Review: Great read!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 11, 2014
Reviewed by Pat Henshawfor TheRomanceReviews.comThere may not be a right time to meet the perfect someone, but there's definitely a wrong one. Philip Sundstrom, whose father is in prison and whose company is facing a takeover, and Stuart Cochrane, just graduated from college and about to enter medical school, come together at what might be the wrong time in both their lives. But love overrides all outside forces.When Philip finds out his girlfriend of three years whom he thought he would marry hasn't been faithful to him, he's stunned. Since he's bisexual and dreams of having sex with men, he decides to see if his dreams could possibly come true.Meanwhile, Stuart, the coxswain in Koehler's CalPac Crew series of college rowers, is being pressured by his boyfriend/roommate to defer going to med school and spend a year in England. Not able to persuade his boyfriend that med school is his lifelong dream, Stuart breaks up with him and moves out.Accidentally meeting at the grocery store where Stuart works, he and Philip hit it off and start dating. But both men have complications in their lives that could keep them apart. And dealing with those problems makes up the bulk of the story.Both Stuart and Philip are interesting people who are neither all good or all bad. In fact, their human foibles are what make them more than cardboard cutouts. Both have family issues: Stuart was raised by fundamentalist parents who threw him out of the house when he told them he was gay. Philip's father had his other son's gay boyfriend brutally beaten nearly to death.But while battered by their parents' actions, both men still retain a solid sense of family as Stuart tries to get his younger sister out of his parents' home and Philip works to restore the bonds between him and his younger brother. Both find that keeping the resentments and bitterness at bay, staying alert and productive in school and at work, and starting what could be a lifelong relationship strain their time and their patience.A mirror of life itself, Christopher Koehler's story deftly illustrates just how precarious juggling personal, professional, and family lives can be. Dropping one piece sends ripples through not just the lives of the two main characters but through the lives of all those they love. True love, Koehler's book says so adeptly, doesn't just happen; it must be worked for.