Permanent Ink by Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn

At twenty-three, Poe Montgomery is going nowhere. He still lives in his father’s basement and spends most of his time tagging with his friends. When an arrest lands him in debt, Poe accepts the front desk job at Permanent Ink, the tattoo shop owned by his father’s best friend, Jericho McAslan. Jericho is nearly twice Poe’s age, but with his ink and prematurely graying hair, he quickly takes the starring role in Poe’s hottest fantasies.

Jericho is known for his ability to transform poorly designed tattoos into works of art, but he was once as aimless and misdirected as Poe. Wanting to pay it forward the way someone once did for him, Jericho makes Poe his apprentice and is determined to keep things strictly professional. Easier said than done when Poe makes his interest—and his daddy kink—abundantly clear.

Jericho can’t resist Poe or their intense chemistry for long. But between the age gap, tension with Poe’s father, and Poe’s best friend calling him a sellout, they’ll need to ensure they’re both on the same page before they can rewrite their rocky start into something permanent.

Book 1
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Riptide Publishing

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Avid Reader – ☆☆☆☆
M/M Romance, some Daddy Dom scenes
Triggers: Click HERE to see Avid Reader’s review on Goodreads for trigger warnings.

This is a story about friendship, love, second chances, and figuring out who you are.

Poe is kind of a slacker. He lives with his dad and goes out at night with his best friend, Blue, to tag (vandalize) the neighborhood with graffiti. He gets caught one night and his dad is at his wits end. Landon is trying to make Poe see that there is more to life than tagging and doing nothing.

Landon is best friends with Jericho and when Poe is picked up again, Landon goes to Jericho just to vent. However, someone once gave Jericho the kick in the pants and leg up that he needed to get out of the bad lifestyle he was living and get into tattooing. Jericho offers that same chance for Poe.

What follows is Poe and Jericho figuring out whether or not they should act on their attraction. They have good, developed chemistry and when Daddy Dom comes out to play, Poe almost wets himself.

In this story, you're hit with growing up, the realization that you might need help, seeing who is a true friend, and learning to love without reservation. I can't wait to see what the next books hold.


Sarah – ☆☆☆☆
This is a sexy, steamy read about a tattoo artist who hires his friend’s son, and then, despite his best efforts, falls hard for the much younger man.

Daddy kinks aren’t really my thing but the kink is pretty negligible in this book. Honestly, silver fox Jeremiah is hot enough that I’d play with him any way he wanted. I wasn’t quite as drawn to Poe. He is very young and while he’s adorable, it’s an exhausting new puppy sort of adorable – fun to play with but far too much work to ever consider taking home. He is way too needy and still making stupid teenage decisions. And seriously, he lives in his father’s basement.

My reaction to Poe aside, these two are very hot together and there are some wonderfully steamy scenes in this book. Boss and new hire, kid dating dad’s best friend – there is a delightfully illicit charge to Poe and Jeremiah’s relationship that I really loved.

I loved learning more about tattooing in this story. I found Poe’s apprenticeship fascinating and I’m now following even more tattoo artists on Instagram. Alternately, I couldn’t quite get into the graffiti aspect of this story. I’m probably just too old and too mainstream to get it but it just served to make Poe seem like more of a clueless brat (and not in a good subby sort of way).

I’m still not sure about Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn writing together. For me, Gale is an immediate autobuy while Vaughn’s writing is sometimes a bit too fluffy for me. This collaboration works well but it is missing the witty, sarcastic dialogue I love in Gale’s books and it isn’t quite as edgy as some of her writing.

Avon Gale

AVON GALE wrote her first story at the age of seven, about a “Space Hat” hanging on a rack and waiting for that special person to come along and purchase it—even if it was a bit weirder than the other hats. Like all of Avon’s characters, the space hat did get its happily ever after—though she’s pretty sure it was with a unicorn. She likes to think her vocabulary has improved since then, but the theme of quirky people waiting for their perfect match is still one of her favorites.

Avon grew up in the southern United States and now lives with her very patient husband in a liberal Midwestern college town. By day, Avon is a hair stylist who loves her job, her clients, and the opportunity to spend her time being creative and making people feel happy and look fabulous.

When she’s not writing, she’s either doing some kind of craft project that makes a huge mess, reading, watching horror movies, listening to music, or yelling at her favorite hockey team to get it together already. Avon is always up for a road trip, adores Kentucky bourbon, thinks nothing is as stress relieving as a good rock concert, and will never say no to candy.

At one point, Avon was the mayor of both Jazzercise and Lollicup on Foursquare. This tells you basically all you need to know about her as a person.

Connect with Avon

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Piper Vaughn

Romance author, tea drinker, book junkie, tattoo enthusiast, typewriter collector, flirt. Lover of hedgehogs, piercings, tattoos, and hockey.

Piper Vaughn wrote her first love story at eleven and never looked back. Since then, she’s known that writing in some form was exactly what she wanted to do. A reader at the core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great book—fantasy, young adult, romance, she loves them all (and has a two-thousand-book library to prove it!). She grew up in Chicago, in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, and loves to put faces and characters of every ethnicity in her stories, so her fictional worlds are as colorful as the real one. Above all, she believes that everyone needs a little true love in their life…even if it’s only in a book.

Connect with Piper

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Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Permanent Ink (Art & Soul #1) by Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn to read and review.