I've had this one for a while now and every time I looked at it I kept thinking it would probably be one of those books that would read even better with a friend or if you're lucky maybe 2. I was lucky as it happened one of Christelle's friends brought it to her attention and opportunity knocked and I pounced on that door all smiles and sweetness..."We should buddy read this, I've been wanting to read it for ages? Maybe Josy will join us?" and thus was born an epic buddy read.

 

Thank you lovely ladies for making what I'm sure would have been a really good read...into an amazingly fun read that definitely required tissues, hand holding and so many cowboy gifs.

 

Having just finished his first year at Harvard Eli Morgan is about to face a summer internship working for his father. He's never felt like he belonged and he may not know exactly what his path in life is but the one thing he's certain of is he's not on it. It's when he spots a battered, 1965 Ford pick-up truck with a 'For Sale' sign that he makes a spur of the moment decision that will change the course of his life forever.

 

After purchasing the truck and loading his belonging into it Eli heads out in search of something, what that is he's not sure but filled with a sense of freedom and optimism he's determined to find out.

 

It's in Nebraska that Eli's truck decides to break down. Luckily circumstances and a posting on a bulletin board solve Eli's problem of where to stay while he awaits the repairs and what to do for the money to pay for said repairs. 

 

Chase McKenzie needs help on his farm. He's been managing on his own every since the unexpected loss of his partner Owen, but he's still grieving and dealing with his feelings of anger and loss so having a sexy, young city boy whose all of 19 years old walk onto his farm and into his life and make his heart start beating again isn't necessarily his idea of help.

 

The relationship between these two initially is tenuous at best. Eli needs the job, Chase needs the help but it doesn't necessarily mean that he wants it from Eli, however, beggars can't be choosers and given the circumstances Chase can't afford to turn down his only available option so it's with more than a little reluctance that he takes Eli on as a farmhand.

 

I'm pretty sure that if I went through all the books that I've read I'd find a few that carry this same theme. Circumstances may be slightly different but the essence would be the same. What I wouldn't find would be a lot if any that grabbed me heart and soul the way this one has. 

 

'Chasing the Storm' for me wasn't a 'romance novel' it was a 'love story'. You may very well be wondering 'what's the difference?'. Truthfully, I've wondered this myself and I've given it more than a little consideration, I've even googled and the results were a variety of responses. There's even an article from the 'Huffington Post' that was written by an editor for Harlequin Romance. But I'm not going to go into all those details for this review since it's my review I'm simply going to share with you what the difference is to me. 

 

For me the difference between these two types of stories is about how they make the reader feel. Romances are big and splashy, with people that are often bigger than life and impossible situations, there's almost a sense of impossibility about them but that's why we love reading them.They take us away from the real world and let us experience an imaginary version where we know that at the end of it all the guy gets the girl or the girl gets the girl or the guy gets the guy whatever applies to the story and everyone lives happily ever after. They're fun and enjoyable but when the stories done so are the feelings, we don't linger over them they aren't lodged in or hearts days, weeks months maybe even years later. Don't misunderstand me, I have no issue with romance stories,  I've read more than a few and I'm sure I'll continue to do so in the future. 

 

But a truly good 'Love story' that's a much harder creature to find because for me a love story is more about the feelings. Not just the ones between the main characters...no more importantly it's the feelings that the story creates to connect the reader to it and how strong that connection is. It's the ability to make you feel everything that the characters feel as if it was happening to you. To share their laughter and tears, their anger and fear,  their joys and triumphs in a deeply personal way that stays with you well beyond the last page of the book.

 

Love stories aren't always about passionate romantic love between two people either, they can be about a parent's love for their child, friends, family. Love has many meanings and takes many different forms and a truly good love story will touch the heart like nothing else can no matter what form it is in.

 

'Chase the Storm' is one example of what I consider to be a love story. Practically from the beginning I willingly invested myself into these characters...heart and soul.

 

I jumped in that pick-up truck and rode down the highway right beside Eli singing those country tunes and anyone who knows me will tell you...Me in a ford pick-up? singing country songs? not gonna' happen but I'd do it for Eli. I loved him, I wanted to feed him milk and cookies and tell him to go make his music and screw his daddy and his Fortune 500 company but I'm a mom and I know better so I stepped back and watched Eli find his own path. It was a path that at times reduced me to tears as I watched him grow and mature and ultimately fall in love for the first time.

 

"...After all, what could a nineteen-year-old kid know about lifelong love?

 

But maybe the nineteen-year-old kid knew what love was because he felt it as his heart shattered in the aisle of a soundless barn."

 

And for all that I loved Eli my heart came to care for Chase as well. I ached for his loss and how lost he was as a result. Chase's struggle to move on with his life is not something that is foreign to anyone who's shared his experience.

 

Eli and Chase's journey to be together was neither simple nor direct and the authors ability to take us on a journey that was filled with a sense of emotion, truth and realism that isn't always present in fiction often made me forget that this was a work of fiction and not someone's story that I was sharing in. 

 

Just like the beginning and the middle the ending of this story was neither simple, easy nor direct but it was emotionally beautiful and filled with love because at the end of it all that's what separates a love story from a romance for me is that when all is said and done as I am drying my eyes I am left with a sense of contentment and completeness that I've just read a story that is as it should be.

 

CHASE



ELIJAH



Elijah is 19 and feels lost,he feels he doesn't belong in the life he has mapped out for him.His parents want him to carry on in his father's business so he is studying Business Studies but his real love is music.
One day he sees an old Ford pick up truck for sale and,on impulse,decides to buy it and instead of going home for the summer he takes to the open road not knowing where he is going or what he is looking for.
When his truck breaks down he takes a job on a farm to help pay for the repairs.This is where he meets Chase...

Chase is a solitary man,emersed in grief after a tragedy in his past.Initially it's just a working relationship with Chase trying to push Elijah away.I thought the Author did a great job with the descriptive of the farm setting.I could totally picture long hot summer days working in the wheat fields and tending to the horses





This is a slow burning love story with two very different characters...one very complex and the other totally open and honest.I must admit half way through I didn't care for Chase much and I hated the way he treat Elijah at times but by the end of the book I understood him much better.Elijah,well...I just adored that boy.Although we know Elijah is 19,we aren't told how old Chase is but I'm guessing around 30 and this is one of my favourite M/M themes..the older guy and the younger one.
The sex scenes are hot and well written.My only slight negative would be I felt the last 20% was a little rushed,bearing in mind the time scale it involved.

All in all a very enjoyable,well thought out M/M Romance....

To V.M. Waitt:



It's ROMANTIC.


 
And It's HOT.



I love complex stories, I love great plots. But there is something I love even more. The nothingness. I fall for (and hard) stories with no “plot”. The ones with no murderer to be caught or with no business to be overcame or with no Earth to be saved. In fact, no excuse to make the couple getting closer and moving forward to the HEA. The “stage-play” kind. The only-two-characters kind. They are the difficult ones. I could say they are almost doomed to failure. But this author has excelled.



The MC are authentic, true to themselves and to the reader. Elijah is young and in alienation: he doesn’t fit in this family, he doesn’t fit in his college, he doesn’t fit in the ideas he has been raised, he doesn’t fit in his mates goals. He never has found a place or a person to belong to. He is shy and prefers reading, he longs for studying music instead of business, he aspires to get further from his family and find people like him, he is old-fashioned and looks for love instead of sex. He doesn’t want to get rid of his virginity, he yearns for losing his virginity to someone he loves. I could put myself in his shoes because he is honest and true and I could feel identified with his desires easily.



So, in an uncharacteristic impulse he buys an old car falling in pieces and drives heading to the unknown. He doesn’t know where he is going to, he just know where he does come from and the further, the better. Destiny calls him when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, and applies for a farmhand job.



Here he meets Chase, and knows Chase’s storm in his eyes, and he chases this storm. Because there is no other alternative, and because he is everything he has been looking for in his life and because he doesn’t want to.



But the road is not smooth, Chase has his demons, and sometimes he is far from kind with Elijah. But Elijah is resilient and emphatic and mature. He surprised me once and again with his conviction and way of thinking. He doesn’t answer with ire or wrath or impatience. He is kind, calm and zen. He is human and suffers but he is unselfish and modest, and understands Chase and forgives him again and again. His martyrdom is astonishing but is not without a reason. He loves Chase that much that he places Chase’s needs before his own with an undeniable veracity. I have always admired people like that.



The sex is frequent and hot. I sometimes complain about too much sex scenes in books, but because I find them excessive or empty. Here they are not. Here they are attractive, captivating and full of feeling. They are sensual and heart warming. They are necessary and needy. I could feel the chemistry, the electricity of their touch and I only craved more.





We are never in Chase’s head. We can only guess his thoughts from Elijah’s thoughts. But he didn’t feel less real of less human because of that. Elijah’s perspective brings a heartbreaking image of Chase. Chase is not separate from love but this distortion is natural and made me shaky in the knees (and other parts of my body). I suffered with Chase because of Elijah’s suffering but also because of Chase’s evident pain. A pain disguised in cockiness and cynicism. The façade is hard but the inside is warm and shattered.



I loved seeing the process of Elijah’s getting the pieces together. I could understand the falling of Chase for Elijah. It’s strange because with only Elijah’s pov we would only be able to watch his own falling but the author manages to reflect Chase’s falling too.



I loved the isolation of the MC. The diary routine and simple life they lead. I loved the horses and the leather smell and I loved everything combined. Sometimes I love different parts in a book pretty much, but when combined I feel there is something missing and that the pieces don’t fit together. But this puzzle is one of the most beautiful I’ve read.

This is a 4.5 star review

When I first started reading Chase the Storm, I was under the impression that it was leading up to a May-December romance. I knew that Elijah was 19, but Chase never did reveal his age, so for me, it became a bit of a mystery to finding out just how old Chase really was. Following the clues throughout the story, I came to the conclusion that yes, there was an age gap, but not something I would raise my eyebrows over. Of course, my math could be wrong.

I really liked Chase…even if he was a butt at some points in the story. I found myself relating somewhat to his grief. Lost people can be rather unreasonable until they can find their way back. Some never do. There are 5 stages of grieving, and not all of them follow a particular order. And boy, was Chase all over the place with them.

There were times I felt bad for Elijah, but he struck me as somebody old enough to know what he was getting himself into when he followed his heart, a very mature young man, and as it turned out, Elijah was exactly what Chase needed to eventually heal.

I also would like to add that Hugh Bradley did an excellent job of narrating Chase the Storm. His voice characterizations match the characters perfectly, although there were a couple of spots that I felt he rushed through. Then again, that could be just me. Kudos to him for his portrayal of the more erotic parts of the story. Damn, if I didn’t find my mouth hanging open like an idiot during some of the hotter moments. I do like my cowboys.

All in all, I’m giving Chase the Storm a 4.5 Star rating. Both the audio and the story were well done, and I would give it a high recommendation to those who love them cowboys. Oh, and let’s not forget the angst lovers too! I’m keeping my eyes open for any more stories written by V.M. Waitt. The same goes for any future audios that Hugh Bradley chooses to narrate.

Reviewed by Kim at The Novel Approach

DNF at 50%

I am not as forgiving as Elijah is. Chase treats him like crap, all the time. I don't care how much he is grieving for his dead husband. I just want to throttle him...