True Love 101 discussion

Whee a C&R thread - I heart my boys Ty and Zane ;). I even have a Zane t-shirt from GRL last year

Dee wrote: "Whee a C&R thread - I heart my boys Ty and Zane ;). I even have a Zane t-shirt from GRL last year"

Cool! What does it look like? I'm a Ty girl myself.

its just a grey shirt, with Team Zane and then something else on it - Abi has Team Zane and Team Ty shirts - but all the Team Ty ones left were like XXL's - my Zane one is a M

Okay - Touch & Geaux - intense huh?

a bit - and I wanted to beat them both around the head several times...you learn a lot more about Ty - I'm hoping that she eventually gives Zane more background and oh the ending...I considering throwing my kindle

supposedly there is a Nick/Kelly flashfic out there somewhere...I need to get my hands on it

here are the t-shirt links - http://www.abigailroux.com/stufftobuy...

OK, not gonna re-type comments from another thread that Leea so generously created for Cut & Run.

BUT, I had a lot of confusion/issues with Touch & Geaux. Not just the intensity but ALL THE STUFF THAT HAPPENS and all the CHARACTERS involved! Yikes! Made my head spin!

PS. Really liking the anchor/compass stuff at the "Stuff to Buy" site.

I have the compass, I want to get the anchor now ;)

yeah T&G was really busy - she crammed a lot into that book

I wonder who the mole is?

I'm afraid the mole is probably someone too obvious... except from what I understand, Ms. Roux is taking criticisms of the previous 2 books to heart, so I'm hoping that she makes the mole tougher to figure out. Although I guess (view spoiler)[only Zane will be the one trying to track the mole now? With Ty and the Sidewinders off on Marine duty... unless that all gets tied in there, somehow. (hide spoiler)]

Just hope that Ms. Roux calms down on all the plot points in the next book! I need to breathe when I read!

I have a hard time with the whole Marine storyline - because being in the military is isn't as cut and dried as that...so I have to suspense disbelief quite a bit

Dee wrote: "I have a hard time with the whole Marine storyline - because being in the military is isn't as cut and dried as that...so I have to suspense disbelief quite a bit"

Do you ever heckle? I remember a friend's mom who was a lawyer used to get together with her friends to mock Law & Order. Does book portrayal of the military vs the reality ever drive you nuts?

it drives me nuts - its weird, I can suspense disbelief for huge things and then its the niggly things that drive me nuts - i was just listening to another book (Countermeasure) where part of it is set in the area that I live - and it drove me nuts that in one part, one of the characters flys from MD (Ft Meade) to VA (Langley) - when it is like a 50 minute drive

We're going to start reading Cut & Run... This is a place we can chat about our impromptu buddy read :)

I can't wait to start!

I'm going to start in the morning. The bbq ran long and drinks were involved. lol!

I'm at 21% now. It's starting to pick up now.

Yeah, I thought Cut & Run was a little slow... and it's pacing is strange, IMO. Lots of back-and-forth between Ty & Zane trying to be partners and their mission.

16% and it's dragging for me. I love Ty he's such a mess. Haha!

Leea wrote: "16% and it's dragging for me. I love Ty he's such a mess. Haha!"

I'm so glad you're all reading them now and I have other people to chat about them with.

And I'm Team Ty all the way!

Wahooo... I have to say I already have a crazy crush on Ty. I stopped at chap 4 to drink coffee and check email :)

It is dragging a bit. I like Ty a lot too, lmao. I love the 'bad' ones. That's not to say I don't like Zane, I just like them both.

I know it's two authors and I can kind of tell right now, like they're just starting out and that's what's causing the choppiness of it.

Okay, what do you guys think so far about cut & run?

I'm about 49% and it's starting to get to me, the choppy feeling of the book and how Ty and Zane just feel so unnatural at times.

Leea wrote: "Okay, what do you guys think so far about cut & run?

I'm about 49% and it's starting to get to me, the choppy feeling of the book and how Ty and Zane just feel so unnatural at times."

Unnatural how, Leea?

There's definitely a choppiness to these books... an uneveness, if you will, between the character stuff and the story. This is where I think most people find the cases/mysteries not as good as the relational/personal parts of the books.

How would you define the choppiness, Leaa and Wendy?

I was initially Team Zane, because he seemed like the sane one - LOL - and more my type. But... nothing is quite what it seems in these books. I have a leaning now towards one more than the other, but I do still really love them both.

I totally get it... it's almost like the two authors did not discuss or outline anything. (Or even go back and edit it for repeated phrases; "Ty looks at Zane in confusion..." then the Zane paragraph, "I see Ty looking at me in confusion". And they're literally 2 sentences apart. Choppy.) Even down to conversations, it felt fractured. I don't even know for sure that this is how it worked, but it feels like one author wrote Ty and the other wrote Zane and one would have Ty react like this, and Zane would react in a way that didn't make sense at all, and then Ty would react to Zane in another random way... I don't know, it feels stunted.

And it's not just that, it's also how like (Leea, I'm sorry! Don't read either of the spoilers until you're finished!)(view spoiler)[new problems kept cropping up, like one author was trying to outdo the other. Ty's partner was killed, then Zane's wife was killed. (Mind you, I have no problem with EITHER of those things.) But then Ty has PTSD, and then Zane has drug problems. So then Ty has to have a sensitivity to drugs, and then Zane also lost his last partner in car accident, and then Zane is hurt, and then Ty is hurt, and then Zane is hurt again. And then Zane is given drugs... it felt like each other kept trying to one up the other with their character. The sex scenes even felt the same way (hide spoiler)].

The case is the same way, it's like they were writing whatever they wanted and there was no rhyme or reason for it. I mean, I get the (view spoiler)[Poe connection. But how they had that come out. All of the sudden Zane is a HUGE reader of books and absolutely must stop in to peruse a bookstore? I don't know, it all felt too contrived (hide spoiler)]. The story did not flow naturally at all. I think I could take the book and map out where the authors switched back and forth.

It felt like an RPG that someone printed into a book.

I'm going to keep reading, because so many people love them that I feel like I'll be missing out if I stop after just the first book. (Sooo many series start off not so good and get better and better.) But the continuity and the cohesiveness was very lacking in this first book, for me at least, lol. The disjointedness of the story prevented me from really falling into the story.

Wendy F wrote: "I totally get it... it's almost like the two authors did not discuss or outline anything. (Or even go back and edit it for repeated phrases; "Ty looks at Zane in confusion..." then the Zane paragr..."

Ah. Yes, totally get the choppiness you mean now. And agree. In terms of the case - I also always thought they were pretty thin. Like honestly, I'm not reading this series for the mysteries. And I think once Abigail takes over writing them herself, they barely even qualify as a case.

Wendy, you always seem to be able to eloquently express what I struggle to realize! You nailed it.

Does that change in future books? Perhaps a little. But again, I got hooked on these book for Ty & Zane, not necessarily all the stuff surrounding them. Which is kinda funny, in a way, because that other "stuff" is what the books are generally about.

I do think that the choppiness was less obvious in latter books, or maybe I just went with it. When Abigail Roux took over as one author, the books seemed to come together more as a whole; but she still felt compelled to throw things in randomly - or so IMO - to keep the drama going. But from what I understand of the whole fandom thing here at GR, she seems prone to drama anyway. I avoided reading too much about all of that, because it was ancillary to the books, to me.

I will say that getting to was sometimes painful. But that book made me laugh-out-loud many times. And it was probably the big turnaround for me - the reason that I kept going with the series.

However, all the stuff in book 2 does come back around. So I realized later that it wasn't a wasted book, so to speak.

Tellulah wrote: "And I think once Abigail takes over writing them herself, they barely even qualify as a case. "

I think for me, even more than the weak case (which was a big problem), I was bothered by the stutters between POV changes. It was almost every other paragraph they were changing perspective and it caused like, a hiccup each time.

So I'm hoping it stops that when it's primarily one author.

LOL, that's funny because I read a review after I finished mine that said she is one of those authors who will argue with bad reviews.... I wrote a bad review.

I'm normally really relaxed when it comes to books. If the relationship is amazing I can overlook a weak plot. If it's got a great plot I can overlook the weak characters. Which is why most of my reviews get 4 stars. LOL, I'm a pushover, really.

And not that I'm saying Zane and Ty are weak characters. They show promise. It's just more that I didn't actually feel anything between them other than lust. 90% of the time they they were annoyed with each other, even when they shouldn't be. Zane is at the graveyard and feeling the trauma of losing (view spoiler)[his wife (hide spoiler)] and Ty is pissed because he's not over it yet and his losses are worse... I don't know, they were just... it was like their reactions were exaggerated to a point where I couldn't see it. I didn't believe it as realistic, maybe.

So, I was going to ask which book you think is when it really gets good, but it seems like you're saying book 3?

Yes, IMO, Book 3 is where it got good. So why did I keep reading until I got there? Good question. Not really sure. Something about these books "got" me. Just like with EiT, although, those books didn't have the "stuttering" problem, obviously; it's just that I couldn't quite articulate why I loved them so much.

Not sure I loved the first 2 books in this series, but I kept going.

It's funny, but in hindsight, I see how books 1 & 2 fit into the overall Ty & Zane picture. I will say that the authors and now author do a good job of preserving what's happened up to this point. They bring people and events back in, so it feels more "complete" as you read through the series. Does that make sense?

Hmmm... hope Abigail Roux learned her lesson and doesn't come after you for your review. She'll have one PO'd bunch of GR readers on her hands, if she does. This is still a country of free speech when I last looked. And writing an honest review isn't worth the fight. My understanding of her beef with at least one of the reviewers is that she thought that person was a competing LGBT author who put down her books simply to dump the competition. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I stopped trying to figure it out at that point.

But it made me avoid the Ty & Zane group here at GR.

BTW, did you know that there's an EiT group here? If someone's a member, don't take this the wrong way, but... I did a quick hop over, and those folks seem to be gushing fans and not necessarily 'up' on things like we are. Is that too Mean Girl of me to say?

Hahaha, NO! People don't want to break them down like we do, they want to just talk about how happy the books make them. On the flip side you have groups where all they want to do is put them down even though they made a group for them. That's how I feel the BDB group is. In most of the threads it's just complaints about Jane and how V didn't end up with Butch. Or how Q and Blay were a sell out to appease people for not putting V and Blay together. Or another big one is how much they hate Layla, lol. It's always the same thing.

Well, I have no doubt that I'll keep reading. They are HIGHLY rated and all you ladies love them so I'm definitely going to hold out and see if I start to like them more. Even though I was not happy with the first book, I still want to know what happens next.

If Roux says something to me I'll just delete it, lol. I'm not going to argue with someone.

Good to know. Part of why I enjoy hanging out in the groups that I do (notice, Wendy, that I think you're in all of them), is because I enjoy DISCUSSING books. And I don't always see things the same way or have the same opinions. But I appreciate groups where everyone is free to express herself/himself without fear of attack or harassment.

Sometimes, you just need to get things OUT. You might not be right and even know it, but you have to say it. Or ASK it. I feel 'at home' in the GR groups that I'm part of (or actively participate in) for those reasons.

As for Ty & Zane... I admittedly tend to get obsessed with certain books or characters. I think that's why I keep reading these. Probably overkill to say it again, but there's something about the relational part of these books that draws me.

In some ways, not all, Ty and Zane reminded me of Dan and Vadim. The give and take, love and hate. This was the tamer version though. Not quite as volatile, lol. Just enough tension that it doesn't cross those lines.

Hmm, this makes sense to me. I am only 3% in and the choppy switch between POVs is getting to me already. The case/mystery is really weak? That would be an issue with me. .....but I am going to read and push through and see what I think. I do know that two of my co-bloggers weren't fans for reasons I usually agree with. But for fans of the series -- I do like books for those reasons too. So who knows where I will land.

I'll be curious to see what you think Regina. Totally looking out for your review.

LOL, I just sent you an email.

Tellulah wrote: "Leea wrote: "Okay, what do you guys think so far about cut & run?

I'm about 49% and it's starting to get to me, the choppy feeling of the book and how Ty and Zane just feel so unnatural at times."..."

How ty and Zane talk with each other, nothing to do with their relationship. I read that comment and I hope that didn't come across that way. Yikes! It's more about the writing and how the characters are written interacting. It just doesn't seem to flow.

i'm 75% into it.

There are always interesting aspects to the cases, but they just aren't the strongest part of these books.

I really wanted to read this weekend but the kids & fam kept me busy. I'm about 43% into Cut & Run and just got done w the first sex scene. I do agree with the choppiness and it really has dragged. The mystery hasn't really been intriguing for me either. I still have many pages to read so I'll have to see how it goes.

I can't wait to see what you think, Kay.

Same here!!

I have to say that if I were to go back and re-read I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much for many of the same reasons you guys mentioned - but I read it fairly early on in my m/m reading adventure, when I was still wowed by it and forgave a lot when it came to story-telling (if that makes sense)

That totally makes sense.

That does make sense. I think I was just shallow and thought Ty was hot and wanted to read sex scenes with him. :) (7 books worth...)

or what Tellulah said (and I totally agree) - but I think i'm still more of a Zane girl...I like the geek

LMAO!