ABOUT OVER AND OVER AGAIN
A ring of braided grass. A promise. Ten years of separation.
And memories of an innocent love with the power to last through time.
When Luca Ward was five years old, he swore he would love Imre Claybourne forever. Years later, that promise holds true—and when Luca finds himself shipped off to Imre’s North Yorkshire goat farm in disgrace, long-buried feelings flare back to life when he finds, in Imre, the same patiently stoic gentle giant he’d loved as a boy. The lines around Imre’s eyes may be deeper, the once-black night of his hair silvered to steel and stone…but he’s still the same slow-moving mountain of a man whose quiet-spoken warmth, gentle hands, and deep ties to his Roma heritage have always, to Luca, meant home.
The problem?
Imre is more than twice Luca’s age.
And Luca’s father’s best friend.
Yet if Imre is everything Luca remembered, for Imre this hot-eyed, fey young man is nothing of the boy he knew. Gone is the child, replaced by a vivid man whose fettered spirit is spinning, searching for north, his heart a thing of wild sweet pure emotion that draws Imre into the compelling fire of Luca’s frustrated passions. That fragile heart means everything to Imre—and he’ll do anything to protect it.
Even if it means distancing himself, when the years between them are a chasm Imre doesn’t know how to cross.
But can he resist the allure in cat-green eyes when Luca places his trembling heart in Imre’s hands…and begs for his love, over and over again?
3.5 Stars
I'm going to be perfectly honest here. This book is long, like 729 pages long according to Amazon and while the writing is good, almost poetically so, after a while it was too much for me.
Luca came across as an immature brat a lot of the time and it took me a long time to warm up to him and I did mostly because I felt sorry over how his parents (especially his father) treated him. I mean, he was 19 years old when the book starts, and his father ships him out to his best friend's goat farm in Yorkshire, because he can't be bothered with Luca lashing out (and as it turns out, Luca had perfectly reasonable motives to lash out). Then, when Imre doesn't reciprocate his feelings he feels hurt, as if it's an obligation that just because he was interested Imre had to be, too? And don't get me started on how many times Luca bit his lips, because I was about to scream if he did it one more time. *sighs* Of course there's more I could say about Luca, but I don't want to spend all night writing this review.
And Imre, well, he's demisexual and he's also almost 27 years older than Luca and hasn't seen him since Luca was 9, and is conflicted because he's attracted to Luca, who is his best friends' son, who keeps trying to tempt and push him and make him feel bad when he tries to do what Imre knows he should do, which is, resist Luca's advances.
This is a slow burn, as in they don't get together until after the 55% mark (around 4350 locs or so), and even after, they take things slowly because of Imre's sexuality and the fact that Luca is a virgin. And really, I'm not one who needs lots of sex in a book, but I felt by the time they actually got to it, I was a bit over it already. That's not to say that the sex wasn't hot, because it was, Imre and Luca had chemistry and Mr. McCade knows how to write a scorching sex scene. The love story was good, too, and I will admit that I teared up during a very emotional scene near the end, which was definitely my favorite part of the book.
The writing was really good, perhaps overly detailed in some parts, I think I now know more about running a goat farm than I ever wanted to learn in my life, but still, it was enjoyable for the most part. Did I feel like the book could've been shorter and have the same impact? Yes, probably, but I'm sure others might enjoy the length and the detail, even if I didn't.
*** Copy provided to me for my reading pleasure, a review wasn't a requirement. ***
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