Pre-Release Day Review ~ My Dragon, My Knight by John Inman

Pre-Release Day Review ~ My Dragon, My Knight by John Inman

Title: My Dragon, My Knight
Author: John Inman
Release Date: March 31, 2017
Category: Contemporary
Pages: 200

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Danny Sims is in over his head, torn between his abusive lover, Joshua, and Jay Holtsclaw, the bartender up the street, who offers Danny the one thing he never gets at home: understanding.

When Joshua threatens to get rid of Danny’s terrier, Danny knows he has to act fast. Afraid of what Joshua will do to the dog, and afraid of what Joshua will do to him if he tries to leave, Danny does the only thing he can do.

He runs.

But Danny isn’t a complete fool. He has enough sense to run into the arms of the man who actually cares for him—the man he’s beginning to trust.

Just as their lives together are starting to fall into place, Danny and Jay learn how vengeful Joshua can be.

And how dangerous.

4.5 Stars!

A tale with a stunningly unselfish, beautiful romance, but also with sadness, pain and a parody of 'love'.

This is a lovely book with all of the above. It will pull at your emotions when you see what Danny experienced at the hands of Joshua in the name of so-called love, and then how he healed and learned what truly is love, with Jay.

It's luckily not quite as painful as I'd expected, given Danny's abuse and Jay's loss of his life partner, and that's not detracting from the tale or the author's writing, because I think that if I'd had the full-on experience of loss and abuse, I might have had to leave this lovely tale unread. As it was, I was hugely upset and affected by what happened to a secondary character in this, one who had selfless love, one who truly loved and who was a truly human human.

The tale is painful, there's no doubt about it, but it's tempered by what Danny finds with Jay, and the love, comfort, support and friendship that the latter offers, without asking for anything in return. It made me glad to see the goodness that there is in people, and it helped me further cement a very recent personal epiphany. Yes, I'm emotional right now, but this book touched me in all the right ways and clarified for me that there's a great deal to be found in the little, unspoken things that are freely offered.

I only wish that there had been a short epilogue to this, showing the leads living their HEA, unshadowed by Danny's past and celebrating that they finally had their happy.

ARC courtesy of Dreamspinner Press and Bayou Book Junkie.