True story: About a year ago I got a manuscript back from my editor with the following note: 
 "Cut out the New York shit, no one cares about New York." 
 Naturally as a native New Yorker I was INCENSED by this suggestion. What do you mean no one cares about New York? NEW YORK IS THE GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD!!!! But I did, nevertheless, cut out most of the pointless digressions into the strange and wonderful nature of NYC so that the story focused more on the actual plot. 
 After finishing Hot Head I really want to send that editor a fruit basket. 
 Damon Suede spends the first 100 pages of this book shamelessly name dropping NYC. Everything is blah blah blah Gowanus blah blah blah NYU blah blah blah Red Hook. I assume he does this to make the story seem more authentically New York, but since none of these places are given anything more than a random shout-out it has the exact opposite effect. More to the point, none of these places have anything to do with either the plot or the setting of the story, so rather than making the prose richer and more engaging they drag the story down. 
 The problem with dropping random NYC facts every other paragraph or so is that there are basically two types of people who are going to read it: 
 1) People who have at one time or another lived in New York City and who will invariably disagree with whatever you say (no matter what you've said) 
 2) People who know nothing about New York City and do not care about these places to begin with. 
 So it's a lose-lose. Unless you can connect it to the story all you're doing is just wasting everyone's time. Damon Suede spends an awful lot of pages wasting your time ... not just by showing off how thoroughly he's memorized Time Out NY, but by making you wade through Griff and Dante's entire-life-story-up-to-this-point before actually getting to a plot. 
 There are two info-dumpy background-story arcs that clog up the first third of this book. First you have to read an entire recap of how Griff's was unofficially adopted by Dante's family. You don't get to see it, you don't get to experience it or slowly savor it through charmingly interwoven flashbacks. You have to trudge through pages of being told how it all happened. Then you have to go through the same process with 9/11. Pages of being told what happened so that we understand the great love Griff has for Dante. 
 To Suede's credit, it isn't poorly written but like the shameless NYC name dropping it doesn't really have a point and doesn't actually add much to the story. The significant bits of the Griff-is-like-my-brother could have been handled in two sentences. If it's really that important a flashback or two would have been nice. The 9/11 stuff would have been much better if it was revealed slowly through-out the book (view spoiler)[especially if juxtaposed with the scenes where Dante almost dies again (hide spoiler)]. Whatever, making readers wade through 'and then this happened, and then later this happened and then...' was a bad call. It made the beginning of this book drag like a dog's ass across a white carpet. 
 I'll be honest here: I would not have finished this book except that I wanted to write a review and I wanted to give it a fair shake. I skimmed A LOT. I didn't care for this book, but I'm in the minority on that so read this as a dissenting opinion I guess :) 
 Let's start with the good stuff: 
 -When that name dropping nonsense is applied to things-actually-relevant you get wonderful, clever, richly descriptive prose. This book is getting three stars because Damon Suede is a damn good writer, the rest is just classic Dreamspinner not reigning in their writers. 
 Writers need editors 
 . We need the freedom to go off on whims and write 37 pages on some pointless digression no one cares about because from those digressions comes the good stuff, but only if you have an editor willing to beat the crap out of you, shovel all the nonsense off the sidewalk and pick out the gems. I swear, I feel like every time I pick up a Dreamspinner book and come away thinking "was the editor ASLEEP?" What I'm trying to say is that the talent is CLEARLY THERE, don't take my critique here as a mark against Suede's ability. This book was not poorly written, just poorly executed. 
 -The dialogue in this book is AMAZING. Clever, snappy, sexy. Had me laughing out loud. A+ 
 -This is a very manly story in a sea of m/m romances written for women by women often starring men who might as well be women. The fact that Griff and Dante are very clearly MEN and their perspectives on both sex and their bodies drips with masculinity is refreshing and a welcome change of pace. Plus sexy. So sexy~ 
 So why didn't I love this book? Or even like it? 
 I never really connected with Griff and Dante as a couple. They are likable characters but the gay-for-pay element overpowers their relationship. You spend a lot of time being told about all about of their lives and histories and being told what the significance of each event is but you never get to feel it. When they finally got together I found myself saying "oh.... um, okay" instead of jumping for joy because the only thing I had seen of these two was Griff pining and Dante nagging him about doing porn. 
 Okay nagging really isn't the right word. What Dante does in this book is part seduction part badgering. He knows all of Griff's perfectly reasonable and understandable concerns about being a porn star, he knows Griff is not comfortable being sexual with him ... the firehouse scene where they make out was very hot and all but it's dampened by the fact that either Dante knows how Griff feels and he's taking advantage of those feelings for cash (asshole) or he doesn't know and he's .... what? Pushing someone 'like a brother to him' into something he doesn't want to do and might follow him around for the rest of his life? (bigger asshole) 
 Then when they do get together there's a strange personality switch that distracts from the very nicely written sex scene. (view spoiler)[Dante who was only 'half-hard' during their porn session has apparently wanted Griff all this time. He's been masturbating to him regularly. Umm... what? Where is this coming from? Meanwhile Griffin is suddenly talking dirty and telling Dante that he's his-- huh? I get what the author was trying for. Griffin's a big guy and like most big guys he's grown up sensitive about his size and strength. Obviously this sex scene is supposed to be Griff letting go of his inhibitions and that would be charming if we had seen any inhibitions in the first place. There's one off hand reference to Griff being afraid of hurting his ex-wife when they were having sex, but other than that you never see any of those desires in Griff. This goes back to the book constantly telling us stuff instead of giving us scenes in which we can experience the character's feelings and interpret for ourselves. Without feeling the tension of Griff constantly repressing more than his lust for his best friend, you're wondering if Griff got a brain transplant when he suddenly wants to dominate, claim and pound away. (hide spoiler)] 
 Finally the ending drags on and on forever as every loose end needs at least 10-15 pages of conversation to tie up (blah) 
 But I think what bothered me most of all was the suggestion that Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn is basically like living in Iran and how this notion was used to drive the plot forward. Griffin keeps repeating this idea that if people find out about the porn their lives will be in danger. Angry gay-bashing mobs will hunt down him and his beloved! Ummm... what? I'm not saying NYC doesn't have hate-crimes against gays and lesbians, because we do (view spoiler)[and frankly the incident described in this book feels like it was ripped directly from the Luquer Street Boys case (hide spoiler)] but Carroll Gardens has a thriving little gay night life scene complete with its own pizzeria ... so ... yeah having Griff freaking out about THEIR JOBS would have made sense, but the OMG OUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER got the biggest eyeroll imaginable from me.