Release Day Review: Someone to Kiss by Scotty Cade

Title: Someone to Kiss
Author: Scotty Cade
Release Date: December 27, 2017
Category: Holiday, Contemporary
Pages: 69

GoodReads | Dreamspinner | Amazon

Dane McCormick’s job negotiating leases and building out furnished office suites takes him all over the country. He stays until the job is done—and then he moves on. As satisfying as the job is, it leaves him no place to call home and no chance to build a personal life. After arriving in Greenville, South Carolina , for a job, a severe stomach virus knocks Dane for a loop. He finds a local urgent care clinic… and a tall, dark, and handsome doctor who goes well above and beyond his duties to treat Dane. The doctor’s bedside manner makes Dane forget all about his stomach flu.

Carter Baldridge has dedicated his life to caring for others. Since graduating from medical school, he has spent all his time and energy building his urgent care business, But the morning he steps into his examining room and sees Dane McCormick on the table, he realizes it might be time to devote some attention to a part of life he has neglected. The spark is there, but so is a major obstacle in the form of Dane’s peripatetic lifestyle and a bad experience in Carter’s past. Both have to decide if the risk is worth the reward.

*Copy provided to Bayou Book Junkie by Dreamspinner Press for my reading pleasure in hopes of an unbiased opinion, a review was not a requirement.*

This story starts several months into a relationship between Dane and Carter, just at a point when things are changing and their relationship is ending. The story then flashes back to how the two met and began from Dane's perspective, then it flashes back giving Carter's perspective on it. Then, flash forward a year of the men being separated but unhappy without the other and them deciding to make changes to have a future together.

I struggled with this novella. I'm not a fan when a book has flashbacks in the storytelling and about half of this book is done so from two different perspectives. There was no character development that let me have more than a surface understanding of the two men in the story. Dane feels an obligation to his boss which is why he continues to live his life on the road at his boss' whim. I mean, the man called on December 24 and said you need to move to a new state before December 26 and Dane just up and moved and walked away from the life he had. Something was mentioned towards the end of the book about Dane living on the streets, but nothing else. Carter was a doctor who couldn't believe anyone would think he should move and seemed pretty inflexible.

Again, I always say that novellas are hard. There's a short amount of pages to get a story and for me, and when it works, it really works. For this one, I'd love if there was some character development or something that let me know the characters. Instead, this just seemed to scratch the surface.

Rating: 3.5 stars