Playing Dirty by Mickey Miller

MALE ROMANCE AUTHOR ALERT.

It's honestly been a while since I read a romance novel by a guy that wasn't M/M (i.e. male/male), which is funny because I think a high percentage of M/M books are actually written by women. Anyways, Playing Dirty by Mickey Miller was recommended to me by a friend who knows the author and, knowing I'm a huge romance reader, was curious what my thoughts were.

The book is self-published and a debut book, so I wasn't expecting a fabulous, perfectly put together, totally non-cliche book... which is good, because I didn't get that.

Jake Napleton is a baseball player with a bad reputation.  Rather than fix his reputation, Jake is fine with keeping his positive attributes a secret while letting the world think he's a boozing womanizer.  Enter Andrea Diggers.  Andrea is a budding public relations expert looking to prove herself and Jake's image is the perfect place to start.  But Jake is more interested in what Andrea can give him in the bedroom and less interested in how she's going to improve his reputation.

If you're an avid reader like myself then you've probably come across this plot a time or two.  I think almost every romance writer has written this plot a time or two (which actually means Mr. Miller is probably on his way to a lucrative career).  I think Mr. Miller fell victim to the "too many plot lines going at once" problem that many authors (and the writers of American Horror Story) fall victim to.  There was an ex-boyfriend problem, a kid problem, a crazy mom problem, a crazy boss problem, his bad reputation problem, and her job problem.  Too many problems.  The book would probably have been more successful had Mr. Miller chosen 2 or 3 of these and expanded on them more.  I would have loved to really learn more about the characters, especially Andrea, and what really made them them.  But if you love drama-filled stories and don't mind the crammed in plots then you won't be disappointed.

Something I didn't expect-- I kept forgetting that Playing Dirty was written by a guy.  I remember occasionally thinking "wow, this could have been written by a lady".  I really thought I would notice a difference between this novel and those by female authors, especially during Andrea's POV, but Mr. Miller has the apparent talent of morphing into a woman and putting her thoughts onto paper.  Sometimes female authors are criticized for creating unrealistic male characters, but you won't be able to say the same about this book obviously.

The sex scenes were fab.  So, the author needs no help there.

All in all, I think that Mickey Miller has real potential.  He definitely has room to grow as an author (especially finding his own voice among the many, many romance authors out there on the market), but I think you should put him on your "Authors To Watch For" list.