Book Review: Heat Stroke
While browsing through Reddit looking for a new m/m romance to read, I saw someone describe one of the main characters of Heat Stroke by Tessa Bailey as a “muscular himbo puppy who dotes on his love interest.” While I haven’t read anything from Tessa Bailey previously, I am 100% into the doting character trope. Because of this, I decided to take a chance and picked up this book to see if it lived up to this particular user’s description.
Official Summary
They can't be together. They won't stay apart. Marcus “Diesel” O’Shaughnessy is a brash, oversized CrossFit enthusiast with a naked lady tattooed on his rippling forearm. Jamie Prince is a private school teacher with an extremely low tolerance for bull. The two men have zero in common. Well, except for three things. They’re both moonlighting as lifeguards for the summer. No matter how hard they try, they cannot stay away from each other. And both of them have secrets they’re determined to keep. But what happens in the shadows of the Long Beach boardwalk can only remain hidden for so long, before the July sunshine reveals the hot, unrelenting connection they never expected, forcing Marcus and Jamie to decide if they’re simply caught up in a temporary heat stroke or if they’ve found something worth rescuing...
Quick Information
Author: Tessa Bailey
Published: March 15, 2019
Genre: Romance, M/M Romance, Contemporary Romance
Review
Heat Stroke is the second book of the Beach Kingdom series. While I jumped straight into Book Two I felt nothing of importance was lost for context. The series follows the three Prince brothers: Andrew, Jamie, and Rory who all own a bar and man the lifeguard stations in Long Beach. Each book of the series follows one of the brothers’ relationships. The two other books of this series feature m/f relationships while Heat Stroke is the only m/m.
In Heat Stroke we follow Jamie Prince, an economics teacher who returns home to help his brothers with the family business during the summer months. Amidst his busy schedule, he contends with Marcus, a muscular workout enthusiast who has taken it upon himself to shadow Jamie everywhere for the past three summers. Hello stalking!
In the opening pages, we receive several mixed signals from our main character Jamie. He clearly knows Marcus is very much in denial about being in the closet, and Jamie has several lines stating just why he doesn’t want to deal with men like that, including a predictable plot point that is repeatedly mentioned before we are given the obvious reveal. However the book had 225 pages and this was all from the first few, establishing that he most certainly wasn’t going to live up to his own rules.
While Marcus does fit several of the himbo traits, he's lacking in what makes this character archetype stand out. A himbo is more than a dumb character. Himbos are friendly, loving, and protective of those they care about. They’re confident in themselves and their place in the world all the while sporting abs that can grate cheese. In my opinion, the himbo archetype is often misattributed to characters who are in actuality just a dumb jock. Marcus is just a dumb jock.
Marcus’s introduction with Jamie in this book is far from love at first sight. In fact Marcus seems to be making fun of Jamie more than anything (not protecting from the very getgo). Marcus flaunts his body at every occasion as if this is his sole defining trait. Further, the narrative stresses how “dumb” Marcus is by telling the reader he dropped out of college because he followed the sample schedule instead of his own actual schedule. Compounded with the naked lady tattoo constantly mentioned on Marcus’s forearm, he’s billed as a hyper-masculine “bro” who’s constantly contending with gay intrusive thoughts he’s incapable of processing because he’s written as being “too dumb” to handle them in a mature, adult manner.
The story follows Jamie and Marcus as they navigate a pseudo-friendship. On one side, we have Marcus the self-proclaimed straight guy who thinks jacking off to the image of another guy's mouth is “just what guys do.” Then there’s “high IQ” Jamie, the so-called smartest man in the room, who heeds none of the warning signs of a path that he's already gone down previously.
The two seemed to be thrown together more out of Jamie feeling bad for Marcus and not wanting to upset him than any sense of love forming between the two. Over and over, the narrative forces these characters to interact rather than allowing their relationship to grow organically over time.
The story fell into the predictable path of Marcus dealing with internalized homophobia from potential external sources we’re told Marcus is afraid of rather than shown in a scene. There are a few weak examples displaying the masculine pressure Marcus faces. We’re told that getting the girl and getting laid should be his priorities, but there’s only one instance of this having any real weight during a conversation between Marcus and his fellow gym bros. Because there’s no further pressure on Marcus beyond this one instance (the characters never show up again), this causes the subplot to fall flat. In fact, most of Marcus’s fears seem contrived more than anything, like the story and the author is holding him back from becoming a fully realized character.
While there are “spicy” scenes in this story, several of them include clunky dialogue that is distracting for the reader. You know how people talk about cringey euphemisms for body parts? Well this story has more than a few. I think the point of no return for me was after Jamie said the line, “You ready to feel my fuck, baby?” I know there are only so many things to call body parts, but really? The author couldn’t use the old faithful just to keep us in the scene? Mileage may vary on what euphemisms or “dirty talk” works for you as a reader, but the use of this line more than once was egregious and ruined the scene completely for me.
The opening line of this book was, “God save him from confused straight guys.” I thought this was an eye-catching opener, but the book didn’t live up to this singular line. I really wish Jamie would have received some help from the nightmare I’ve described above, as he did not deserve to go through the amount of needless drama riddled within this story.
The third act break up was completely unnecessary and thrown in as if something had to fill those later pages. The ending couldn’t come soon enough, but it somehow felt rushed as if the author couldn’t wait to return to familiar m/f territory.
While there were a lot of things I found unenjoyable about this novel, I did find the occasional line of dialogue humorous. But there simply isn’t enough here to make it worth your while. There are plenty of other novels to read out there that treat these subjects with a little more tact and maturity, even while being comical. After reading Heat Stroke, I feel as though the author treated m/m romance in a very juvenile manner.
Overall, only pick this book up if it's free from your local library. Only subject yourself to this story if you want to learn what not to do with these tropes.