Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Self-Published 

Genre: Gay Romance  

Tags: Absolutely In Your Face Cheating, Age Gap, Insta Everything, 2 x GFY/Bi Awakening 

Length: 335 Pages  

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon

Blurb:

Two men. One script. And the role that changes their lives.

Liam Hart has it all. He’s Hollywood’s golden boy, with a loving wife and a baby on the way. When he signs on for a risky, intimate role in a gay love story, it feels like just another professional challenge.
Until Jacob Wolfe walks in—brooding, magnetic, and untouchable. A legendary actor with a presence that strips Liam bare.

On screen, their chemistry is electric.
Off screen… it’s something else entirely.

Rehearsals blur the lines. One kiss shatters everything Liam thought he knew—about the role, about Jacob, and about himself. Somewhere between scripted lines and silent looks, something real ignites. Something raw, hungry and impossible to ignore.

OFF SCRIPT is a medium-burn, high-heat MM romance packed with forbidden longing, emotional intensity, and a love story that hits hard, aches deep, and leaves nothing untouched.

Tropes & Themes: Double Bi Awakening ∣ Cheating ∣ Age Gap ∣ Forbidden Love ∣ Co-stars to Lovers ∣ HEA

Content Warning: This story contains explicit themes of cheating and infidelity throughout the plot. Please only continue if this is a trope you are comfortable reading.

Review: 

Sorry—what a useless word. Sorry was for forgotten anniversaries, for snapping in traffic, for spilling wine on a rug. Sorry wasn’t big enough for the kind of betrayal that gutted a marriage.

Just giving another warning for cheating. If it’s a hard limit for you then this book is pretty much going to trigger you. I really don’t like bi awakening (GFY) books and somehow I missed that in the content information. Anyway, missing part of the author’s CW is on me, not the author.    

Jacob Wolfe is forty-three and known for being a controlled, insular man but a professional actor. He has an equally measured and glamorous wife, plus two children. He’s decided to take on something new. A script about a gay couple. It’s not a secondary couple. It’s not subtext gay. It’s the lead roles. Wingspan offers Jacob something unusual. Then there’s Liam Hart, a twenty-five-year-old up and coming actor with an all American boy next door brand, including a sweet wife expecting their first baby. Both men are straight yet both men want to take a risk on something edgy and compelling and raw. Jacob is already contracted based on name alone. So they do a chemistry read to see who fits with him. Liam and Jacob do so well in the CR that the die is cast. What the reality has been about these men, and what the looming truth is, it’s about to get messy.  

The best way I can describe what happens from the read is that this pair go full insta lust after a scripted passionate kiss scene. It’s months between the chemistry read and that scene but they’re both still reliving the kiss and touch. Both still thinking about one another. Things only intensify once filming begins. They have so much freaking chemistry they bypass the sensitivity coordinator’s choreography and go full tongue, moan, full touch, generally making it look like, well, hooking up on a nightclub wall, or on one occasion, in a private bedroom. It’s so hot that someone on set leaks footage to SM. It stirs up a lot of questions. Eventually, when the official trailer is released – also super spicy – it makes both their wives question whether this is acting… or… ? It’s “or” but the men aren’t admitting that. Jacob’s wife has been with him long enough to trust her husband’s word readily. Liam’s wife is a little more rattled.    

Wingspan starts an affair that spans months prior, during, and post shooting of the show. The director knows what’s happening but the film in the can looks hella authentic. She tells Jacob she hopes he knows what he’s doing because the footage is raw, it’s gold, and she’s using it. However, Jacob is so far down the rabbit hole of sex, obsession and possession of Liam he really doesn’t care.  

“You want me to lie and say this is a disaster?” Her tone stayed even. “From where I’m standing, on the show’s side—this is gold.”
His jaw tightened. “Gold?”
“That video is a masterclass in unresolved tension. The way you held him, the way he broke for you? Half the audience probably climaxed in their seats. Everyone wants to see what happens next.”

The author stamped her direction with where she was taking these two men. Jacob was quiet, introspective, while quite definite about self. He also sits on a past of dysfunction. His thoughts did lead me to believe he just might have previously fancied men but sat on it. His wife, Caroline, is a polished woman who looks good on his arm, understands celebrity, and is steady as a rock. Their life is very comfortable, being a sought after actor ensures that. It’s also very clear that while he loves his wife, he isn’t in love with her. So I thought, hmm, maybe we get to see the closeted side of him come on out. See how I missed that part about double bi awakening? Because that isn’t the case. It’s made clear he’s only ever been interested in women. I would have loved the closeted direction but the author had another story in mind. I rolled with it because it was serving unrepentant writing and it was somehow compelling.  

Liam is different to Jacob. He’s gregarious, has an easy charm. Talks to cast and crew readily. He also wears his heart on his sleeve which causes him a lot of angst at times while the two of them are fucking. You know he’s unraveling while filming, also post filming, but not enough to stop. I mean, they actually both have moments where they give it a try, to stay with their respective wives, but they always come back to one another – the book spans approximately a year. Emma is close to giving birth by the time the show wraps up filming, it’s then that Liam tries to put Emma first. Again, it adds more tension to the story. 

 
Both of these guys got into it like they’d been there before. Liam sucked cock and bottomed with minimal hesitation. There are slight mental gymnastics about what they’re doing, both being straight. I mean, they get it on like pros, though. BJs? No problem. Anal? Right on it. 

Jacob’s throat tightened. “You done this before?”
“No.”
“Then why now?”
Liam stepped closer, breath warm against his mouth. “Because you need me, and I don’t think there’s anything with you I won’t like.” 

These two men fell so hard and so fast, god, it must have been one hell of a kiss, because they’re potentially going to burn their personal and professional lives down to the ground. They risk permanently tarnishing their career because Hollywood, as open as it pretends to be, really isn’t. But hey, a tale as old as time was playing out and I was here for it. What the author was selling, I was buying. Gray uses subtle and not so subtle elements to help smack the reader in the face with infidelity. 

Nothing like a well placed moment with a wedding ring. I love unapologetic writing and this book is that. There’s the intense cheating and the feelings of what it’s like to be in that position, including the self-centric nature of it –  I want, I need, I deserve completely overriding empathy 101. The unmitigated possessiveness of Jacob declaring to Liam that ‘you are mine.’ Then there’s the jealousy that comes up over each other’s wives – gurl!!!! And the ‘we never lie to each other, to them, yes, but not us.’  I mean, that’s ballsy writing because a lot of readers hate cheating when it’s far more lowkey than Off Script is. The author was unrepentant about the MCs desires and Liam dealing with a pregnant wife. Being torn but not enough to stop. He wants Jacob. Is inexorably drawn to him, the older, deliberate man. And Jacob? He pulls Liam right in. Is sure about what he wants. When Liam starts having panic about what he’s doing, Jacob helps centre him because the series they’re making, Wingspan, is important, but the magnetic pull and the sex and attraction is even more important. He. Wants. Liam Hart. He. Will. Have. Liam Hart.  

“Jesus—Jacob—”
“You think I can go home and touch her after this?” Jacob snarled, breath hot against Liam’s neck. “Like I don’t think about you every fucking second.” Each thrust drove deeper, harder, until Liam’s breath broke with every single one.

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I came to this book off the back of having just re-listened to one of my all time faves,  When All the World Sleeps. A dark, deeply psychological book. I wanted to stay in a darker zone. This is different but gave me plenty of what I was looking for. The psychological. The obsessive desire. The whole let’s just burn our fucking world down for lust, eventually love. Off Script did not fail me. I said to my blog partner as I read that I felt like I was reading the writing of the love child of my OGs – Cameron Dane and Mercy Celeste. Not quite Celeste’s next-level angst and crazy, but still giving melodrama. Not quite the length of CDs sex scenes, she could write sex for days, but long enough and hot as Hades.   

Overview: 

Honestly? Colour me surprised. This is not only a new-to-me author but a debut novel – double scepticism was unlocked. However, in spite of me not being a ‘bi awakening’ fan, it’s very good reading. Consuming. Go big or go home stuff. I’m so glad I took a chance on this book. It reeled me in and had me well and truly hooked. The tension is off the charts. The heat is smouldering. The emotion is raw. Pining exists. The MCs had to work for it. There is a dual POV throughout but the we also get one POV chapter from both the wives who, I might add, are nice, classy women. Starkly ‘undeserving’ of infidelity. But, that adds another emotive layer. I’m looking forward to more by this author. Congrats on the debut book, Ivy Vera Gray. May you continue to push the boundaries and I hope you go darker. 4.5 Stars!