Tricia Andersen, $3.99, ISBN 979-8201554637
Fantasy Romance, 2020

I’m surprised that Tricia Andersen goes ahead with the premise of Heavyweight. The current year dictates that you obey the dictates of the volatile and frankly pathological packs on social media, and this premise has a high chance of setting them off and making them go into rabid pit bull mode.

Picture this: our hero Samuel Hollow is in love with Henry, but there is a problem: the magic love tattoo that will pop up on one’s body after shagging a destined mate has yet to appear on any of them. That means their true love is not kosher, because screw agency, the way of the shifter dictates that it’s tramp stamp or dump.

Fortunately, their illegal homosexual coupling finds legitimacy at long last when Henry’s BFF Delilah zooms into town and Samuel immediately goes into heat for her and she he. Oh, don’t worry about Henry, he gets to play too, so at long last, two gay men find legitimacy and religion in the straightening magic hoo-hoo of a woman.

I guess it’s only fair. How many times have we heard complaints that men make a fetish out of lesbians and treat these ladies as just misguided women secretly yearning for the almighty penis? Now men that are into men can get the same treatment too!

Mind you, I get the feeling that the author doesn’t know what she wants to do with this story. 

First, the story has women groping and molesting Samuel like it’s some kind of meta reference to a section of rabid female readers of gay romances that secretly think that those hot men would go straight for them the moment these men meet these readers. Our hero, however, wants only Henry even as his pee-pee salutes and stands tall at attention.

However, the moment he meets Delilah, he’s banging her faster than I can blink, while Henry is downgraded to being Sam’s friend with benefit instead. Poor Henry. One day, Sam would meet another hot woman while getting some milk at the local 7-11, and then he’s suddenly the guy that sleeps on the couch instead.

Then again, does it matter? These people jump into the mate-ily ever after right after Delilah and Sam bang and the tramp stamp shows up, so these three characters and their romance never get any semblance of development.

It’s just sex and wham, we’re all mates now, woo-hoo, and it’s not like the sex scenes are hot enough to make up for this lack. There are some minor drama about whether Sam can juggle between bookish Henry and more outgoing Delilah, which is just an excuse to pad the pages with boring internal monologues as their free will and agency are wiped the moment the tattoo pops up. It forces these three to be horny forever and ever, and there is no escape—ever.

So, there is no romance or hot naughty scene, so what is the point of this story? I suppose it can be fodder for female readers that harbor fantasies of converting hot gay guys they lust after into being straight for them, but it holds little appeal to me, and I suspect I won’t be alone in feeling this way.