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Length: 130,000 words approx.
Blurb
At Cal’s funeral, Chris is completely thrown when he meets Elliot Rawlings, an artist Cal has been dating. Chris is hurt to discover that the brother he knew as straight was actually bisexual. Elliot is angry and resentful of having been kept hidden from Cal’s family.
After the funeral, a night of drinking at the bar with Cal’s friends leads to Chris and Elliot falling into bed together. The next morning, they’re overwhelmed by guilt and grief and agree to never speak of it again.
But Cal’s apartment needs to be packed up and Elliot reluctantly agrees to help Chris, as well as answer some questions about Cal’s life and their relationship. Despite their guilt and initial dislike for one another, they sort through the pieces of Cal’s life and begin to fall for each other.
Despite his best efforts to fix things, Chris’s family seems to be crumbling around him and he begins to question who he is and what his role with them is. As his feelings for Elliot grow, Chris must decide if they’re worth further damaging his fragile relationships with his friends and family.
Elliot’s rough upbringing has left him distrustful of getting close to anyone, much less another man who isn’t willing to acknowledge him in public. The odds seem stacked against Chris and Elliot, but if they can overcome them, they may be able to lay Cal’s ghost to rest, along with their own demons.
5 Stars
A really worthwhile tale, but get the Kleenex out, and don't expect this to be mostly a romance.
I recently read Trust The Connection by this author, and whilst I admired BV's skills, I thought that the tale had too many unconnected elements and needed thinning out and reining in. This one has many elements, too, but is skilfully done to centre around Cal, who though absent from this tale, is at the core of it, in a non-bigged-up, non-corny way. It's really well done, and it has made me want to read more by this author. It's my 2nd 5-Star tale of 2019 so far.
This is an emotional book from the beginning, as it starts off in a cemetery; I didn't cry at that part, but I did later on. It's a book that you need to have a tissue for. It hit me hard in parts, especially when it got to Chris and what his job entailed, and when he read the letter that Cal wrote to him but left unsent, and most impactingly for me, when I got to the road trip scene. The latter made me wish I could experience something like that, having suffered a loss recently. The whole tale made me suspect the author has had to deal with loss in the past to write this tale with such insight.
I won't recap on the tale, as it's a really long one and it follows the blurb faithfully. It is a tale about love, loss, family, flaws, support, grief and its effects, friendships, loyalty, secrets and doing the right thing, and people get hurt and people learn to trust and know that it's OK to lean on others. It has a lot of realism and pain to it, so you need to be in a good place to read this, and I don't mean that as a cuss to the author, simply that the book impacts hard.
The tale doesn't focus on the romance between Chris and Elliot as much as I expected, which is not a criticism; as a couple, they actually seemed to take a back seat with everything that was going on, and realistically, for a long time they couldn't spend much time with each other because of how each felt about losing Cal. Elliot seemed to blame Chris for Cal keeping secrets and I did think he overreacted a couple of times, and it felt almost but not quite as if the good old MM staple of the 'fashioned by his past trope' might be raising its head, but his reveals came at the right time and avoided it. I think that had the author done an info dump about him any sooner, it would have been trope-ish and would have spoiled the tale for me, but rightly so, Elliot had to learn to trust Chris before his own secrets came out.
The story focused on everyone and everything affected by Cal's death, and I think it's a tale that many people will connect with, whether they've experienced a loss or not. Cal wasn't made out to be a superhero, but I loved how his friends celebrated his life, and when the tale ended a year later, how another celebration took place, this time a slightly happier one that included everyone who loved him, not just his friends. But, refreshingly, it wasn't suddenly all roses and bunnies, as people were still healing from secrets and the effects of loss, though there was a feeling of hope. It is the first tale in a series, and it's clear who at least one future lead will be, and I had mixed feelings for the guy. I suspect his feelings about Cal and their friendship will be revealed in a lot more depth than what we get to see here, and that it'll make for another emotional tale. The author did set him up for his tale the tiniest bit obviously at the end, but he was a big part of both Cal and Chris's lives, and he has secrets of his own, it seems.
And, whilst this is a tale about a (possible) bi guy hiding that side of himself, it did not at all feel as if the author had jumped on the 'reversing bi erasure' bandwagon that so many MM tales seem to be on at the moment. She managed to make this tale feel organic in how Elliot and Cal came together, and how, refreshingly, sex was not at the heart of it. It's a really well thought out tale, that had believability at its core.
ARC courtesy of the author and Bayou Book Junkie, for my reading pleasure.
Her books range from short stories to novellas. They explore gay, bisexual, lesbian, and polyamorous romance in contemporary settings.
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Thank you for sharing your book with us and for the giveaway as well.
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