bonesRating: 4 stars
Buy Links: 
 Amazon | All Romance
Length: Novel


Cam is a famous porn star working at Blue Boy Studios.  He loves his job but lately has been feeling adrift. He has been getting fewer good scenes and so work has been dull and unfulfilling. His friends-with-benefits relationship with his boss Jon is hot, but he also feels used and uncared for.  He doesn’t mind work being just about sex, but Cam does feel like he is missing out on sex with real emotion, especially when he sees his friends Levi and Sonny so happy together.

When Cam meets Sasha, a cute BMX bike store owner, he feels a spark inside for the first time in a while.  A friendship builds between them and soon an attraction.  But while Cam is ready to move things forward, Sasha is hesitant to get more deeply involved.  Then Cam gets some serious news that complicates his life and his relationship with Sasha even further.  The attraction is definitely there between the two men, but Cam needs to get himself together, both physically and emotionally, before he can move forward with Sasha.

Bones is the second book in Garrett Leigh’s Blue Boy series and features the journey of Cam, a veteran porn star.  This book is really Cam’s story and Leigh does a nice job of giving us the portrait of a man at loose ends who needs to really figure out what he wants out of life.  Throughout the book we see him move from a place where he is really unsettled and unsatisfied, to one where he is happy and ready for love and happiness.  I found him really likable and enjoyed his journey throughout the story.

While Bones focuses a lot on Cam, we really see much less of Sasha or the two of them together.  While they meet fairly early on, things don’t develop into more than friendship for a very long time.  We know that the guys are hanging out together, but that happens pretty much off page. We don’t see a lot of the two of them together really developing a relationship even as friends and Sasha is out of the story for big chunks of time.  So if you are reading this as Cam’s journey, it works well. But if you are reading this as a love story between the two men, I felt like I was missing too much of Sasha to really feel a strong connection between them.  I wanted to see them together more, even just as friends, and have a better feel for Sasha and his character.  Interestingly, I reread my review of the first book in this series, Bullet, and had almost the same comments there. So maybe this is just the style Leigh is using for this series.  But for me I needed more of Sasha to really feel fully invested in their relationship.

The book also reconnects us with Levi and Sonny whom we met in Bullet.  They have a pretty large role in the book, as they are both Cam’s friends and Sonny still works at Blue Boy (Levi has quit).  I loved their friendship and the way that their relationship impacts Cam.  The two men have definitely made progress in their relationship since the first book and I really liked them together.  I will say though that there are some plot threads with regards to Levi and Sonny that felt undeveloped. We get numerous comments about things going on with them — Sonny not showing up for work, the guys being hard to get a hold of, problems they are having together, etc.  Their subplot is substantial, but none of this is every really addressed head on or resolved.  If they were going to play such a big role here, I wanted to see some clarity and resolution, or at least advancement of their storyline.

I will mention that there are some cases of sex here between Cam and others besides Sasha.  All of them made perfect sense in the story line and at least one happens before the guys even meet. There is one case where the hook up occurs after he has started a friendship with Sasha, but it is clearly not cheating as they are definitely not together at this point.  Sasha learns all about it and is totally fine. And the scene is well done and important for character arcs of all of the characters involved (menage, fwiw). So for me this all worked perfectly, especially given the way the relationship develops between Sasha and Cam. But just mentioning it for those who like to know these things.

So overall I enjoyed this one and really liked Cam’s journey. I think the story works better as Cam’s journey than as a full romance between Sasha and Cam, but I still found it rewarding and them enjoyable together.  Cam really needed to get his life together before he was ready for Sasha and we definitely are left with them being ultimately happy together.

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