Review: When One Door Opens by JD Ruskin
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 3, 2013
When you read a romance you have this expectation the main characters will be perfect; if they are ex-con , they were wrongly accused, framed by some villain. In this novel the author decided to be true to their characters, and Logan, out on parole and recovering alcoholic, is indeed guilty of the crime for which he ended in prison, and still on the path to be completely free of his addiction.For reasons that have nothing to do with his skills but more with his good looks, he is picked as delivery guy for Caleb, his boss's housebound agoraphobic nephew. Logan's boss think that, if the picked guy to care for his nephew is hot enough to be the boy's type, it will be a stimulus for him to go out. He doesn't understand that Caleb's problem is deeper than that, and by the way, he doesn't know that Logan is gay and that also Caleb is Logan's type.As soon as the two meet, they bond over their respective, if different, disability: they both want to try help the other overcome them, and helping each other they will build something together. There is no surprising revelation that will "free" them from their past, there is instead the understanding that, only accepting that past, they can be able to build a future together.Maybe since Logan is as troubled as him, with him Caleb is able to open himself, and doing so, to have a support to face his fears. On the other hand, Logan doesn't consider Caleb's disability so bad to level him to his own situation, Logan sees Caleb as something precious, too good to dirty him with his past; but Logan also realizes that he is doing good to Caleb, that for whatever reason he doesn't understand, Caleb wants him in his life and not someone else.With a supporting cast of characters one better than the other, in which I include the huge tabby orange cut Tiny (that of course is not tiny at all), When One Door Opens is a well-done contemporary romance with unlikely romance heroes that in the end are better than the by-the-romance-rules ones.