Are you In? is the debut novella by P.W. Steele and it's a mix of Adult Fairy Tale and Erotic Fantasy.

I liked Andy very much, he's so sweet with his insecurities. Can't wait for the stories about the other guys.

Overall, great concept but meh delivery.
This author has a lot of potential, I just hope that in the future there are less insta love and more developpement to support her storytelling.

Probably around 2.75

"Are you in?" - is a short love story about Andy, the young guy who'd like to join a gym. The book is short, so don't expect lots from it. But there is a hope that the author will continue with Andy's story.

I like the connections and relationship lead up (pretty much near the end). Had to remind myself who was who at a few times. First in a series, possibly read the next ones.

The characters were introduced so rapidly I kept getting them confused, and they didn't really have any emotional/unique personality traits to distinguish between them. Sex scenes weren't my taste, but doesn't mean others wouldn't enjoy them. Every single moment was narrated which isn't for me, as it just becomes so involved and feels unending (ex: conversations between characters including useless small talk that does not further the plot or enhance the story) There was no plot to speak of, which I want to say is understandable in a short story but I've read others much shorter that still had a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. This one just felt meandering and pointless.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to review this book early.

I have never read anything by P.W. Steele before, and I enjoyed my time reading this short story. I think it had some editing issues, mostly with both POV’s blending together and causing minor confusion. I also felt the plot was just a tad weak. There wasn’t too much substance to it, which is fine. I don’t need a well established plot. I did like the message of learning to love yourself, perceived flaws and all. I think there could have been much more developed on this. Also the age gap would have been nice to explore.
The characters were great. They definitely complemented each other nicely. I liked Andy, his character development did feel contradictory…but this so real to most people that it was nice to see. He was so confident and then at the next second so self deprecating about his appearance. Not gonna lie, I’m totally jealous that he can eat so shitty and not gain 500 pounds. Andy felt very real. I like the relationship journey, but I don’t think Jack is a strong enough character on his own. I don’t have much of a feeling or connection with him, outside of his relationship with Andy.
I am going to continue with the series. I am interested in seeing something about Michael, and Scotty seems pretty interesting.
Thank you to Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are entirely my own.

Well, forget about the layout--it needs to be touched for a final print. The story itself is magnificent. It reminds me of a locker/gym scene of porn. It is definitely HOT, though I need more than only a handjob. I need more and more of Andy and Jack's action. And, can I hope that Jack will be a bottom here? Hahaha.... It will live up my fantasy, a muscular men is getting down for the skinny one. Can't wait for the next chapter of Andy's life---especially, his sex life.

Are you in? I'm definitely IN.

A stereotyped version of unbelievable and unrealistic male gyms. What could have been a good story based on the main character soon fell into the depths of sheer nonsense. Maybe some guys may like this sort of story but certainly not for me.

This started out promisingly with likeable characters and an interesting premise but quickly devolved into a thinly-veiled, poorly-written fetish story with completely unrelatable narrators..

Welcome to this book review,
Disclaimer : I received a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

This is a book that intrigued me, the description was super interesting and I wanted to see how it would play out. The novel started out great, the writing was nice and the pacing at first was great, it all went down hill at the halfway point of the book. It was a quick read for sure, but the book skipped a lot of scenes that I believe would have been interesting to go straight to sex. Which did not make sense as Luke (one of our main character and one of the gym co-owners) said in the beginning of the book that he wanted someone to appreciate and see him for more that his physique and appearance. Furthermore, our other main character hates his physical appearance and that was a huge thing from the get go and then boom sex ? There is also this intrigue with his old ex which is somehow not addressed between the two of them and the fact that he is now somehow dating Luke.
It happened like so : training-sex-car-end...
Which I don't really get, it felt like the first 50% of the book was written by someone different and the rest rushed to wrap things up, I was really disappointed by that fact as I really loved the first part. While this is a first book in a series, it felt more like a novella.
I wanted to know why Scott, another co=owner and Luke's ex, was "baggage" and see our two main characters grow as a couple and learn more about each other, not be like "omg I don't know why I am trusting you and confessing so much when we have known each other for a week and interacted 3 times before and once wa sex out of the blue in the gym sauna", with how they were presented with trust issues, it just did not make any sense.
Great premise, okay first book that could have been amazing if not for the time skips and the underdeveloped characters. Another sad loss was Emily she as the best friend of our main character who is supportive and semed great.
Another thing to know is that it has mostly a one POV style book appart from a couple (3 or 4) of Luke's POV's which made for a very confusing read as they did not have a completely distinctive inner voice that we could discern from, and we also got random information and certainly not enough for what happened in the novel in my opinion.
Overall, great concept but meh delivery.
This author has a lot of potential, I just hope that in the future there are less insta love and more developpement to support her storytelling.
2.5/5 stars
Bookarina

This isn't typically my genre, but I wanted something short and sweet and figured why not? The description did draw me in, the gym setting seemed interesting. I like that Andy felt he was too small, which isn't something I've seen before. Seeing him struggle with the body dysmorphia would've been a cool addition except it seemed to go away rather quickly at the hot guys' attention.
There are quite a few typos, extra words, missing punctuation... especially towards the end. This seems like it's supposed to be in Andy's POV, but there's several times that we get the inner thoughts of some other character for a paragraph or two before it jumps back to Andy, which is a little disorienting. Most of the main characters have their own little info dumps to explain how we as the reader should feel about them. I get this is a shorter story, but all that stuff could get worked in via actions and conversations. Speaking of conversations, Andy fell in love/lust with the guy pretty much on a handful of words and his chiseled physique alone.
This is definitely more erotica than romance. I wasn't getting any sweet romance-y vibes from Andy and Jack, though I think the author did try... it just didn't come off, to me, as anything besides a cheap hookup, unprotected and with the people admitting to particular fetishes much too early on in knowing a person for my taste. I mean, to each their own, just wasn't my thing.
I did like Andy's relationship with his friend, Emily. I liked that 4 gay men jointly owned the gym and would've liked more interaction with and about them.
Ultimately though, I didn't feel drawn in enough by the characters to want to continue reading the series.

This book was a little hard to read. Thankfully it was a short read. I understood what the author was trying to portray with the characters and their thought process, but most of it seemed a little immature, despite their ages or supposed maturity. Many of the pages could have been left out, as there was a lot of repetition with their thoughts. The entire first chapter could have been one or two pages to convey everything we needed to know. It was basically just getting to know the main character and didn't go into the plot at all, other then mentioning starting a gym membership. That caused me to lose interest in the book right off the bat. I'm assuming the author was simply trying to make this a quick erotica read, which I'm all for, but other than a characters talking about how hot the other characters were, there was really nothing to get excited about.... until the very end, and even then, that was underwhelming. There were several characters (the owners of the gym) who all seemed to be attracted to the lead man, a couple of them even casually flirting so you didn't really know who was going to be 'the chosen one (or one's.) That I liked, because you just didn't know. It is written primarily from one POV, though there are a few paragraphs here and there that come from another POV. Due to the sexual content, this book is suitable for mature readers.

*I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.

Are you in is the first book in the Powerhouse series. The series seems to be set in a gym and focuses around a group of four gay owners who are known as the quad squad. This first book is about Andy who wants to build his body up and goes to the gym. There he meets one of the owners Jack and is instantly drawn to him.
This is a very quick read, not necessarily a bad thing, but it did end with the feeling that this was just setting up for a bigger story. I don't know if future stories are going to be similar, or if this was just setting the groundwork for a bigger story involving Jack and Andy.
There is one sex scene in this, which in all honestly was a bit of an odd one. I did feel a bit as though I'd wandered into someone's personal fantasy. That might just be me though.
I'd be interested to read the next in this series to see where it's going to go next.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book was a hard pass for me, i didn`t like the characters and it all felt overrated and overdone in a way. I liked the start of the book, around 5 pages or so, then it went downhill. All the guys seemed so hot and perfect and the main character had a huge cock and wanted to be fit... in the end he felt fit, but he had had like two-three work outs? and i didn`t really feel the romance here, it was lost on me.

IT WAS AN OK BOOK.
I WON'T SAY THE BOOK WAS BAD BUT IT WASN'T THAT MUCH GOOD TOO.
THE STARTING WAS GOOD BUT THE SCENE DESCRIPTIONS WAS BAD. THE CHARACTERS WERE NICE AND THE STORY LINE WAS GOOD BUT THE BOOK ENDED WAY TOO SOON. AND THEIR WASN'T ANY ROMANCE IN THE BOOK.

I'm really sorry for not liking this, but for me it was so boring that, even though it's so short it can be read in an hour, it was really difficult for me to finish it... if not because I recieved it for free in exchange of an honest review I would have dropped it by chapter 2.

The main problem, as I said, is that the story bored me, and the author's writing style didn't help.

First of all, the most interesting thing of this novella is the blurb: you read about an skinny guy that decides to put on some muscle and meets a hot guy in the locker room of his new gym and you expect something hot and romantic even if short. But instead you get paragraphs and more paragraphs of the author telling you completely irrelevant things and nothing happening. Nothing.

(SPOILER)
If I had to summarize this, it would be a perfect kid with a huge cock that goes to the gym, ogles some hotties until he meets the hottest one and haves sex with him. Full stop.
(END OF SPOILER)

Andy should be a complexed guy that doesn't like being skinny. But he just now realized how skinny he is (even though he eats a load of crap, which the author decides to repeat again and again for some reason) which excuse me but... You are 25 and just now realize you are a bag of bones? Not happening. What's worse is that even though he is described as handsome but unattractive all the hotties seem to be interested in him. Realistic, yeah...

Jack is described as super hot and a Casanova who wants someone to love him for who he is and not how he looks. Does that happen? Not that I've seen... The both of them just have sex because they have the hots for each other, they don't even speak more than necessary (in fact, the author doesn't like dialogues that much... They are few and not too natural).

In short, this is not a romantic novella. It doesn't have romance at all and it lacks plot and development. I find it more a porn fantasy of big dicks and full of cum, and it's not what the blurb promises. Sorry, but not for me. I'm not even interested in getting to know the other guys. Not at all.

I had the privilege of reading this book on NetGalley.

I'm not sure I liked this book that much, although I did find snippets fun. My main issues with the book are:
1) This book read much more like a harlequin romance novella set in the 1400's than a modern-day contemporary gay romance novel. The descriptions here are thick and they felt very out of place. The author describes every scene and gives it light and texture, but this book is primarily about our MC going to the gym and thirsting after all the men there. Don't get me wrong her writing is pretty, but it feels like she should be writing historical romance and the world needs more historical gay romance *nudge nudge*.
2) We have a very Mary Sue main character, he's rich, beautiful, tall, everyone loves him immediately and he (view spoiler) The only negative thing about him is that he is skinny, and he only very recently decided his skinniness was an issue (like 3 months ago). He's very hard to connect with and the story is so short there is no growth here.
3) This really isn't a romance. The book completely lacked a romance plot, it feels like the romance is going to start happening AFTER this book. The MC lusts after our the guy for like 90% of the book with nothing really but glances, strutting and one-sentence conversations and then (view spoiler). And then there is an odd mention of (view spoiler) on the very last page. Weird.

Overall I'd have to give it 2 stars. I think the author can write but the plot here was weird and very difficult to get into. I hope P.W Steele eventually writes a historical romance, I would love to see what they do with it.

<B>THIS DRC CAME FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.</B>

A solid debut effort from Author P.W. Steele. Andy and Jack are clearly the opening act...what better way to introduce the Gym Where Dreams Are Fulfilled than with two men who have "everything" except what they really want...which happens to be what the other one has. The sex scenes aren't my personal kink. That's not to say they aren't very, um, involving shall we say.

In general, this is one of those times I've read something that feels like a passion project, like a very personally important corner of a writer's idea closet. That's a very appealing thing for a writer to convey. It makes up for strange lapses in the Americanness of the story. Things like "five years with the Rams"...when they were in St. Louis, I suppose, since they only moved back to LA in 2016...but the story seems to take place in LA, though that's not specifically stated...and just in case anyone's wondering, "learnt" is never used in the USA. Except by Brits. Maybe some pommier Aussies. But Murrikinz? Nuh uh.

Still, pobody's nerfect, and I'll come round to yours for another cuppa, Author Steele.

Too short to recommend but overall written relatively well with good character development in a limited read.

How to start this review, i like romance book but having said that i do not like the play play form whereby it goes back and fro. The scences were okays to read but it was just super tiring for me to continue reading it.

I will have to pass this series if it is going to be one.

There was so much telling in this book and not enough in the scene description. It wasn't terrible, I did feel for Andy and Jack but I wish there was more.