’, and Babe were sweet. I also felt that, as mentioned above, that Johnny’s on-page issues went on for way too long. I understand the subject matter wasn’t all candy and roses, but it would’ve been nice to see a few more sweet moments between him and Kurt.

I love the cover.

2.5 stars.