If I was judging this completely on characterization and the major sex scene, I'd give it five stars. I was ready to give it four up until then, despite two stylistic things I REALLY hate in this book: 1) Excessive repetition of certain descriptions (He has scarab eyes! We get it.) that diminishes the originality and freshness of them, and 2) Several labels for one thing in a scene that gets confusing. It's similar to when someone has several epithets for a character. It kept pulling me out of the story. Like calling Alek "Shaved-Headovitch," "Mr. Clean goes to Moscow," "the Russian," etc. in the same few paragraphs. Stop trying to be clever and sacrificing clarity in the process. I was able to look past these two things because I loved the premise so much, and the well-developed main characters and relationship between them. I could not read this book fast enough up until said major sex scene because I was just dying to know what they would be like in bed with all their history. The porn shoots were also pretty interesting for this reason; the reader is wondering, how the hell is THIS going to play out? It was great. Plus Griff and Dante are just super likable. Especially Dante with all his charm and well-placed little details that show it's really not him. Like (view spoiler)[that scene in the bar when Dante fingers the girl with an empty look in his eyes, just trying to get it over with so he can spend time with Griff. (hide spoiler)] It was obvious that Suede really loves these characters, and he's not afraid to play with language, which was fun to read most of the time. I also ADORED the major sex scene. Best sex scene I have ever read in any book ever in my life. So hot, so romantic, such good dirty talk. Top notch. This book was worth it just for that. 
 Why three starts instead of four? The ending. The plotting in the last third. I mean, Suede totally dropped the ball here, or possibly Dreamspinner dropped the ball because nobody content edited this or gave him any pointers here. For one, the bullshit misunderstanding between Griff and Dante that barely satisfied the whole "breakup/black moment" part of the classic romance plot was obvious. I was just like, Griff is an idiot. They could have solved that just by talking. I would have passed over that and not been too unhappy if not for my second problem with the plot: I have never wanted a book to end so badly. After said major sex scene, and the sequel scenes afterward in which (view spoiler)[Griff and Dante decide to be together (hide spoiler)], the book was over. IT WAS OVER. All the major conflicts were done. In my opinion, Suede should have done a short epilogue, which could have taken the place of the last few chapters. We didn't need the (view spoiler)[three-day HotHead photoshoot (hide spoiler)] to be completely detailed out, nor did we need this for the (view spoiler)[Thanksgiving and gay bar scenes (hide spoiler)]. Some things should be SUMMARIZED and not detailed in a very long scene. I'm actually shocked this is going to have a sequel, because almost everything was tied up to an excessive degree. 
 I'll probably check out other books by Damon Suede, but I'll be discerning and try to get them when they're cheap. I'm an author myself, so I'm not just looking for a free or cheap book, but quality is important to me if the eBook is more expensive than $4.99. I'm not a fan of long books in general, and if it's something shorter from him, I'll be more apt to check it out, hoping some of these negative things won't have room to bother me as much. 
 TLDR; Suede is great at description, characterization, building suspense, and sex scenes, but he needs to learn how to self-edit and scale back wordiness and unnecessary scenes. Maybe also ditch Dreamspinner because if this was indie published I would have been way less hard on it. A publisher that charges so much for books (though I did get this on sale) should provide top-notch editing, and it's clear that this did not happen here.