Review: I'm Almost Embarrassed To Say I Loved It!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 30, 2014
I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much I loved this book. Why? Because it's an unadulterated romance, not a work of earth-shattering gay literary fiction. It's about love, commitment, each man finding that home is the other, and a really lovely happily-ever-after.It's also very well written, so, what's not to like? I count "The Only Guy" as a great guilty pleasure, and recommend it most highly!Like its predecessor, "The Guy From Glamour" (whose characters reappear in "The Only Guy"), Ms. Cates has drawn some wonderful, three dimensional characters. Jesse is a wild man, a man who walked away from his rich family and a promising future in the sciences, to live in a self-built log cabin, in the middle of nowhere. He is also a brilliantly talented and hot-selling sculptor, despite his parents' conviction that "art" is a waste of a life. Aaron, on the other hand, spent the last decade piloting choppers in Afghanistan and other places. Jesse and Aaron grew up together, their families staying in nearby cabins every Summer. Aaron is a few years older than Jesse and had a mad crush on Jesse's older brother.After suffering a bout of endocarditis, Aaron is discharged from the military because his heart never quite recovered. He heads for a reunion with his first big crush, but ends up staying with Jesse, in the middle of nowhere, when his car breaks down. Of course, it's the perfect opportunity for them to fall in love. The older brother turns out to be a beautiful, but boorish closet case ("what did I ever see in him?") and it turns out that Jesse had harbored a long-time love for the older Aaron.Now both are men, and all that's left to do is to find their way to each other. Which, of course, they do, and that's all the fun of the book.Doesn't read like a groundbreaking plot, does it? It's not. It's just a gentle, beautiful love story with lots of color, fascinating secondary characters, and even some pretty hot sex - though, fortunately, never too much. With Ms. Cates, it's all about characters, and she nails them (even when two of her characters are dogs!). All of her men are men and fall in love with other men, not reflections of feminine fantasies. The author has a real knack for getting into the skin of gay men and writing them true.I've just bought her third Kindle book, and anxiously await her next one, and the one after that.... she writes Gay Romance at its best!