Book 708: Hotline (Murmur, Inc. #1) – Quinn Anderson

Along with Walker’s The Weight of It All and Throwing Hearts, I picked this up as part of my Kindle Unlimited download spree after Tim got me a new Oasis for our anniversary.

If I’m honest, I picked this one because it didn’t have the traditional half-dressed/watermarked/super-model handsome cover model on it. Even with the super-hokey heart as an “o”, I liked how clean and simple the cover was. And maybe more importantly, I liked that I got to envision the characters without constantly thinking their descriptions are nothing like the cover models (which yes, I spend WAY too long thinking about this).

I also thought the premise was pretty interesting, in that Zack is a phone sex operator (a professional sex worker—I guess I knew this but never connected the dots) that ends up speaking with John, a law student with a trust fund, and they eventually (of course) fall madly in love over the phone, they meet, and drama ensues.

“He opened his eyes and looked at Zack with pupils that had completely overtaken his irises.” (208)

My biggest gripe with this book, aside from it being published by Riptide (see my diatribe about Riptide here), was Anderson’s over description. It works great in the numerous phone sex scenes to set the scene, but when she described every little thing in Zack’s room or every action taken by John when Zack first visits, it got repetitive and super slow and hard to read. Add in that every time they had sex in person, Anderson used the dilating pupils line above (I clocked it three or four times at least) and I just shook my head.

The over description and that annoying line were a major turn off that I powered through and probably will do so again for Action and Cam Boy, books two and three in the Murmur Inc. series, because she’s not a bad writer, she just needs to refine some of her skills.

I struggled a little bit with the crisis of this novel, it was a little too much “let’s not talk to each other about anything serious, but still make serious life decisions” for me, but overall it didn’t detract from the story.

I found Anderson’s writing to have quite a bit of humor which I always appreciate:

“Lee exhaled slowly and stared at the ceiling. Zack waited for him to respond. After a solid minute of silence had passed, he asked, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m beseeching the Lord for strength.’ ‘You’re Buddhist.’ ‘I know, but I feel like sex workers are more Jesus’s area than Siddhartha’s.'” (223)

“‘Now that you mention it, our group all together checks a lot of boxes. A black lesbian, a gay man, an alternative bisexual, and then the token straight guy.’ ‘Who also happens to be Vietnamese,’ Zack added. ‘Precisely. I bet there are some politicians out there who would pay us just to be photographed in our presence. We’re a PC dream.'” (220)

She doesn’t have as subtle a humor as Annabeth Albert does, but she did a great job of weaving it in when it fit and it wasn’t all gay jokes either! (More funny quotes at the end of the post.)

“‘You,’ Zack growled, pointing, ‘need to stop trying to top from the bottom. You can fuck me later if you like, but right now, it’s my turn. And I intend to make good use of it.'” (167)

I appreciated that Anderson walked the walk in her book when it came to versatile characters. There were times when Zack took charge (both on the phone and in person) and there were times when John took charge and they were both active and willing participants in their various moments of passion.

And then Anderson sealed the deal for me with this line

“His voice is really something special, like the human equivalent of how a cello sounds. It’s not as deep as mine, but when he gets really turned on . . . I can’t even describe it. It drives me wild. And he’s creative too. And detailed. And he makes this delicious sound when he’s just about to . . .” (75)

Maybe I’m just super easy, but the cello is probably my favorite instrument. Seriously, I have over a dozen albums with cello concertos from Dvořák to Saint-Saëns by Yo-Yo Ma, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Jaqueline du Pré to name a few. So, describing someone’s voice like a cello—sold.

My Recommendation: A good middle-of-the-road MM romance. The fact Zack is a phone sex operator not only provided ample opportunity for great sex scenes, but it also provided a diversity of them with Zack and John taking on various roles and personas. The book was bogged down with over-description and I had to push through, but overall, I enjoyed it and will look into the other two books in the series.

Opening Line: “‘Oh, yes,’ Zack moaned, ‘keep touching yourself just like that. You make me so hot.'”

Closing Line: “Instead, he returned John’s smile and gently squeezed his fingers. ‘All right.'” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Hotline
“Plus, you have the whole bad-boy look down pat, and I’ve actually heard women around the office describe your eyes as ‘stormy.’ That is a bad-romance-novel level of hotness.” (9)

“Hey now, don’t go dropping the L word in my apartment. This is my safe space.” (42)

“‘Kira, I want you to promise me something right now.’ Zack schooled his face into a grave expression. ‘If I’m still having phone sex with strange men in ten years, euthanize me.'” (42)

“Pale Europeans. I’m like six different kinds of white, mixed together into a vague beige color. I think I have some Irish ancestry, but your guess is as good as mine.” (143)

“He needed to get over the constant paranoia he felt when he was with John. He wasn’t even sure what caused it. It wasn’t like he’d been burned in the past and now had trust issues. He’d never dated anyone seriously in his life. Then again, maybe that was the reason. Now that he was in danger of liking someone for the first time, he was terrified.” (189)

“The people who have more tend to think they can get away with more. After all, they have the talent or the money or the nice things. Why shouldn’t they get to do what they want? They also expect you to give more because you have less. After a while, feeling like you have to compensate for just being yourself will wear you down.” (200)

“‘Mind you, don’t overthink it. If you’ve got a good thing going with this boy, let it happen. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.’ Zack smiled. ‘Okay, Dad.’ Mr. Alvarez swatted him on the shoulder. ‘I don’t remember adopting a little gay white boy.’ Zack laughed heartily. ‘And yet at some point you did.'” (200)