My Thoughts: I give it ♥♥. I got completely lost with Dirty Secret. I wish I would have taken notes while reading because the numerous names is where I really got confused. Most of the characters are Korean. Many of those Korean’s have an Americanized name. To top that off some of those people have nicknames that are familial, stature references, or just simple nicknames. This was distracting to the point that when I got to the end where we readers find out the answers to the case that Cole was hired for I had forgot this was the reason Cole got swept up into all this.
Scarlet brings a friends son (Shin-Cho) to Cole. Shin-Cho would like to find his father who has been missing since nineteen ninety-four. Cole’s investigative skills will have him looking into many Korean gay men’s private lives revolving around a bath house and the activities that went on there. There is so much motive in here I never knew where/whom to put my guesses towards. So many different people are caught up in the crossfire of the escalating violence I never knew who was a target and who was collateral damage.
The case itself explains so much about Koreans culture to Cole that he better understands his relationship struggles with Jae. This is the part of the book that I truly enjoyed. Jae has obligations to his family as a man. This includes taking care of his mother and sisters, having a child and a wife of his own to create a legacy of sorts to leave behind at the time of his death. I’m enjoying the cultural references in the Cole McGinnis series. Some of its harsh and ugly but it is still completely intriguing.
When purchasing and reading this series be sure to start off with the first book Dirty Kiss. You’ll also want to buy and read the second and third book together. Dirty Secret does not end at what I consider a cliffhanger. No one’s life is in danger and our guys are happily together. It does end with a very interesting phone call that has me ambivalent as to whether I wish to continue with the next book in the series. For most of the book, my mind was ‘quit this series’…but now? Maybe. I need to get over the very hard work it was to just get through this one!
Author’s Blurb:
Loving Kim Jae-Min isn’t always easy: Jae is gun-shy about being openly homosexual. Ex-cop turned private investigator Cole McGinnis doesn’t know any other way to be. Still, he understands where Jae is coming from. Traditional Korean men aren’t gay—at least not usually where people can see them.
But Cole can’t spend too much time unraveling his boyfriend’s issues. He has a job to do. When a singer named Scarlet asks him to help find Park Dae-Hoon, a gay Korean man who disappeared nearly two decades ago, Cole finds himself submerged in the tangled world of rich Korean families, where obligation and politics mean sacrificing happiness to preserve corporate empires. Soon the bodies start piling up without rhyme or reason. With every step Cole takes toward locating Park Dae-Hoon, another person meets their demise—and someone Cole loves could be next on the murderer’s list
My Brain Vacation 