I read the other two books in this series and liked them, and I really wanted to like this one...but did I? Not even a little bit. I just didn't see what the attractions or the connections the characters had to one another. I've read enough BDSM books that I understood the connection between Chenco and Mitch when Chenco was in his male persona but when he was in the female persona that he performed as...I became lost. Between the relationship dynamics, the group dynamics and the male/female personality of the Chenco...it just didn't work for me. I guess I don't understand the attraction of drag. The start of the story was complex and promising, but everything was way too wrapped up and pretty by the end. I checked back to be sure that it was part of the Special Delivery series. It had some of the same characters but this one was not even in the same league as the other two books. ( )

This book was very different in tone from the previous Special Delivery books, in an extremely tense and serious way that mostly didn't work for me. The way the Gordy plotline started one way and then developed and finished in another seemed to skirt possible important exploration of the initial topic in favor of wrapping up that conflict in a quick (if messy and unsettling) bow so the characters could have their HEA. This was the primary reason for docking two stars off my book rating.

The kinks practiced by the main characters are definitely Not My Things, but Cullinan as usual did a fantastic job of making it clear what the kinks meant to the characters and demanding respect for them.

My favorite part of the story, the strongest aspect of the series, is the found family among Mitch, Sam, Randy, Ethan, Steve, Chenco, and even Crabtree. Their love and unconditional support for each other shines so brightly throughout, that alone justification for reading. Everyone's instant acceptance of Chenco and Caramela is beautiful, as is their desire to help in healthy, often explicitly consent-driven ways. This acceptance and desire extends between every member of the family, and it's presented in such a healthy, powerful way. More stories need to have those kinds of relationships. ( )

Chenco Ortiz has been doing okay, eking out a living at part time jobs and perfecting his drag act whenever he can. Then his pos dad dies, and it turns out that he left the trailer where Chenco has been living (and which his dad promised to him) to the KKK. Chenco flips out over this is the office of the lawyer handling his dad's will, and fellow client Steve Vance witnesses the freak-out and tries to calm Chenco down. Chenco and Steve eventually start seeing each other, and the story explores all sorts of things including found family, a BDSM relationship between Steve and Chenco, the emotional fall-out from a decades-defunct but still-damaging relationship Steve had with an old boyfriend, and Chenco's continuing blossoming and success with his alter-ego Caramela.

It's a lot to be going on in one romance novel (and there's a whole passel of side characters, all of whom form the found family and only a couple of whom really get any particular face-time in the story), and sometimes it showed. I occasionally felt like the novel was referring to things that hadn't been mentioned before as if they had, and I'm still unsure if that was a function of slips in the editing (I mean, that can be as simple as a "the" where you need an "a") or if it was a bigger problem, either of structure or of asking the reader to hold too much in mind at once. The minor characters also felt a bit under-developed. (This is the third book in a series, and I'd only read the first one before. I didn't expect that to matter, but maybe that was the problem. Although, the characters I did know from book one didn't feel anymore real in this book than the ones from book two, who I didn't, so *shrug*.)

The novel thus felt a tad uneven; however, I did love love love the main characters and thought that Cullinan did her usual brilliant job of portraying complex emotional relationships and giving her characters a believable HEA. She absolutely nails difficult scenes. One in particular in this book is just crazy intense and so well done. (Though I really hope Steve seeks out a kink aware therapist at some point because man the outcome of all that stuff with the ex is rough). Recommended with slight hesitation generally but wholeheartedly to Cullinan fans. ( )

Tough is the operative word in this novel of love and redemption between two men who've been batted around by life.

After being rejected by his mother for being gay and reviled by his ill father who promised to leave him the old man's Rio Grand Valley trailer after he died, Chenco Ortiz is incensed when his father leaves the trailer to the Ku Klux Klan instead.

Visiting the probate lawyer's office to see if there's anything he can do to keep the trailer which he considers his home, Chenco runs into Steve Vance, a friend of Chenco's older brother, Mitch Tedsoe, the long distance trucker from the first in the series, Special Delivery.

A drag queen in his spare time from his job at a cafe, on the one hand Chenco knows his father was repulsed by his son's onstage alter ego Caramela, but on the other hand, the old man should have been grateful because Chenco paid all his medical bills and the home where he spent his last days.

As Chenco stews about where he will live when evicted, Steve is smitten with him and begins a campaign to get to know him. When push comes to shove, Chenco moves into Steve's spacious hacienda which is also housing Chenco's brother Mitch, Mitch's husband Sam, and their friend Randy, a Las Vegas card dealer, who is married to a casino owner.

Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews: http://glbt.theromancereviews.com/viewbooksreview.php?bookid=13723 ( )