Soft Launch
Hazardverse: Sidetracks
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Soft Launch
Buy Now for £13.48
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Narrated by:
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Greg Tremblay
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By:
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Gregory Ashe
Summary
It’s soft until it’s hard.
Sam Yarmark is going to be a detective. He’s done everything right—the trainings, the homework, the performance evaluations. He’s even got a mentor. So, when the chief of police tells him his lack of community involvement might cost him the promotion, there’s only one thing to do: get involved. Fast.
Gray Dulac is putting his life back together. After a self-destructive spiral, he’s finally found solid ground in the nonprofit he founded to help victims of intimate-partner violence. The only problem? Funding. And when a consultant tells Gray that his bad boy reputation is keeping donors away, there’s only one thing to do: fix his image. Fast.
When Sam shows up at Gray’s nonprofit, looking for an opportunity to pad his resume, Gray sees a way they can help each other: Gray will make sure Sam gets the community endorsements he needs if Sam pretends to be Gray’s loving—and stable—boyfriend.
What could possibly go wrong?
©2025 Gregory Ashe (P)2025 Gregory AsheListener received this title free
Soft Launch begins around a year after the events of Body Count, and Gray is clearly working on himself and has pulled himself up and out of the mire he was so sunk into. He’s started an organisation to help victims of domestic violence – as a survivor, it’s something very close to his heart – but is struggling to attract the kind of funding he needs to be able to grow and develop the initiative so he can help more people.
We first met Sam Yamark, a rookie patrol officer in… I can’t remember which book, but he appears throughout the Hazard & Somerset series. Sam’s ambition to make detective hits a stumbling block when his boss, Chief Peterson, tells him that he’s looking for a detective who’s going to be able to go out and establish relationships within the local community, and that Sam’s lack of experience in that direction will almost certainly count against him, so he decides to go out and build some of those relationships and prove to Peterson that he can do the work required.
Which is how Sam ends up volunteering at WISP, the non-profit Gray is struggling to get off the ground – and Gray, having been told his reputation is going to be a problem when it comes to securing funding, decides that what he needs is a squeaky-clean serious (fake)boyfriend, who can convince potential donors that he’s “a model of family values or whatever it is they want.”
The whole ‘I need to fake-date someone who will be good for my image’ is a staple of the fake-relationship trope, but the important thing is that these two men absolutely work as a couple – yes, they’re opposites in so many ways (Gray is mouthy and impulsive, Sam is polite and thoughtful) but they are absolutely what the other needs, providing the opportunity and a safe space for the other to just be who they really are. They have terrific chemistry and the romance is nicely done - Sam is exactly who Gray needs to help him on the way to becoming the person he really wants to be and Gray becomes Sam’s biggest cheerleader.
Greg Tremblay delivers another excellent performance here; the pacing and characterisation is excellent, and he’s fabulous in the intimate scenes and in the moments of heightened emotion.
Gregory Ashe once again proves that he can write pretty much whatever he turns his hand to; I appreciate his switching up the genres in the Hazardverse: Sidetracks books, and getting to revisit so many favourite characters. Soft Launch is funny and poignant with well-developed characters and a lot of depth, and I’m happy to recommend it.
An unlikely couple - but it works!
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What a treat!
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