When one door closes, another door opens...

What I expected: A tale of new love, renewal, a chance to rise above the past.

What I got: A short story that was over much too quickly.

At about 40 odd pages on my Nook, this book was just too short to come even close to accomplishing what it apparently tried to do.

The main characters, Canyon and Simon, meet after Canyon's lover Robert dies in a car accident, and Canyon is left part of Robert's fortune, with a note to go deliver news of Robert's death to Simon in person.

Canyon still loves Robert even though their relationship ended 6 months prior, when Canyon wanted more than Robert was willing to give.

The rest of Robert's fortune goes to the wife. Yep, you read that right. It turns out that Robert was married and therefore a cheating bastard. The circumstances around the accident, and the letter Canyon carries to Simon notwithstanding, it would have been nice to have known this little tidbit from the blurb. Add to that, the wife, Natalie, is given the role of shrill, hateful bitch, without any further character development. We are apparently to assume that she is that way because of her husband's cheating. Or maybe not. Since no background information is given for her, we only see her at the beginning of the book being hateful.

So Canyon, who apparently can just take time off to hop a plane across the country, does as he is asked, and ends up in a small East Coast town where Simon lives and delivers the letter.

I guess your brand new three million dollars inheritance help to just drop whatever life you had and take some time off.

Once with Simon, who turns out to be not much younger than Robert, and therefore older than Canyon, the two men get to know each other a little bit. Some stuff is revealed. Canyon does a nice thing, but gets his head bitten off for his troubles. Simon is an asshole to Canyon. Canyon makes excuses.

Time jumps: Time passes that could have been used to actually let the reader see that there is more to this relationship than Canyon being a doormat and apparently thinking he doesn't deserve any better than what he gets.

I didn't like Simon. And Canyon felt too much like a doormat to have any appeal to me. I think that if the book had been longer and taken its time to explore the grief, the cheating, the budding relationship between Simon and Canyon, it might have rated a bit higher.

And demonizing the wife, whose only apparent fault it was to have married a cheating bastard, didn't do anything either to endear this book to me.


** I received a free copy from Indigo Marketing as part of a blogtour. A positive review was not promised in return. **

What the heck did I just read? This was one odd story, with a barely a plot, a TSTL MC and a writing style that left me out of breath like I just ran a marathon just from reading it.

This was a free story from the M/M Romance group's Love Is An Open Road event, and therefore automatically gets one star for the time spent freely to write it, but man - what was this?

The main character, Maris, is a PA for a complete asshole but fancies himself in love with said asshole, changes his whole exterior for said asshole, and is basically a complete doormat for said asshole. Until asshole leaves for greener pastures, and Maris is forced to reevaluate his life.

And then, to add insult to injury, asshole comes back with his tail between his legs, and Maris feels sorry for him? WTF?

The writing was ... not good. The story was ... not good.

Thanks to the author for participating in the event.

I don't really have anything good to say about this book, sadly. The blurb sounded interesting, but now that I've read the whole thing, that was about all that was interesting about this book. It needs a serious editor, first of all. Run on sentences are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Frankly, this read like a 3rd rate fanfic story, hastily thrown together. There is sooo much overly detailed info for things I didn't care about - like what Rafe's Tavern serves for food, or what Justin is wearing when he comes into the bar, or how Justin takes off his coat - and not enough substance to carry this story line. 

All telling, no showing, consistently dumping irrelevant information.

A detective in the bar, a little drunk, I guess, relays the entire story of the relevant homicide that happened the previous year, and that is how the author chose to give us the background info on what took place. Seriously, a detective doing that in a public bar, drunk or not, should be fired. Secondly, this is all info-dumping, clumsily done at that.

Rafe, who is a tavern owner, also knows all about how floral arrangements are made - even though he has no experience with that type of thing, at least not based on what we know of him. 

Both characters are flat and uninteresting. There is no substance to either of them. The only nice thing I can say about Rafe is that he seems to care very much about Justin, but it smacked of insta-love and didn't feel realistic at all. Justin is all woe is me and depressed, but while his outlook is perhaps understandable, he felt to me like someone who is a doormat, who just lets this stuff happen to him, without ever fighting back. 

I stopped taking notes around 25% of this short novella, and just read the rest of it simply to finish the book. Drama with the ex-boyfriend, who is so one-dimensional it's not even funny, Rafe calling Justin "his little man" without there being a relationship at all in place, Justin being all emo and depressed, and talking about needing money to buy the florist shop (not that there's ever any hint given as to why he thinks his boss is planning to sell it in the first place) - it's all told in such a flat, boring way that I was glad this book was only about 13K words. 

The sex scene at the end - oh dear. First, they have "the talk" about exclusivity. Then they do the deed, and then there's the big HEA that I couldn't for the life of me believe in. It happens too quickly, too unexpectedly for me, and it felt like the author was trying to wrap this up in a neat little bow that had no foundation in anything realistic. 

I can't recommend this at all. There is a good story hidden in this, with a decent plot line, but the writing and lack of serious editing ruined it. And that's without counting the missing proofreading, what with the many, MANY punctuation issues that any proofreader worth his/her salt should have found. 

Yeah. This wasn't a good book for me. 

** I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. A positive review was not promised in return. **