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Vaulting

Megan Slayer (Goodreads Author)

2.77 · Rating details · 13 ratings · 4 reviews

Vault for the gold or fall in love? What about both?

Dylan Parker wants nothing more than to win the gold. He’s worked on his vaults long and hard to be the best. And he is…until the best, Aiden Conrad, shows up at his gym. What’s a guy to do when the object of his affection also happens to be his stiffest competition?

Aiden’s no slouch when it comes to competition. He’s got ...more

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Published May 13th 2013 by Total E-Bound Publishing (first published April 25th 2013)

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· 13 ratings · 4 reviews

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May 18, 2013 Susan65 rated it liked it

I have mixed feelings on this story. It started out promising as I've not read about two gymnasts before and I was all set for something new and exciting. Got some of the new, but fell flat with the exciting. I am also not a fan of insta-love and non-stop sex. For me that never works out well and I start to skim.

I was lost for a lot of this story and would have to back track and figure out what I'd missed. It was almost as if a whole paragragh was missing and I just had to shake my head and keep ...more

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Jun 04, 2013 Kassa rated it did not like it

While this wasn’t a terrible book I kind of want to scrub my brain after reading it. It’s just so banal and ridiculous. The writing is tedious and the characters are silly. The short story is mostly sex scenes with instant “I love you” declarations between them. Oh and a totally unnecessary possessive ex-lover threat thrown in for absolutely no reason. I even went back and re-read parts just to ensure I was right about the changing details. This is probably a prime reason I don’t read Total-E-Bo While this wasn’t a terrible book I kind of want to scrub my brain after reading it. It’s just so banal and ridiculous. The writing is tedious and the characters are silly. The short story is mostly sex scenes with instant “I love you” declarations between them. Oh and a totally unnecessary possessive ex-lover threat thrown in for absolutely no reason. I even went back and re-read parts just to ensure I was right about the changing details. This is probably a prime reason I don’t read Total-E-Bound as I don’t think their books are quality stories or all that well written. No doubt that description doesn’t cover every m/m book of theirs but it’s a rare book I pick up from TEB that is well written, fully developed, and worthwhile reading. Sadly this author won’t make my list of new authors to check out.

The plot is perfunctory and would have been fine, if only it had been well executed. Dylan is a top rated vaulter and deeply in the closet. Aiden is a well-known gymnast that comes to train at Dylan’s gym and the two hit it off immediately. One sex scene later, they’re in love and a teammate decides he wants Aiden for himself.

It’s not so much the instant love that bothers me as the lack of any appreciable depth to the story. It reads very superficially from beginning to end. The plot is not just predictable it’s boring. There’s no purpose to the story. The two men meet, have sex, fall in love, and live happily ever after. All of that is ok but there are no problems. There are several attempts to inject drama and uncertainty but they’re weak at best. The first is internal issues between Dylan and Aiden. Dylan has some trust issues from a former relationship, which he cries out in an unremarkable scene between sex sessions. Aiden is unwilling to let Dylan go and is a strong, stalwart force that doesn’t doubt and doesn’t question.

This attempt didn’t work because both men are very cardboard and frankly, boring. They’re average guys with no particular interest. Any time the characters could have a more developed issue, such as afraid to tell others they’re gay, and the story solves the problem with sex and a random solution. Such as all of a sudden the guys who were giving Aiden a hard time for being gay are suddenly gay too. Problem solved. Dylan’s afraid of coming out but he just blurts it out and is suddenly fine. These sudden and way too easy fixes take any nuance out of the story.

Likewise the sad inclusion of the teammate, Jerome, who wants Aiden for himself, is too obvious. It also makes no sense. Early on in the story people claim Jerome isn’t violent but oops, the story needs to fix that so the story changes at the end with no good explanation. This is a very clear attempt to inject some tension in the story but it’s flat and poorly written, just like the short story itself unfortunately. The prose tends to be awkward and unappealing with phrases like “Being out of practice in love sucked assholes.” When you add in 7 sex scenes in 50 pages or so, it’s just too much.

I didn’t ever really care about the couple. They’re flat without any nuance or any depth. I know nothing about them but they’re in love and like to do gymnastics. I didn’t feel any real chemistry so all the sex scenes turned me off and the writing didn’t help. This isn’t a terrible, horrible short story. It’s just one I didn’t like and got bored with very early on. I took a break halfway through and it took me almost 2 weeks to return to finish the last 20 pages. I wouldn’t recommend it.
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May 28, 2013 Thomaidha Papa rated it did not like it

Shelves: athletes, bareback, contemporary, erotica, lukewarm, m-m

1.5 Hearts

Review written for MM Good Book Reviews

I didn’t like this book for too many reasons. First of the blurb is in white contrast from the story itself. There is no competition between Dylan and Aiden at all. As a matter of fact the story starts with Aiden approaching Dylan and telling him he’s thinking of joining their gym because he wants to be Dylan’s teammate. And Dylan always had admiration for Aiden because he is one of the best out there. Again no competition there at all, only insta 1.5 Hearts

Review written for MM Good Book Reviews

I didn’t like this book for too many reasons. First of the blurb is in white contrast from the story itself. There is no competition between Dylan and Aiden at all. As a matter of fact the story starts with Aiden approaching Dylan and telling him he’s thinking of joining their gym because he wants to be Dylan’s teammate. And Dylan always had admiration for Aiden because he is one of the best out there. Again no competition there at all, only instant lust and in the span of a month – that we didn’t witness- both of them have reached the point of deep feelings for each other even if no move has been made yet.

And that takes me to the pace and time frame for this book. The pace seem too frantic, the events between the pair happened in lighting speed, the time frame was hazy at best. There was no depth to the story; you couldn’t see the built of their friendship, partnership, and relationship. Thus you couldn’t connect with either character, that by the way were completely flat. Beside some “hurtful” past events in Dylan’s past we didn’t get much on their personality, who were they and so on.

Moving on, there was the issue of chemistry and the old classic telling that made it hard to feel them two. Both characters shared similar emotions. Both wanted each other and both were scared of their feelings and both shared the same thoughts even. Between that and their intimate scenes that were as bland as they come it felt as if I was reading a bad copy/paste over and over again. A big, big thing I disliked was the comparison of a certain sexual stance with submission and since the story had no kinky side in there I couldn’t quite understand it why would that even be mentioned. And really when too people like to have rough sex it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are possessive, I don’t get what one has to do with the other.

The plot was also a big reason I didn’t like this book. It was irrational in so many ways. At times I felt like there had been more there, but was crudely cropped and chopped and deleted so I was left with a text that jumped and leaped and the meaning didn’t fit. The dialogues made no sense and were often a contradiction of previous dialogues between the guys, adding to the feeling that there was a story behind the line that I’d somehow missed.

Speaking of irrational, the villain of this story (because every story needs a psychopath) made no sense at all to me. He wanted Aiden so he harassed Dylan – so far so good- but later on he wanted Aiden so he beats the heck out of him sending him in the hospital… I suppose the author needed Aiden in the hospital so badly so that Dylan would have that kind of a déjà vu, that the rationale behind it didn’t really matter. And dear me, a guy is in the ER badly injured, his mother and friend (because no one knew Dylan was the boyfriend in that damn hospital) go to check on him and visit, and the nurse said “Ten minutes then you’ll switch. Once we get him in a room you’ll be able to stay longer. No monkey business.” I’m still rolling this over and over in my head to try to make some sense from it. The guy is barely conscious, badly hurt, friends and family are distressed and in agony to see he’ll be all right, what monkey business would there be for crying out loud?

So no, I didn’t like this one and I can’t recommend it.

Thommie ...more

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Jun 20, 2014 Trish Edmisten rated it liked it

I love the premise of the story and the setting. It's great to see the characters in the world of gymnastics.

There were a couple of problems here though. First, the relationship between the characters moved so fast I couldn't catch my breath. They meet and then they're in love and hooking up a month later. That's not terrible except that chapter one was the meeting and chapter two jumped right to the second month. It felt like the author was so anxious to get to the meat of the story that she ru ...more

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About Megan Slayer

Megan Slayer

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Megan Slayer, aka Wendi Zwaduk, is a multi-published, award-winning author of more than one-hundred short stories and novels. She’s been writing since 2008 and published since 2009. Her stories range from the contemporary and paranormal to LGBTQ and white hot themes. No matter what the length, her works are always hot, but with a lot of heart. She enjoys giving her characters a second chance at lo ...more