The Novel Approach

Blood on the Mountain (The Mountains #4) by P.D. Singer

Love will find its way
Through paths where wolves would fear to prey. – Lord Byron

For anyone who’s been following The Mountains Series, you know that Jake Landon’s been facing some intimidating fears about his sexuality and what it would mean to come out to his family and live openly as Kurt Carlson’s partner. That fear was a driving force in this installment of the series and a dominant factor in the decisions Kurt made and the ultimatums he laid down. Add to the relationship anxiety the discovery of something sinister brewing on the mountain, something that very nearly eliminates all of Jake’s issues in one fell swoop, and all that did was spell doom for anything that might’ve resembled a decent night’s sleep for me. I didn’t want to put this one down until I was sure everything was going to work out for me. Or at least for Jake and Kurt.

I really could’ve summed up my feelings about Blood on the Mountain in four words: Best. Mountains. Book. Yet. And that’s saying a lot, because I’ve really loved them all, but this one… This one was adrenaline and anxiety all mixed up in danger and fear; not that adrenaline, anxiety, danger, and fear are an especially unique recipe for Jake and Kurt’s romance—these men know that drill pretty well by now—but this one took their relationship into new and unfamiliar territory; it was a trial by fire and a near death experience and a rising from the ashes, and I thought it was pretty perfect in every way.

And that big secret Jake’s been keeping? Well, it turns out the fear of that secret may have been a far gnarlier beast than the secret itself. Maybe not gnarlier than the bear, though. Did I forget to mention the bear? Yes, there’s a bear.

From a sexy archery challenge to start the book off, to a new beginning at the end, and all the action and romance in between, this one was consummate Jake and Kurt and I wouldn’t hesitate to say this is a must read for fans of this series.

Buy Blood on the Mountain here:

Fire on the Mountain (2nd Edition) by P.D. Singer

Jake Landon believes he’s going to spend the summer after his college graduation fighting wildfires in the Colorado Mountains, partnered with some cantankerous and hygiene-challenged geezer who’ll make Jake forget that he’s at all attracted to men. Fighting fires will eat up a few months, and then some, of the year he’s taking off before he starts pharmacy school, or, at least that was the plan, but plans don’t account for much of anything if the fates refuse to get with your program, which makes Jake’s idea to stay in the closet until he can figure a way to get out become a whole lot more challenging when he ends up partnered with Kurt Carlson—walking, talking temptation—the man who lights a fire in Jake’s libido hot enough to rival anything Mother Nature could possibly whip up.

It’s a shaky start for both men, for reasons that have nothing to do with ability or experience and everything to do with attraction, but Jake and Kurt quickly form a working partnership, become friends, and, eventually, come to discover that the connection they feel is as elemental to them as the fires they fight are to nature. It’s a slow burn as their desire chases them like the flames on a shifting wind and when they finally succumb to it, the results are scorching, and before I knew it, I was completely invested in them and my hope for a long and lovely romance.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading P.D. Singer’s work, it’s that I always learn something, whether it’s what mise en place means, how a hedge fund works, or what it feels like to be thisclose to becoming a victim of your job. There is no “this seems really authentic” about her work. It is authentic and never fails to draw me in every time.

I’m sorry to say I never got around to reading the first edition of Fire on the Mountain, (why, I have no clue) so what’s been improved upon, I can’t say. But I can say whatever it was, the improvements made for some seriously sizzling summer reading.

Buy Fire on the Mountain HERE.

The Rare Event by P.D. Singer

The lust for money is as timeless as money for lust. They are the original vices, and at Wolfe Gorman Equities, money and lust go together like stress and a volatile economy.

Rick Santeramo is all about hedging his bets, both professionally and personally. He plays Wall Street a little bit like a skydiver jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, who gambles on the remotest acceptable possibility there’ll be a safe place to land after the thrill of the jump. Ricky thrives on the volatility of the market as much as he thrives on the volatility of the predatory and empty sex he engages in, in the backrooms of the clubs he stalks. Ricky either has no sense of self-preservation or an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation, I’m not certain. I do think, however, that for Rick, it depends on the circumstances and what exactly is at risk, because really, you have to know how much you’re willing to invest and how much you’re willing to lose before you know how to secure yourself against a loss.

With Jon Hogenboom, Rick took what were, for him, acceptable risks. He avoided committing, he left himself a means of easy escape to avoid the shackles of monogamy and, in the end, he lost far more than he’d ever invested in their relationship. After all, infidelity can’t be infidelity if you’ve never gone all in and invested fully in the relationship, can it? Is there such a thing as negative gain? For Ricky there was—it happened when he accepted everything Jon was willing to offer but didn’t fully invest in it, then let it all slip through his fingers. He learned a little too late, the value of limiting his losses by protecting his investments. He also learned that the margin of error in his relationship with Jon was limited to Jon’s willingness to accept any deviation from the norm, which, in the end, turned out to be fractional. Unlike Rick, Jon could foresee the rare event and considered the price too steep, the investment too risky to accept.

And when the bottom fell out, when their partnership imploded, they both discovered they had so very little to show for their time together. Negative gain.

The Rare Event is the story of a man who didn’t know what he had until he didn’t have it anymore, then discovered with a staggering surety that he very much wanted it. There’s nothing quite like discovering someone and something is priceless, especially when your adult life has revolved around assigning value to everything and weighing how much profit you can gain from it. It’s the ultimate redemption story—discovering you’ve always had a parachute, regardless of how many times you’ve jumped, but that the strings attached to that parachute aren’t meant to tangle and bind but to protect against the unexpected. It’s about being willing to make compromises, not selling out who you are, but investing in who you want to be so you can be the person who’s worthy of being wanted.

The bottom line is that I couldn’t put this book down. I devoured it in a single sitting and got to ask a lot of “honey, what’s?” questions to the CPA I have in my hip pocket. I learned a lot about hedge funds and puts and stop-loss orders, but those things really weren’t so essential to the whole of the story, although it provided a perfect juxtaposition to Ricky and Jon’s personal relationship. What was entirely essential was the way in which Ricky and Jon collaborated and conflicted with each other, and eventually, the way in which that connection suffered under the weight of the odds of the gamble. If there’s such a thing as profiting from loss, Ricky did it, and it was both painful and lovely to witness.

Buy The Rare Event HERE.