Dirty Kiss by Rhys Ford
July 1, 2011
M/M Romance Suspense
Paperback
Dreamspinner Press

Reviewed by Helyce

What should have been a routine investigation into the suicide of a young man turned out to be more than Cole McGinnis bargained for. He didn’t think he’d be shot at, almost run off the road, have his car blown up and he certainly didn’t think he’d meet someone he could fall in love with. But he got all of that and more!

Hyun-Shik Kim was leading a double life. In one, he is married to Victoria, has a son named Will, and works for his father’s company: the perfect son, the perfect husband, the perfect father. The other Hyun-Shik Kim was a man who enjoyed the company of other men and did so in secret at a gentlemen’s club called Dirty Kiss. It is at Dirty Kiss that he is found, dead, the victim of an overdose. It is ruled a suicide, but his parents don’t believe it. The son they knew would not take his own life.

When Cole meets Jae-Min Kim, a relative of the young man who died, he is speechless. Still grieving over the senseless murder of his boyfriend Rick, Cole has not dated or been with anyone for a long time, and when he looks at Jae-Min he can’t ignore his body’s response to him.

“I’d never been into Asian men, maybe because they reminded me of Mike, but the young man answering the door took my breath away. If there was any evidence of God, it was standing right in front of me, I was sure of it.”

When Jae-Min’s apartment is blown up and he is injured with no place to go, Cole brings him to his place to rest and keep him safe. Cole may have only just met Jae-Min but he cannot deny his attraction to this young man. He tries to pass it off as lust, but his heart tells him it is much more. He hasn’t felt anything for anyone since Rick’s death, but he feels guilty about letting Rick go just the same.

“Straddling my legs, he watched me, cautious and controlled, waiting for me to make the first move. It’s always a fallen angel who waits for a man to open the door to hell, and if I was going to be damned for pushing Rick aside, I was going to taste Jae on the way down.”

As Cole ventures deeper into his investigation, it becomes apparent that there is so much more to what actually happened than what the Kim family wants the “public” to see. For one, anyone he speaks with regarding Hyun-Shik Kim and his association to the club Dirty Kiss either ends up dead or injured in some sort of accident. Cole becomes a target as well but all that does is make him more determined to get to the truth of Hyun-Shik’s death. He doesn’t believe that Hyun-Shik killed himself at all and until the killer is caught, anyone who knew about his time at Dirty Kiss was a target, including Jae-Min.

I loved this story! While it does focus on the death of Hyun-Shik and the growing relationship between Cole and Jae-Min, at the heart of it we are shown the complex intricacies of the Asian culture, their family values, the expectations between fathers and sons and the difficulties they experience when they do not measure up to those expectations. Hyun-Shik was a good man who happened to be gay. He allowed himself to experience this part of his life, in secret, at Dirty Kiss. His father knew about it, but as long as it remained behind the closed doors of Dirty Kiss and did not touch their public image, he could ignore it. Rhys Ford does an outstanding job of showing just how difficult it is to be gay in an Asian family that still embraces old fashioned values and cannot accept anything outside what they consider normal. As Cole falls for Jae-Min he sees a future for them and Jae-Min had to keep reminding him that it was temporary; that he had a mother and younger sisters who depended on him. Yes, there were tears.

I was very excited to read this, especially when I learned the author grew up in Hawaii just like me. I was also very happy to learn there will be a sequel! Yay!!!

Rating B+

Recent Reviews:
Book Lovers Inc – 4/5
That’s Queen Bitch to You – B+
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