Review – Birth of an American Gigolo by Deek Rhew

I’ve been following Deek and his wife Erin on Twitter for a while now (they’re so cute, if you aren’t following them, please remedy that immediately), so when an opportunity came up to review his debut, Birth of an American Gigolo, you can bet I jumped on that! So yes, I received a free e-copy of Birth in exchange for an honest review.

An old party girl turned domestic diva, infuriated by her husband’s cheating–and his holier-than-thou, tree-hugging, no-tits and no-hips girlfriend–inflicts her wrath by training a local boy in the fine art of seduction. She and her new boy toy turned love god, start a gigolo business as a distraction for the neglected and mistreated housewives of Alabaster Cove. (Goodreads)

On the story scale, I give Birth a solid 4 stars. As far as technical choices go, I give Birth 3 stars. I guess that averages out to 3.5, but since the technical choices are more personal than something about the story itself, my final rating is 4 out of 5 stars.

I thought the story was fun and inventive. While I in no way support the idea of cheating, whether the other person in the relationship is doing so or not, I still enjoyed this book–what good are books if we can’t explore another world while reading them?

By turns I found Birth funny, steamy, and frustrating (in a good way). The story flowed well and was entertaining, it certainly kept me reading.

On some level I felt like I identified with Lindsey. Hold on, before you get any ideas, let me explain. When the story starts, Lindsey is already frustrated with her cheating husband. Every thought she has about his assistant–the other guilty half of his extramarital trysts–is laden with all the ways she feels about Cindy. I mean, when I’m already fed up or frustrated with something, don’t I add all those adjectives, too? So, yeah, I identified with how Lindsey was feeling and enjoyed the way her thoughts were presented.

I really like how instead of Dios being naturally smart or suave, he had to be taught–it made for some funny moments.

Lindsey seems to have all her bases covered, and I have to wonder at some point if it will all crash and burn.

A problem I had (minor spoilers, click and drag to display): Angel. She works in a grocery store. She has very limited amounts of money. HOW THE HELL DID SHE GO TO THE MALL AND BUY A NEW WARDROBE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE!? Or, without shown consequences, I guess.

So why would I want to give 3 stars based on technical things? For the most part, the story is told in 3rd person limited POV, but there are little breaks with that which show the thoughts of the character, but they aren’t really set off in any way. These tripped me up the first few times I encountered them but got used to it as I read. Also, the story was told solely from Lindsey’s POV for the first half of the story. That far into the book, a POV change was jolting, especially since no precedent had been set earlier. That being said, these things were not off-putting enough to keep me from finishing the story, and won’t prevent me from reading more when it comes out.

I was certainly entertained by this story and look forward to reading more from Deek.