Hot Head

By: Damon Suede

Narrated by: Charlie David

Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.... Since 9/11, Brooklyn firefighter Griff Muir has wrestled with impossible feelings for his best friend and partner at Ladder 181, Dante Anastagio. Unfortunately, Dante is strictly a ladies’ man, and the FDNY isn’t exactly gay-friendly. For ten years, Griff has hidden his heart in a half-life of public heroics and private anguish. Griff’s caution and Dante’s cockiness make them an unbeatable team. To protect his buddy, there’s nothing Griff wouldn’t do…until a nearly bankrupt Dante proposes the worst possible solution: HotHead.com, a gay porn website where uniformed hunks get down and dirty. And Dante wants them to appear there - together. Griff may have to guard his heart and live out his darkest fantasies on camera. Can he rescue the man he loves without wrecking their careers, their families, or their friendship?

©2011 Damon Suede (P)2011 Damon Suede

Captivating and Sexy

I couldn't stop listening to this book. Loved the voices, characters and the whole story!

Spectacularly Inviting

I finished in one day because I just couldn't get enough of Griff and Dante. This book was funny, romantic and always had me wondering what would come next.

loved it

Not only does this book have some very sexy scenes, it is very well written. I fell in love with griff immediately and just loved this book.

One of the hottest audiobooks ever made!

Griff is a big Irish firefighter in NYC in the days after 9/11. He’s always been best friends with fellow firefighter Dante, but what nobody else knows is that he’s also been in love with him, for years.

Griff doesn’t act on his feelings, finding ways to either be with women or be alone, but every day he sees and yearns for Dante.

Dante, meanwhile, seems to have no problem finding a new woman every night, slowly killing Griff with jealousy.

One day Dante – whose known for his crazy schemes – comes to Griff with a money making proposition. Gay for pay porn. There’s this list of activities – from kissing to jerking off to blow jobs – each with a dollar value. Dante needs the money for the house he’s bought that is sucking up all his money in repairs. Griff knows it’s a special form of torture to get involved with this, knowing how much he wishes it were real, but he can’t say no to his best friend.

What they find out is they have some serious chemistry together. They are HOT! Griff finds himself wondering just where the lines have gone, they seem so blurry now. He feels tremendous guilt at deriving such pleasure from the activities that he just knows Dante is only doing for the cash.

After the shooting is done, the guys find their relationship at a cross-roads: in one direction denial and friendship at the other something amazing and more and very, very scary.

**

There are not enough words for me to tell you how exceedingly hot this story is. The chemistry in this is OFF THE CHARTS! Griff and Dante are scorching! But they are also tremendously sweet, tender and hysterical all at the same time. Dante is a hoot! There is nothing he won’t say or do and the stoic Griff is the perfect counterbalance to his hot-blooded craziness.

There isn’t just one part that was amazing because all of it was fantastic. From the original jerk off scene, to the gay bashing of their friend, to the way the families handled their relationship to the lesbian photographer. It’s such a rich and deep story. So carefully crafted and sensuous. It just feels so real with the language and the emotion and the way they talked with one another.

The Audiobook is done by Charlie David and to me his voice will always be Griff and Dante. He gives them subtle accents and scorching hot physical scenes, sweet emotional discussions and all in all is an amazing listening experience.

I can’t recommend this enough to you. It was one of my first m/m reads and the first m/m audiobook I purchased. It’s simply fantastic and a story I’ve read and listened to numerous times and will do so again.

6 of 5 stars

David Pulling Damon’s Chestnuts Out of this Fire

What about Charlie David’s performance did you like?

Kudos to the narrator Charlie David, whose skillful reading and inflections have come to the dialog rescue and breathed a glimmer of life into this corps of a plot. Had I been reading this in paperback I would have tossed it before finishing the book. It was only David’s skill that pulled author Suede’s chestnuts out of this fire in this work.

Any additional comments?

This particular book was written for those who have firemen fantasies. The genre of the book is meant to be M/M romantic; sub-genre finding ones true self and true love.

Maine Characters: Two Firemen, Griffin Muir, & Dante Anastagio.

Griffin Muir AKA Griff AKA G: Friendly nicknames (Goliath, Monster, & Vanilla Gorilla). Griff is from a home where his mother has passed and whose father is cool to the point of being unaffectionate. For love he attached himself by way of his boyhood football buddy Paulie to the Anastagio family growing up. The family is warmhearted generous the-more-the-merrier Italian family and accepting of Griff as an honorary Anastagio son. Griff is reserve and conservative to the point of ridiculous. He has an open heart that is firmly held in check by his level head. Spiritually he is a lapsed Catholic with residual guilt hang-ups (this aspect is not well developed). He has a failed marriage after 9-11. Oh, one more thing, he has a massive Hercules like body, with pail Irish skin, ginger hair that shimmers like fire, and a complete lack of awareness of his killer good looks. His chief charm is the way he blushes.
Dante Anastagio: Is the younger brother of Griff’s classmate Paulie. Paulie got married and produced a family and is largely out of the picture. Griff’s marriage to Leslie did not work out. Following the failed marriage Griff fell in with keeping company with the happy-go-lucky, charming, and devilish Dante. They both work at the same firehouse. Work out with weights together. They hang out at the same work bars drinking and chasing women. The fire crew and Griff uses Dante’s place as a party spot and sports center. Dante somehow has scored a bank repossessed house that Griff and the fire mates are helping him to refurbish in exchange for party spot privileges. The house has such importance to Dante it becomes a major driver of the book’s action.

Dante and Griff together: They have partied together, shared women together, shared each other’s interests, have each other’s back at work and in danger and both share the same secret that they are harboring feelings that go beyond both pseudo-family and firemen brotherly love bonds. Both are fearful that they would repulse the other and ruin the friendship if they ever admitted they felt the love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name for the other. Frustrated with hiding their feelings they are both racked on the twin horns of desire and guilt. To put a cherry on this ice cream treat they are both virgins when it comes to men. The book is about how this conflict is resolved.

In my opinion the device used is a bit ridicules. Dante tells Griff that he is over extended financially on his house and is in danger of losing everything. Griff tells Dante to figure out what the numbers are and he will do “anything” necessary to help. Enter Alek, the friendly Russian pornographer, with a heart of gold. You guessed it; Dante has struck a deal with the pornographer to raise cash by appearing on his fireman fetish website and eventually seduces Griff into stepping out of his comfort zone, and join him to raise the necessary funds. After the M/M deeds are done, under the guise of helping out a buddy, Griff becomes alarmed that in saving Dante’s house he has helped expose Dante to danger of bigoted gay bashers in general community. This is where the plot gets stupid. Alek offers Griff a safe way out. He will suppress the M/M footage of Dante and Griff in exchange for Griff doing some sort of artsy modeling job in which only his face will be unseen. This farfetched plot twist is totally unbelievable. For that matter, so is the idea that any bank, post 2008 junk mortgage bubble crash, would turn over a repossessed house to Dante if he could not demonstrate financial solvency and credit worthiness. The book was published in 2011.

The happy ending of saying of the, “I love you” to one another is predictable as well as selected Anastagio family members being OK with the new “son-in-law”. However, there is a lot left unresolved as plot issues and unexplored as character development. These flaws leave the very flesh and blood main chief characters looking more two dimensional caricatures of life leaving one fed but ultimately un-nourished and unsatisfied. . If you only need to eat and run this book will surface as a stomach stuffer to prevent starvation. Mr. Suede’s writing is quick and easy and has a nice flow. He obviously has a talent and speaks to the fast food audience. I really wish I could have liked this book more. Obviously I am a bit too picky as my opinion is a minority one.

Hot Head - Just Plain Hot!

Would you listen to Hot Head again? Why?

Yup. I love the story and I love Charlie David as a narrator. It's heart warming as well as hot.

What other book might you compare Hot Head to and why?

Frat House Troopers. The main characters are good friends who work together and one of them has to perform in porn videos although for different reasons.

Which scene was your favorite?

The first time Griffin agrees to perform with Dante.

If you could rename Hot Head, what would you call it?

Hot Head - Burning Down the House

Any additional comments?

Damon, where's the next installment!?

Romantically fired up!

A true romance with fire to warm your heart! Love throughout the book, from friends, family and much more. Hope to hear a sequel in the making of "Tommy"...

Loved everything about this book

I’m not kidding, this is one of my favorite books ever. Loved the friendship, the romance, the family relationships, the casually hilarious conversations, and every single character in the story. And when they got together, it was so amazingly loving and hot! I had to go back and read it again. To me, this book is beyond 5 stars. Great narration, too!

LOVE! LOVE! LOVE!

This is one of my most favourite books and I have reread it many, many times. This is only my 2nd audio book, but it was time for a re-read and it was on sale, so here we are.

Charlie David does an AMAZING JOB! The voices were clear and you can definitely see his acting talent shine through. The banter between Griffin and Dante is hilarious and I found myself laughing out loud more than a few times. Like pause and fan myself, kind of job! This book has some super sexy scenes, and hearing them read, the emotion and anticipation comes through so deliciously! I think I had to pause a couple times and let my blush settle!

BUT, my most favourite thing and the part that amazed me the most, is that the book was interpreted in a different way then me! I read this book so many times but hearing it now, the humour is so much lighter, and the angst feels so much less angsty (this is a very good thing for me). This was always one of my comfort reads and when I thought I couldn't love this novel more...audibles happens!

A BEAUTIFUL STORY

Gerard's Book Review: Hot Head is worth the money and the listening time
Because it tells A BEAUTIFUL STORY of friendship that blossoms in the face of the aftermath of something EXTREMELY TRAGIC that changed the history of my BELOVED hometown of New York City and America for ever.