Book 688: Level Up (#gaymers #4) – Annabeth Albert

Who doesn’t love a meet cute involving a mistaken identity and shock factor? If you don’t, then don’t read this book 😀 This is the final book in the #gaymers series by Annabeth Albert following: Status Update, Beta Test and Connection Error.

The protagonists of this book are Landon, a bisexual university professor who is tangentially related to the characters in the series (and is mentioned in passing at a LAN party or two) and Bailey, a photographer from Portland, OR, donating his services for a nude calendar for charity.

The big drama in this book is Landon continuing to learn from a sexual assault that happened off the page. It’s mentioned in the open trigger warning letter and it’s not necessarily a huge plot point, so much as the repercussions are when falling in love with someone who has a physically intimidating stature.

Albert continues with her geek knowledge and trademark nerdy humor:

“Oh, I’m not outing him or anything—he’s brought dates of all genders to school functions and is a faculty adviser for one of the QUILT BAG alliances on campus.” (Loc. 298)

“Landon loved his home, but between his mother’s penchant for buying him half the Think Geek catalog for each gift giving holiday and his own nerdiness, the condo’s decor pretty much screamed, ‘Here lives a single gamer.'” (Loc. 357)

All while she slowly increases the heat of the sex and romance to a constant simmer that hits a boiling point and keeps the non-sex scenes that much hotter:

“Unlike the handholding of his teen years, this was borderline erotic, Bailey’s thumb sweeping against his palm, fingers stroking knuckles, exploring calluses. A few minutes of sweet torture, and Landon was painfully hard. From holding hands. And it was nice because as much as his body wouldn’t have minded something more, it was a family movie, not an R-rated makeout flick.” (Loc. 631)

To me, the most interesting part of the negative reviews I glanced at mentioned this low simmer as being a problem in that they really wanted more sex and hotter scenes. I read that as being less character development and less emotional connection between the characters. And for me, Albert does write great sex scenes but she does even better when it comes to character development and relationship developments.

Recommendation: If MM romance is a genre you read and you like a slow simmering romance with the heat building up over time and don’t necessarily want a “wham bam” super hot and and sexually intense story, this one is for you. Albert continues to one of my favorite MM romance authors and I plan to read her Out of Uniform series as they become available at my local library.

Opening Line: “You’ve got a crush on a photographer you’ve never met.”

Closing Line: “And he knew, with laser certainty, that this time they were going to get it.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)