Review: Hard Press by D.J. Jamison

18 August of 2016 by ButtonsMom2003

Reviewer's Rating: 5

5.0Overall score

Another great book from DJ Jamison!

Hard Press By D.J. Jamison

Genre: GLBTQ, MM Romance

Released: August 18, 2016

Publisher: Smashwords

Series: Ashe Sentinel Connections, Book 5

Synopsis

Julian has everything: good looks, flashy cars, a high-end condo. Until his girlfriend dumps him after a disastrous attempt to have a threesome. To top it off, he rear-ends a motorcycle and meets a pissed off biker who calls him on his shit. But there’s something about the man that hits his repressed buttons, and makes him want to finally pull his desires out into the light. But living up to the standards of an edgy but caring man proves a challenge.

Elliott feels like his world has spun off its axis, and if he can just get control of his life, he can breathe again. His parents’ deaths and his autistic brother’s need for a boarding school weigh heavily on him. When Julian hits his bike outside the news office where he works in the press room, he thinks the sultry man is a spoiled brat who knows nothing of real pain. But bringing him under control soothes something in Elliott’s soul — and Julian seems to need a steady hand, too.

Can these two very different men navigate the give-and-take of a relationship unlike any other they’ve experienced? For both of them, it will be a hard press.

Review

Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003

Another great book from DJ Jamison!

Hard Press is the 5th book in the Ashe Sentinel Connections series but it can be read as a standalone with no problem. I haven’t read the first four books yet and I didn’t feel like I missed anything. (The first four books are on my to-be-read (TBR) list, though, because I liked this one so much.)Julian needs to grow up. His ego is huge. He can’t believe it when his girlfriend dumps him after she finds gay porn in his browser history. Julian isn’t gay – he just wants to experiment a bit with a threesome. He works for his father who is pretty much a jerk to Julian even though Julian knows their car sales business inside and out. He’s also great with the marketing but he can’t keep his father from doing crazy expensive things that don’t yield enough return to justify the expense.

Elliott “Tripp” Young has his hands full. He’s responsible for the care of his younger brother who is autistic. After their parents died he wasn’t able to care for Eric at home but he visits him frequently and he’s doing everything he can to try and bring Eric home.

Julian and Elliott meet when Julian knocks Elliott’s motorcycle over and it gets scratched. He doesn’t realize that Elliott has seen what happened and is shaken when Elliott confronts him. He gives Elliott his contact information but it’s outdated and Elliott has no way to get in touch with him. Three months later they run into each other in a gay bar and Elliott decides to get Julian to pay for his mistake one way or another. Once Elliott realizes that Julian is not experienced he asks him what he was doing at a gay bar and Julian tells him he was just curious.

This is a complex story with great characters and fantastic writing. The author stated in a blog post that Hard Press is different from her other books in that the characters are more demanding and the story contains light elements of submission (there are also some pretty hot, sexy scenes). I loved the story, and while it is quite different from the one other book I’ve read by Ms. Jamison (Catching Jaime) I found the writing to be just as compelling and the characters extremely interesting. Once I started reading this book I didn’t want to put it down.

For me this was so much more than just a romance story, it’s a story about family. Elliott is so protective of his brother and will do almost anything to take care of him. Julian’s family relationships are also a big part of the story. I feel like my review doesn’t really do this story justice because I’m having trouble conveying how much I loved it.

I especially loved the epilogue. It gives us an update on where Julian and Elliott are around a year later. I won’t give anything away but there’s also a bit of a surprise in that a hateful character in the main story, redeems himself quite nicely in the epilogue.

I think Ms. Jamison is an author to watch; she’s relatively new, with her first published works on Amazon listed around a year ago. She is one of my favorite new-to-me authors in the M/M romance genre and I look forward to reading many more of her books.

♥♥♥♥♥

O Factor: Scorcher

Ashe Sentinel Connections Series

Changing Focus, Book 1

Source of Protection, Book 2

Rewriting His Love, Book 3

Winter Blom, Book 4

About Author

D.J. Jamison

DJ Jamison spent more than a decade working in the newspaper industry. When she’s not laboring over her works of fiction or reading copious amounts of books on her phone, she works as a freelance blogger and social media marketer. DJ lives in the Midwest with her husband and two children.

She briefly considered writing under a fantastic pen name, but decided that’d be too much like hiding in the closet. As the author of gay characters, it felt dishonest. So, she settled on being discreet, by using her own initials and last name. No doubt, she’ll be outed any day by people who are not part of her target audience but who do know the shade of her hair.

Author Links