DNF 61%
2.5 out of 5 stars
E-book. Kindle Unlimited. 236 pages. Published April 11th 2019
Blurb:
Ryan Kingston is having a terrible year. His twin brother and his best friend just got engaged, leaving him feeling adrift and out of place. Prepared to ring in the New Year drunk and without a date at the annual Mallory Vineyard party, Ryan is blindsided by desire when he shares an unexpected kiss with the last person he expected…another man.
With his darkest years hopefully behind him, Darian Fulton is finally ready to step out of the shadows and embrace his true self. Armed with pink lip gloss and a snazzy silk tie, he is determined to keep his New Year’s resolution and find his own slice of happiness; one that shows up in the form of Ryan Kingston, an alluring and apparently not-so-straight-after-all man.
Darian sets his sights on making Ryan his future gay boyfriend after a simple kiss, which quickly turns into two, then three, then more. Ryan and Darian find themselves more involved with each other than they’d ever planned. But Darian worries that Ryan is going to change his mind about being with a man—and after a surprising job offer, Ryan is worried about losing Darian for the temptations of a big city career.
Between impromptu shopping trips, midnight ice cream runs, and a long list of firsts, Ryan and Darian are faced with the choice of conquering their fears together or missing out on all of their dreams.
Likes:
- Darian is a cancer survivor.
- Ryan was interested in being verse.
- The way their families didn’t make a big deal out of their relationship.
Dislikes:
- Never hooked me.
- Slow character development.
- Too much sex.
- Sex happened too fast in the story.
- There wasn’t enough time given to introduce the reader to the characters.
- Formatting issues.
- Nothing about their lives was shown.
- Darian and Ryan felt incomplete.
DNF 61%
I had problems with this book right from the start. I don’t immediately like main characters when I start reading something new. I have to get to know and like them. Even Ryan, who appeared in the previous book, needed to be introduced as a main character and not just Rhett’s twin brother.
Unfortunately, the book starts off with insta-lust. I didn’t get the chance to connect with Ryan and Darian before they started having sex. Which meant that I didn’t care about the sex. As much as I love smut in my romance books, it doesn’t pack a punch if I’m not invested in the relationship.
But I kept reading, because the book can’t all be about sex, right?
It wasn’t until chapter five – more than 20% into the book, that serious character development and relationship building started to happen. And even that was lackluster. Ryan and Darian are both directionless. Ryan’s life isn’t terrible but isn’t great. Darian has finally beaten cancer and now has to decide what he wants to do with his life. Kurt Vonnegut famously advised writers that “Characters must want something, even if it’s just a glass of water.” Neither Ryan nor Darian had something they wanted. It made them feel incomplete.
The lack of goals meant that both men had boring lives, and so not much of their lives was shown. It also meant the story lacked a subplot. Sure, eventually Darian’s desire to go to college comes up, but it happens after the 50% mark.
The entire first half of the book was focused solely on the relationship. Which would have been fine if there was some tension there. But there wasn’t. Ryan, who had always been straight, adjusts to his newfound sexuality in the blink of an eye, which isn’t a huge surprise. His twin and best friend are both gay, so Ryan is obviously fine with gay men. But I’m not a big fan of ‘gay for you’ stories, and this definitely is one. Ryan had literally never been attracted to another man before.
Since neither man has a problem with the budding romance, they had a lot of sex. Too much sex. So much that it became ridiculous. Everything Darian did got Ryan hard. I got so tired of reading about Ryan needing to adjust his boner. Sex is not substance. It didn’t matter that they were both trying to work out the intricacies of anal sex. A romance isn’t built on sex alone, and there wasn’t enough time spent developing the relationship to get me invested.
The only reason I got as far as I did in the book was because I skimmed. A lot. I never got invested, and gave up because it wasn’t worth my time to finish reading.
I am especially disappointed that Darian wasn’t more fleshed out. He was the more interesting of the two men. As a cancer survivor, he had a unique view on life. It was mentioned a number of times that he was finally wearing the kinds of feminine clothes he’d always wanted to wear, but that wasn’t delved into. And for a guy who just got over cancer, his family was noticeably absent. And I hated that Kristen, who’d been portrayed as a bitch in the first book, was Darian’s BFF. I know people act differently depending on who they are around, but she was still a bitch to Ryan, and her character just felt inconsistent.
I did appreciate that Ryan was verse. He didn’t immediately assume he would top, which is noteworthy, especially since Darian was so feminine.
I also have to point out that this e-book had a lot of formatting issues, especially at the beginning. Paragraphs were indented differently, or not indented at all, in a very noticeable way. I also didn’t like that the book started with a prologue when the story continued without any sort of time break into chapter one.
After reading some reviews from people who actually finished this book, I’m glad I gave up when I did. Apparently things happen in the last few chapters that made people super mad.
I will finish the series, but I’m definitely less excited about the final book now. Hopefully it will be like the first book and not this one.
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