Review: Characters showing amazing depth
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 10, 2014
Reviewed by Pat Henshawfor TheRomanceReviews.comIn the 4th Provincetown romance, Flores falls under the spell of purple prose and Family Week at the gay resort.Brody O'Shea, last seen as Teddy's boyhood lover in When Love Gets Hairy, is the odd man out as family and friends gather for the marriage of Zach and Van whose romance was central in When Love Takes Over.Brody is particular about who he will love, but not with whom he shares a night of sex. His parents left him with a skewed image of marriage, so as Brody has worked his way through the Provincetown offerings, he's kept a list of the things he wants and doesn't want in a partner. At the top of his list is a man without children.Eric Vasquez, a cop who two years before lost his husband, is bringing his daughter Mattie to his cousin Van's wedding from a small town across the state of Massachusetts. When Eric gets there and sees how many of Van and Zach's friends are paired up, he misses his husband who died in an accident even more.But as the odd men out, Brody and Eric are paired up more and more as the wedding plans come together. As they do, both come to change their minds about what they thought were important considerations: Brody finds he likes Mattie and has formed a bond with her, and Eric realizes that his husband would want him to go on living, not pining for the rest of his life.Jacob Z. Flores' mix of humor and fond depictions of what initially seem shallow men who end up showing amazing depth is at the forefront of this novel as it has been in his others.What's different in this one, however, is his use of flowery description in the mullings of both Brody and Eric. In fact, at times readers will think they've fallen into old Harlequin prose, overdone imagery and flowery embellishments inappropriate to the subject, not what they've come to expect from this author at all.Since neither Brody nor Eric is a particularly flamboyant type, these flights of fancy seem oddly out of step with the rest of the novel.Hopefully, this book in the series has cured the author of his foray into a long-forgotten romance writing style and he'll go back to what he does best--humor and biting commentary in his next P-town romp.