Review: Highly recommended! Must read!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 4, 2013
Let me kick this review off by getting this out: Oh myyyyy! (Said in my best George Takei voice ever). First off, I’d like to give a nod to Reese Dante for the cover. Dante is an artistic genius; the cover is beautiful. Okay, let’s get right to it. As with all of this author’s work, you are captivated from the first word to the last. What I especially love about this author is that you simply do not read about men who meet, fall in love and live HEA. So needless to say that you will not read about three men who enter into their relationship straight away. In order for you to understand where they are now, you have to understand the circumstances that gets them there. So, this story is told over a fifteen year timeframe and is told from all three men’s POV starting with Charlie’s. The way CC was able to set the stage for the story to be told was brilliant for they’re not simply telling it. Let me explain. Charlie guides us through this journey by way of a photo album where every picture in the album has a story behind it. You can almost visualize him sitting on a couch, lifting each photo, and telling us the story to each one. You want to know the best part of the book? The characters are talking directly to you, the reader. That was absolutely brilliant. This story will pull so many emotions from you; heartache, happiness, triumph, loss; you go through and feel them all with Charlie or Chase as it was. You will absolutely adore these characters, but not all of them and certainly, not right away. Charlie is sassy, funny, caring, strong and brave. He’s not afraid to be himself; you take him as he is, or keep it moving. This little guy (and he’s just shy of 5 feet, so I mean that literally), has the heart of a lion. Scotty is this big loveable, sexy, strong, intelligent, caring, and gentle teddy bear who you just fall for. Adan on the other hand, was a little more complicated. I didn’t like him at the beginning of the story. He was obnoxious and crude and downright unbearable at times. Even though I thoroughly disliked his character at the beginning of this story, I ended up loving him towards the end of it. But here’s the thing with Adan: he was, to some extent, a product of his environment. His cold, unfeeling, insensitive parents played a vital role in making him who he was at the time Charlie met him. Adan had this skewed idea of what it means to be a man. He was fixated on this idea as to how a gay man should act and dress and speak and it’s this distorted view of masculinity that causes him to hurt Charlie. Both relationships ended with Charlie getting hurt. He felt abandoned by Scotty but it was Adan who eviscerated Charlie’s heart. But oddly enough, it was Adan who, in my opinion, needed and experienced the most growth. A tragedy brings Charlie to Las Vegas where he is confronted by the two men that has ever held the keys to his heart, and they’re with each other. The journey Charlie takes through life is a painful one, but the roads that he travelled took him exactly where he was meant to be. You see Charlie and Scotty’s characters grow from innocent, love-struck teenagers to experienced men; each of their life’s experiences shaping them into who they are. Adan’s character enters the story as an adult; you get brief snatches of his life’s story from his perspective. You also get a peek into it towards the end of Strong Enough, the second book in this series. There are so many delicious layers to his wonderful story. The characters and their storylines are blended together perfectly. This book is an engrossing and, at 234 pages, substantial read. I highly recommend this book in addition to others written by this author. This is a definite must read.