Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Also the rate of a book Dance With Me, By Heidi Cullinan is so economical; lots of people are actually thrifty to allot their money to get guides. The other reasons are that they feel bad and have no time to visit guide establishment to search guide Dance With Me, By Heidi Cullinan to check out. Well, this is modern-day era; so lots of publications could be obtained effortlessly. As this Dance With Me, By Heidi Cullinan and much more e-books, they could be obtained in quite quick methods. You will certainly not have to go outside to get this e-book Dance With Me, By Heidi Cullinan
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Best PDF Ebook Online Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Sometimes, life requires a partner.
Ed Maurer has bounced back, more or less, from the neck injury that permanently benched his semi-pro football career. He hates his soul-killing office job, but he loves volunteering at a local community center. The only fly in his ointment is the dance instructor, Laurie Parker, who can't seem to stay out of his way.
Laurie was once one of the most celebrated ballet dancers in the world, but now he volunteers at Halcyon Center to avoid his society mother's machinations. It would be a perfect escape, except for the oaf of a football player cutting him glares from across the room.
When Laurie has a ballroom dancing emergency and Ed stands in as his partner, their perceptions of each other turn upside down. Dancing leads to friendship, being friends leads to becoming lovers, but most important of all, their partnership shows them how to heal the pain of their pasts. Because with every turn across the floor, Ed and Laurie realize the only escape from their personal demons is to keep dancing - together.
This novel has been previously published and has been revised from its original release.
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan - Amazon Sales Rank: #46919 in Audible
- Published on: 2015-10-23
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 599 minutes
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Where to Download Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Most helpful customer reviews
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Adds A Whole New Dimension By Alan Arthur Katz I don't often take a second look at re-released books. Re-releases are generally for new readers. There's almost never enough new material, in most re-releases, to merit a new take on (or a new purchase of) a book I've already read.But "Dance With Me" blew me away when I first read it. Rarely have I been as moved (and aroused) as I was by the relationship between the two main characters and the vivid, sensual descriptions of them, how they moved, dressed, expressed themselves in both words and dance. At first glance, the theme seemed pretty trite, what with one macho almost-straight guy and another who is not just gay, but an artist, a dancer, someone who seems to hold the music of the spheres within his soul. Oil and water, of course, but not for long. There's not a false step in the entire book, not a word out-of-character, the emotional highs just keep on coming. In sum, "Dance With Me" is an exquisitely-written book filled with beauty, poetry and insight, well-worth re-releasing, over and over again, as far as I'm concerned.All too rarely, a book surfaces that is so far beyond the rest of my normal fare, that I am awed at the power and talent of the author. This is one of those. Yes, it has all the requisite Gay Romance elements: financial trouble, physical infirmity, emotional disability, life-altering events. It is also, in some ways, a conventional love story: boy meets boy cute, boys fight, boys fall in love. Been there, done that - but never before as beautifully and evocatively as Ms. Cullinan does it in "Dance With Me".This book offers another whole dimension beyond the expected, one that touched me deeply - a new, expressive vocabulary that I've never before encountered in any form of literature: dance.More than once, she moved me to tears, her descriptions of emotions expressed and shared through the language of the body in motion. She deeply understands the joy, the power and the grace of movement. She extols the celebration of the male body as an instrument of art and expression, of beauty, elegance and passion that could (and often did) leave me breathless.More than three decades ago, I was involved with dance, first as a stage designer, then as a producer of several dance companies, including the Downtown Ballet of New York. Not qualified by training or body to be a dancer, I nurtured my passion for dance by enabling those who do. It was a transcendent time of my life.Music and art can make my heart soar. But nothing transports me as completely, deeply and spiritually as seeing those exquisite bodies fly through space while telling a tale or sharing their passion, pain and hope. It is truly a great gift. It is also almost unbearably sexy.Ms. Cullinan gets this. The dance in this book is much more than the literal dance depicted in the scenes. It is also a metaphor for the trials and love of the main characters.I regret only that my words, in this review, fall far short of expressing the joy, the beauty, the pure flight, the love, the passion of the dance and the dancers that Ms. Cullinan seems to express so easily, with prose that is often inspired.Of course, that's why she is the writer and I, just a reader - a reader who loved this book.Thank you, Ms. Cullinan for writing this brilliant book, and for releasing it once again. Anyone who misses this extraordinary book will also miss one of life's great reading experiences. I cannot recommend it highly enough.Alan reviews gay fiction for the Sinfully Addicted... blog.
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful. One of our genre's best authors flexes her muscle in a subtle, supple pas de deux. By Damon Suede Okay... first things first: five out of five stars obviously. This book is so adamantly, obviously superior to 90% of the gay romantic fiction being published that I feel like assigning it a comparative rank seems juvenile. At this level of craft, can the five stars be in question?. I feel like when you have a gifted, warm, generous writer who consistently pushes into new terrain with grace and affection, the question is not if you will enjoy the book but why. The issue won't be the stars, it will be the ways the stars align in each book.I've said it before but it bears repeating, Cullinan writes her books. She doesn't merely type them and hope for the best; she doesn't cobble them together out of half-digested borrowings; she doesn't regurgitate the same bland book over and over in an Ourobouros of homoerotic hackwork. Cullinan writes; she writes beautifully; and she has written a marvelous book that you will enjoy if you have any interest in sexy, subtle, snarky romance fiction.Dance with Me is a contemporary Odd Couple narrative about two men who shouldn't work together, but almost cannot work apart. As with many of her books, Cullinan starts with a "cute" story germ that almost feels like a high-end porn setup (Dancer and Jock tussle!) and then refuses to take the easy, sleazy road to their HEA. The story straddles the worlds of dance and football at several levels of professionalism and expertise... As always, Cullinan revels in the particulars of her characters' lives. Her characters inhabit the worlds of sports and art from limelight to ruin fully and viscerally because she spends time aggregating the tiny slivers of reality that make their jobs feel like more than a costumes her characters wear between sexy times and witty banter.And let me tell you: the times, they are sexy and the banter, it is witty. The engaging reality of these two men slams into you from the first intense pages of personal setback which set up the plot and the searing meet-cute. With typical panache, she draws clear parallels between the competitiveness and equilibrium native to all athletes of stage and field... and then keeps her men off balance for most of the book with delicious results. She sidesteps the clichés about masculinity and aggression you might expect, and even prods stereotypes and prejudices within the gay community. Awesome! Cullinan has a knack for building these meat-n-bone men and then dragging them towards their happy endings over mud and marble.Personal aside: I should add that I come to this book with a strange skew: this book covers a lot of personal terrain for me. I worked in theatre as a song-n-dance guy till I was in my mid-20s, so I have had close contact with the strange overlapping worlds of the professional dancer; I know several "Lauries." Likewise, I grew up in Texas, where Football is a religion and semi-pro games often devolve into brutal free-for-alls. Weirdly, I also have friends who compete (and teach) on the international ballroom circuit. Those familiarities might have worked against me; Cullinan always does her homework, but knowing turf intimately can work against the enjoyment of a story. Of course, I needn't have worried...Semi-pro football player Ed starts the book with a brutal, tragic injury that reroutes his entire life for better and worse: a promising athlete doomed to cubicle hell. Picked out in snarky, snappy humor, Ed offers up all kinds of sexy he-man goodness without sliding into cliché. Unmanned by his failings, his regret, and his debilitating injuries, his journey presents the bedrock of the book. Though the narrative uses a split third person POV, in some ways the story belongs to Ed a bit more because the plot points hinge on his transformations and decisions. My sense was that Cullinan felt more connected to Ed, and so I did as well.Laurie tended to be more objectified and held at arm's length, even when he controlled the POV; his detachment and neuroses (n.b. completely characteristic of dancers) made him into the object for Ed's subject, so that although they shared the story, I experienced Laurie at a slight remove. By the same token, Laurie's journey from artistic paralysis to explosive release provides much of the book's sparkle. It's a clever choice because Cullinan ends up using the intense, intricate realities of dance (in several forms) to bring her characters together and to navigate the rough terrain between them. Those dance details weave seamlessly through the entire novel. Magical stuff. I especially appreciated the fact that both men refused to capitulate, but both managed to compromise believably. Theirs felt like a real relationship: warm, human, and humorous.And the sex!?! Holy Moly, Mother of Lube is the sex hot! The inexorable dance these fellas do around and against each other proves excruciating and exquisite. Again, Cullinan refuses to kick back and crank out the same old, same old. No two of her characters have the same kind of sex or the same desires. She knows better. The intimacy between her heroes specifies and defines their relationships; every interaction, erotic or otherwise, builds and transmutes them. And because dance is inherently physical and performative she gets to play with voyeurism, exhibitionism, obsession, flexibility, and dominance between Ed and Laurie as they dance towards and around each other. Raunchy, smoldering tenderness unfolds and entangles them.Likewise, Cullinan also accomplishes a deft trick in this book, using injury and defeat as a way to render her men fragile without making them passive. The cleverness in that? Two aggressive, opinionated males flesh themselves out three-dimensionally by revealing their flaws and handicaps: lovely. In that context, gentle treatment only underscores their pain (and masculinity). Since injury factors so heavily in these men's lives, Hurt/Care becomes less a genre trope than the baseline for their entire existences. It's a delicious M/M seam between behaviors that need to be both butch and vulnerable. Ed and Laurie learn to act as stem and flower in turn for each other, and the spot-on push/pull of partnered dance spills over into their lives.Do I have any reservations about Dance with Me? Meh. Minor quibbles. There's a looseness to some of the connective tissue in the subplots; interestingly the squishy bits all pivot on Laurie (who as I've mentioned, did seem less central at times). The initial public "ruining" of Laurie never landed with me (because of my familiarity with the dance and ballroom worlds) and felt like a melodramatic device more than an actual catastrophe. The reconciliation with Laurie's mother felt oddly tidy and slick. And most noticeably, there is a Mickey-n-Judy "putting on a show" subplot in the second half that I saw coming a little too early and that ultimately imploded in a way that made it feel artificial and unnecessary. And yet, the radiant, redemptive ending sort of swept that minor clutter out of consciousness.Totally dug this one. I loved getting to know these two men and will definitely read it again... more than once. If for some insane reason you haven't already bought it, you should. And if you own it and have dallied, you're missing out. Dance with Me offers righteous moves and technique to spare.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Such a beautiful MM read, it spoke to me through words and dance By DonnaC Dance With Me by Heidi Cullinan5 stars!!“Better to dance with the devil and enjoy yourself than hover under the glower of the nuns.”This was one of those books that I just couldn’t put down, such an intense and beautiful story where the character connection was second to none. This MM spoke to me, the characters spoke to me and the author spoke to me. When I read my first MM many moons ago I never expected to fall in love with this genre so much. I try and read at least one a month but one is never enough, I always find myself reading two or three one after the other.Ed and Laurie were opposites in all sense of the word, one was an ex semi-pro footballer and the other an amazingly talented ballet dancer. Both had their issues but both had hearts of gold, their paths crossing at a community centre where each gave a class. They hated each other, constant confrontations but we all know that there is a fine line between love and hate. Both made no secret of their sexuality and it seems that their hate for each other was just the kindling to an intense sexual attraction that neither were willing to admit in the first instance.It is this slow, sizzling burn that draws you into their story, that will they won’t they push and pull that I love and crave. Never too much but enough to garner your interest and keep you invested on every level.“…and when he danced he made male beauty come alive. Laurie wasn’t simply good. Laurie was a f***ing artist. As far as Ed was concerned, he was a legend. And I’ve kissed him.”Ed’s career was ended with a near life threatening injury, he somehow was lucky enough to survive but the ramifications left him with a life long neck injury that never let him forget. He battled his way through life but he had never been the same since. He missed football and he saw his neck injury as a flaw, how it made him an inconvenience and a liability and totally unlovable…he couldn’t have been more wrong.“The pain wasn’t trying to take away his life. The pain was his life.”Laurie had a huge career in front of him when he took the biggest chance of his life and it spectacularly back fired. It seems the world was not ready for two male dance partners and he became a laughing stock in the dancing world. Laurie set up his own studio and gave up performing. It was a choice that haunts him to this day as it not only ruined his career but that of his partner too. His family are so unsupportive and just see him as a means to further ingratiate them into the social circle that they continually flutter around in.“Sometimes I think two parts of me warred with each other, and they took down the whole of me in a civil war.”When Ed loses a bet and Laurie asks him to attend a dance class as his partner the lines finally begin to blur and both of them finally notice the undeniable, intense, sexual chemistry that positively hums between them. You could power the national grid from in between these pages.“You don’t simply feel the rhythm. You must feel the soul, both of the dance and of your partner.”I loved the fact that these two had dancing in common and it became such an intrinsic part of their relationship. How dancing brought them together but also centred them, how dancing was “their” time where their connection became so deep that earth stood still and it was just Ed and Laurie, they had both finally found their home.“Why do you stay with me?”“…because I don’t want to dance by myself.”Ed was a hilarious character that lightened this book and balanced it beautifully; his sarcastic, witty banter had me in hysterics and even lightened the intense, sullen Laurie. You couldn’t help but be affected and infected by Ed’s personality. Laurie was the cautious one, the dependable one, slightly OCD but the perfect balance to Ed’s carefree attitude.This was a voyage of discovery for both of them and I was so glad that I went on this journey with them. This was a leap of faith for both of them, one of the biggest they would ever make, but one they would never regret. This journey was by no means easy, but learning to trust and love, to have faith in themselves and each other, to believe they were worthy…it was exquisite and I totally fell in love with them and this book.“Laurie opened his mouth, his legs, his body and took Ed all the way into his soul.”
See all 132 customer reviews...
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan PDF
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan iBooks
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan ePub
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan rtf
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan AZW
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan Kindle
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
Dance with Me, by Heidi Cullinan
