Sindustry Volume 1

Title: Sindustry Volume 1
Author: Various
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Genre: M/M Contemporary and historical Romance
Length: 332 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

A Guest Review by Jenre

THE BLURB

Rentboys, strippers, hookers, and porn stars—these men are making a buck the hard way. This is Sindustry, where a quick fuck is more likely than a romantic kiss. But while they face the harsh light of reality every day, unexpected love finds them in all sorts of crazy ways. Take a look at Sindustry from the outside in, because for these guys, happily ever after is just around the corner.

THE REVIEW

This anthology of different stories all based around the sex industry attracted me because I wanted to read something that dealt perhaps with the grittier side of the gay lifestyle. The characters in these stories are rent boys, strippers and phone sex workers. This didn’t mean that the stories were depressing – although many of them certainly didn’t shy away from depicting the harsh realities of the lives of these characters – instead the stories were uplifting, showing that love can blossom even where there may not seem to be any hope.

This was also another anthology where none of the stories were badly written. In fact I enjoyed them all immensely. That, of course, didn’t mean that I liked some more than others.

My favourite story was Fun and Games by Lenore Black, which tells of geeky Patrick, who runs a company that produces video games from his home office. He never goes out of his front door to meet people and so his friends arrange for a hooker for his 25th birthday. That hooker is Jack, whose winning personality breaks down all Patrick’s objections to his friend’s ‘gift’. Patrick is surprised when Jack returns the next night as well, and the next and wonders how much this is costing his friends. Imagine his surprise (but not mine, I hasten to add) when Patrick discovers that his friends aren’t paying at all. I have a thing for geeky guys and Patrick was just the epitome of nerd. He spends all his time designing computer games; he never leaves his house; he has low self-esteem; and is completely clueless as to what is happening between him and Jack. This was a really lighthearted, fun read and even a minor misunderstanding at the end of the story didn’t prevent me from enjoying it.

There were several stories in this anthology which dealt with older men (40+) who hire younger rent-boys for sex. I found this older/younger dynamic quite refreshing, especially as most of the stories began with the older man being in control and yet by the end the younger man had gained an equal footing. The next two stories both contained these themes.

In How Could I Not? by Jamie Freeman, we are given the story of a young Indian man, Ben, who occasionally takes money for sex to supplement his income. He is hired by Joshua, an older man, who takes him to an expensive hotel and has sex with him whilst watching DVD footage of another man who looks very similar to Ben. This arrangement goes on, weekly, for some time until Ben realises that he has fallen for Joshua, which suddenly complicates their arrangement. I liked the theme of the older and younger man in this story as well as the difficulties that Ben goes through once he admits to himself that he has fallen in love.  I also empathised with Joshua and his reasons for hiring Ben and the scene where he confesses his reasons to Ben was quite moving.

As Beauty Does by JL Merrow, was, perhaps, one of the more grittier stories in the anthology. It follows Nathan who turns tricks on a cold London street for money. He’s barely making enough to pay the rent, but he has his regular ‘customers’ which helps keep the money in. One of those customers is Stephen, an older man who comes at the same time each week for a blow job. I liked Nathan, especially that he had a reason for how he had managed to get into the situation he was in now. I also liked that he had the ambition and drive to try and improve his life by enrolling in the local tech to do his A Levels. The author showed us that life as a male prostitute wasn’t pretty and I really sympathised with Nathan and his problems and rejoiced for him at his happy ending.

Honourable mentions also should go to Stripped Bare by S Blaise which gave a different spin on the traditional ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale; Chat Line by Clare London which was a fun, cheeky story of mixed messages; and A Muse by Zahra Owens which used an unusual mix of first and second person narration to tell the story of a photographer who hires a prostitute for his photo shoot.

If I have any complaints about the stories it would be that a couple: Reluctant by Madeline Urban and Rhianne Aile and Boomerang by Rachelle Cochrane had endings which were a little too sweet for my tastes. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as many readers like stories like that, just not me!

Despite that, I would recommend all these stories as every single one of them had something about them that made them interesting and engrossing reads. I rarely read anthologies as a whole book, often spreading the stories out over a few days in between other books I’m reading, but with Sindustry 1 I read it all, one story after another. I just couldn’t put it down.