Tag Archives: thom collins

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Book Review: Tomorrow’s Hero by Thom Collins

Fernando Inglesias is the typical Premier League League footballer, with a flash lifestyle and a girlfriend who’s famous for starring in a reality TV show. But Fernando has a huge secret – he’s gay, and he knows that coming out would change everything for him. So he keeps his man-on-man encounters swift and anonymous, until he meets Joshua on a trip to a gay club on the island of Ibiza. The two make an instant connection and the sex is unforgettable, but Joshua has reasons for distrusting closeted men, and finding out Fernando’s real identity changes everything…

Tomorrow’s Hero is Book 2 in the Success series, about the complicated lives of men in the celebrity spotlight, and while there’s a loose connection to the first book in the series, Never Too Famous, you really don’t need to have read that book to enjoy this one. You also don’t need to know anything about football as the storyline barely touches on the sport, which would be a disappointment for a huge fan of the game like myself if Tomorrow’s Hero hadn’t been such an engaging read. Thom Collins’ real strength lies in picking apart the celebrity culture that’s sprung up around the stars of reality TV shows, and how someone can have a hugely glamorous life that’s built on little more than Botox and fillers. In this book, he also has a dig at the kind of ultra-buff male action hero who’s stringing out those roles rather longer than he should, in the shape of Joshua’s father, Jason Drake.

There are reasons why there’s currently no openly gay player in English professional football, and Collins explores some of them, giving plausible reasons why Fernando has created an alter ego, Juan Carlos, for his same-sex adventures. It helps to create believable conflict between Fernando and Joshua and leaves you hoping that Joshua can overcome being lied to by Fernando and they get the happy ending they deserve.

By turns funny and tender, and with sex scenes hotter than the Balearic sunshine, Tomorrow’s Hero will have you eagerly looking forward to more books in this deliciously bitchy series.

Tomorrow’s Hero is available from First For Romance, Amazon US and Amazon UK. I was given a copy of the book by Lucy Felthouse at Writer Marketing Services in return for an honest review.

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Book Review: Never Too Famous By Thom Collins

Harry Alexander and Grant Hunter have both made their names on reality shows, but while Grant is happy to milk his fame for all it’s worth, Harry is tiring of being famous for nothing more than having been on TV. When they bump into each other at a nightclub where Harry’s making a personal appearance, it’s obvious there’s a connection between them, but Harry really doesn’t like Grant’s co-stars on the show Sexy Northerners, and unfortunately where Grant goes the rest of his crew are never too far behind. Can the two men ever get together for long enough to act on their desires for each other, or are they destined to be celebrity ships that pass in the night?

Never Too Famous is a fun, hot novella that taps into our current obsession for reality TV and the outrageous micro-celebs these shows create. Harry is an ‘old school’ star, in that he became famous for actually doing a job – in this case, an engineer on a cruise ship – while Grant is from a show that, like Geordie Shore, Made In Chelsea and their ilk, simply features a cast of pretty young things fighting, shagging, and agonising about every last detail of their hook-ups. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Thom Collins has spent some time working in TV, because he really captures the vibe of the low-rent TV chat shows where characters like Grant and Harry would wring out the last drops of their fame, and he has plenty to say about the people who are willing to distort their looks with cosmetic surgery, release sex tapes, and generally do whatever desperate things it takes to stay in the public eye.

Harry and Grant are nicely contrasted as characters, with the older Harry initially appearing the more grounded one in relation to the brash, cocky Grant, but as the story progresses and Grant finds himself trying to help a friend who is getting sucked deeper into the seedy side of fame, it becomes obvious they’re really not too different after all. The attraction between them is a slow burn, but when they finally get together, the sex is steamy and the affection between them palpable.

My only quibble with the book is that for something produced by Pride Publishing, who have very high standards in everything from editing to cover design, there’s a noticeable number of mistakes in this copy of the text, though hopefully those have now been fixed.

If you’ve ever thought being a reality TV star might be fun, Never Too Famous might make you think again, and as this is the first book in a series – Success – all about men in the public eye, I can’t wait to see what comes

Never Too Famous is published by Pride Publishing and is available from First For Romance, Amazon US and Amazon UK. I was given a copy of the book by Lucy Felthouse at Writer Marketing Services in return for an honest review.