The App Trap

By: Dan Calley

Narrated by: Dan Calley

When Danny’s mother is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, he finds himself in a race against time to fulfil her wish for him… to find a soul mate.

Danny’s quest for love soon steers him into unfamiliar territory, and before long he’s introduced to a powerful new addiction: Online dating.

But has he taken a wrong turn? Because neither serial dater Harry, nor fetish scene enthusiast Ben, seem like the type one brings home to mother, and time is quickly running out.

Will Danny find the love of his life, or is his chance of meeting the perfect man slipping away one date at a time?

The App Trap is a bittersweet journey into the world of the London dating circuit. You will laugh, you will cry, and you may never swipe again.

©2025 Mark Restuccia (P)2025 Mark Restuccia

App Dating

This was definitely a unique spin on what "dating" through apps is like. It was a humorous story, and I did find myself smiling at the ridiculousness of it all. This was my introduction to Dan Calley and thought the writing was good. I'm not usually a fan of when authors narrate their own books, but Dan Calley pulls it off. His voice helped me get into the story. It was an enjoyable ride.

Harry and Danny

Danny's dating problems had me howling. I was 💯 team Ben until the roommate situation. That was so messed up. Hilarious, but messed up. I would have never talked to Ben again. The guys dating 7000 people himself anyway. It's just hypocritical. Harry is perfect. The narration was amazing!

The dating comedy is hilarious

This book was unexpectedly good in audio form. I’ve continued to enjoy Dan Calley’s narration.

The story kinda wrapped up too quickly. It was enjoyable as a comedy of funny, dating stories, thus the HEA seemed rushed, even though it was the point of the whole thing. I think it was due to the timeline skips. Also it might have been too British humor, so anything that seemed like funny, I just chalked it up to British things that I didn’t get.

I look forward to more comedic stories from Dan.

This was different...

3.5/5 rounded to 4.
OK, so… this was a bit different from my usual MM romances. As it is, the romance part is quite limited and comes towards the end of the book. There is in fact, romance, in that Danny finally ends up with his own man, but it comes after the best part of the book describing (in hilarious and cringe-worthy detail) his (mis)adventures in the world of online dating.
The story is super funny for the most part, but the ending is totally not (seriously, no spoilers, but if you may want to skip the last chapter).
Dan’s performance as a narrator is great as usual, and though the book is not perfect in certain aspects, let’s not forget this is only his second book as an author.

Not a light hearted comedy but really good - you will laugh and cry!

For whatever reason I absolutely thought this was going to be a light hearted comedy of twists and turns. Turns out I definitely got the twists and turns right, not so much the light hearted comedy. Don’t get me wrong there were definitely some laugh out loud moments (I’m not going to say Danny saw his mom at his first bdsm party, but I’m not going to say that he didn’t either). It’s an interesting take on the current dating culture and I honestly wasn’t sure how Danny was going to end up with his HEA until it all made sense and he did. Was it a little stalkerish and creepy? Yes. Yes it was. But also, very creative. The bdsm is basically pretty light - think first date light. I will say, Danny’s mom’s cancer journey hit me in all my feels and because a larger part of the book than I thought. While it might seem like Danny was initially kind of dismissive of his mom’s diagnosis, for me it really paralleled the experience a lot of kids have where the parent downplays the illness until it can’t be downplayed anymore. This book was deeper than I thought and I’m not ashamed to say I really did laugh and cry. I’m familiar with Dan Calley as an audio narrator so my (met) expectations were high there, but it’s my first book of his as an author and I was not disappointed.