“It’s not love or anything, but I think I like you, too.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
Title: Compromised: Uniformity, #1
Author: Ethan Stone
Publisher: Totally Bound
Pages/Word Count: 183 Pages
Rating: 4 Stars
Blurb: Correctional Officer Daniel “Kash” Kashaveroff is single, gay and working at a maximum security prison in a small town in Nevada. Not the best job or town in which to meet men. He wants to fall in love again but isn’t actively looking.
Then he begins working with a new partner, Zane Davis, and his life is turned upside down. Kash is attracted to Zane but isn’t sure the sexy man plays for his team. When the gay or not mystery is solved, Zane and Kash begin a relationship that starts as friends-with-benefits but soon becomes a committed one.
Zane is bisexual and as much as he cares for Kash, he is still drawn to women. The attraction to the fairer sex creates problems in the relationship but Kash is committed to making it work.
While dealing with his relationship issues, Kash also becomes friends with an inmate named Cody Ives. Becoming personally involved with an inmate is against the rules, but Kash believes in the young man’s innocence and insists on proving it.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Review: Getting to know Correctional Officer Daniel “Kash” Kashaveroff was very enlightening. I always figured that anyone who did the job of a CO at a prison had a calling in law enforcement. Kash was the complete opposite of that. He needed a job and this was the only job available at the time. This was also not a job that you would imagine a gay man would rush out and sign up for. It is definitely not a truly diverse working environment.
When Kash meets his new partner, Zane Davis, he is immediately attracted to him and after dancing around one another, they give in to the desire they both have for one another. There are two big problems with the relationship, however. First Kash is looking for a committed, monogamous relationship, and Zane isn’t. The other big issue is the interest Kash has in inmate Cody Ives.
Kash finds himself making compromise after compromise with Zane until he just can’t compromise any longer. This frees up his personal time, and he spends that time trying to prove that Cody is innocent of the murder he was convicted of. The case takes him deep into the underbelly of a prison gang and puts his life in danger, as well as potentially outing him to all of his co-workers. Eventually, Kash has to make a decision between a job he doesn’t really like and a man he is quickly falling for. It will take the help of a quirky cast of characters to get to the bottom of the mystery and a HEA.
Going into this book, the only thing I knew about the inner-workings of a prison were what I saw on the HBO series Oz. I knew that most of those things were probably dramatized for my viewing pleasure, but I could never have imagined how much. It was very interesting to me to learn how very mundane and repetitive being a correctional officer could be. I truly enjoyed how Ethan Stone took his firsthand knowledge of the job and wove it into a great story with and some hot sex and a compelling mystery. By the time I got to the big finale, I was jonesing for the next one.
Highly recommend this book.
You can buy Compromised: Uniformity, #2 here:
