Review: Remarkable
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 19, 2014
'The Mating of Michael' is book three in Eli Easton's 'Sex in Seattle' series and I've been eagerly anticipating its release. My heart went out to Michael when I met him in the previous books, mainly because acting as a sexual surrogate for a sex clinic is a valuable and important job, but I had a feeling he'd lost many friends once they found out. Then to discover that this author, whom I have seriously grown to adore over the last year, took on the challenge of writing a main character with a significant physical disability just clinched the deal for me. I knew I was going to love this book and I'm glad I was right."The trouble was, Michel Lamont was not a bold person. He wasn't a big guy - five seven, weighing one hundred thirty pounds in good periods and one twenty-five in bad. He'd always been shy, though he was able to overcome it with his patients. But he was not the sort of person who would walk right up to a stranger and ask them out, much less a famous author."It's impossible not to love Michael. He has such a generous heart and he truly believes that love and intimacy are crucial to everyone’s health and well-being. He's an in-home nurse when he isn't working with clients for the sex clinic, and Michael loves caring for people. Michael is incredibly empathetic to others’ emotions which makes him so good at both his jobs. When he gets the chance to meet his longtime fan boy crush, science fiction writer JC Guise, Michael is disconcerted for a moment when he sees that JC is in a wheelchair. But suddenly, it all makes sense, the connection he's always felt to this author through his books. When JC turns him down for a coffee date, Michael is devastated, and when Michael discovers where JC swims every morning and goes there, only to be rejected again, Michael is beyond sad."And then the guy had the audacity to ask James out for coffee and reality crashed around him. Because James was not JC Guise, some sophisticated writing god to be worshiped, and he wasn't any of his on-page heroes either. He was plain old James Gallway, a struggling writer with two useless legs and severe limitations, a tiny house in south Seattle, a pathetically modest income, few friends, and zero experience at sex. He was, in short, no one a guy who looked like that would want."James contracted polio at the age of five when his mother allowed him to swim in the Ganges river. Weeks of staying in the hospital in India, being pushed and prodded by nurses, with no games, no TV, allowed James to sink into his own head and make up stories. But it came with its own set of frustrations as James had always been an active child and the loss of the use of his legs was devastating. What broke his heart and ripped it from his chest, however, was the day his mother brought him to a home for disabled children and then she walked away and left him.When Michael tracks James down feeling guilty that James hasn't been back to the pool since they met there, the two of them begin a friendship. Michael is hesitant to tell James about his surrogacy job, feeling sure that James will assume Michael has some weird handicap fetish, which most people assume. Michael starts taking James out of his house, going to see places in the area which James has never seen before. The inevitable falling in love is bound to happen, but what will James think when he finds out about Michael's other job?After the first two books in this series I didn't think the author could top herself. I'm so glad I was wrong. 'The Mating of Michael' is definitely the most serious of the three stories, but, in my opinion, it also holds the most heart. This is truly one of the gentlest of love stories and one that I cried over. A remarkable addition to the series, I can't thank Eli enough.NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews