Rating: 4 Stars

Publisher: Cora Rose

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Age Gap (14 Years), Bi Character, Romance, Son’s Best Friend

Length: 275 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

As a divorced man in my thirties with a throwaway job and very few friends, I admit that I’ve made a lot of bad decisions over the years. Rounding out the top of that epic list was allowing my son’s best friend, Quinn, to talk me into taking him on a two-week summer road trip…alone.
What was supposed to be quality father-son bonding time before Joshua goes off to college has somehow transpired into a battle of wills between me and his nineteen-year-old best friend.
Quinn may be young but he genuinely seems to enjoy spending time with me, something I’ve never experienced before, and it feels nice to finally have someone care. I mean, being friends with the kid wouldn’t be so bad, right?
But Quinn suddenly seems hellbent on flirting with me, and the way he looks at me is anything but friendly. My will to stay away from this sweet, attractive, and persistent young man is waning. With the two of us alone in a camper, in the wilds of Michigan…Christ, this is bad…very, very bad.

Waiting For You is a low-angst and spicy MM age-gap, son’s best friend romance.

Review –

Dear Author,

33 is not old.

Signed,

Everybody over 30

Good Lord, the way Grey was described a few times was as a really old man, not somebody in his early thirties. I’m going to assume the author is young. That’s the only way she’d write a 33-year-old as ancient.

Quinn, 19, has had the hots for his best friend’s dad since he was 15. He bided his time, knowing he had to wait until he was considered a so-called adult before making a move. Quinn didn’t grow up in a traditional household. His parents were still together, but they had a ‘live and let live’ type of parenting style. In other words, Quinn was forced to grow up quickly because of the lack of discipline from his parents.

Josh, 17, is Quinn’s best friend and Grey’s son. The only way to describe Josh is bratty, spoiled, and selfish. The reader learns this in the first few pages of story.

Grey has been planning a 2-week camping trip with his son, excited about having some alone time with him before he goes off to college. There’s been very little of that kind of time because of Josh’s mother/Grey’s ex-wife, who did everything she could over the years to ensure they didn’t have a good relationship. Not that she really mattered when it came to the camping trip because Josh – not his mom – made the decision to bail on his dad at the last minute with nothing more than a quick “sorry” text to his dad.

He wasn’t sorry. He was a brat who didn’t care if he hurt his dad’s feelings, didn’t care about the time put into the planning, or the expense of it.

Grey actually found out Josh wasn’t going because Quinn showed up and told him before the text even came through. This isn’t the first time Quinn’s jumped in when his best friend let his dad down. Apparently, Josh made a habit of it over the years.

I don’t care that Josh was only 17. There’s no excuse for anything he said or did in the book. A lot of blame was (rightfully) thrown on his mother, but he was his own person. He didn’t have to treat his dad the way he did. I still couldn’t stand the little brat when the book ended, even in the second epilogue that took place four years later.

Quinn offers to go on the camping trip in Josh’s place, and Grey agrees, though reluctantly. He has nothing against Quinn, but he’s not sure how it will be spending 2 weeks in close quarters with the guy.

When they get on the road later he learns exactly how it’s going to be. Let’s just say that Quinn’s no longer being shy about his little crush on his best friend’s dad. The flirting starts before they’ve been on the road for even thirty minutes. Grey, as much as he’d like to pretend otherwise, gets seriously turned on by the much younger man. Until then, Grey had no clue that Quinn was bi, which makes it worse as far as keeping his attraction at bay because he knows Quinn is being serious, not just joking around.

Quinn was real pushy, from the minute he got in the truck until Grey finally gives in a few days later. Grey wanted it, wanted him, but had he not, it would’ve been one hell of an uncomfortable vacation for Grey.

Once they hook up, there’s no turning back. It’s almost nonstop sex after that except for the mini adventures during their camping stops along the way. Even then, if they weren’t having sex, they were talking about it and teasing each other.

As pushy as Quinn was, I still liked him. He knew what he wanted and he went for it. As for Grey, he never saw his son’s best friend like that until the trip. Then he becomes like an addiction, and he can’t get enough.

Grey dealt with a lot of guilt over being with Josh’s best friend. There was also a lot of talk and inner monologue about the age difference. That got tiring. Even so, he and Quinn went hot and heavy until the inevitable happened and they were found out.

Now back to Josh, the bratty son… there’s freaking out over certain things, and there’s being a petulant little boy who throws tantrums because his little perfect world has suddenly changed. He never treated Grey well when Grey busted his butt to be a good dad to him. Josh allowed his mother’s lies (SO many lies) to seep in until they took hold and nothing could change his opinion of who he pretty much considered a deadbeat dad – when Grey was anything but.

I get that finding out your best friend is hooking up with your dad could be pretty traumatic – especially the way Josh actually found out – and I might’ve had a little sympathy had he not been such a jerk before. His earlier actions kept me from feeling anything nice toward him.

Which brings me to Grey with his son and his ex-wife. What a doormat. He and the ex had sex when they were both 15 and became young parents. They got married at some point, but it didn’t work out. It didn’t work out because Grey is gay and could no longer live a lie. I get all that. He felt guilt for hurting the mother of his child by pretending to be somebody he wasn’t. But the ex kept using that guilt to wring more and more out of him – mostly money – and then taking credit for it all when it came to Josh, and then lying to Josh and saying his father didn’t care about him. Not one time did Grey tell Josh the truth, even when there was no reason not to. Why in the hell did he care if his telling the truth made his ex-wife look bad when she was making HIM look so bad to his son? And if Josh was this so-called bright kid, how could he not see it? Quinn saw it over the years because it was obvious to everybody else.

I also didn’t understand how in the world Josh and Quinn were friends considering how different they both were. Josh was spoiled, flighty, and immature. Quinn was mature for his age, and he damn sure knew what to do when it came to sex. Sure, his youth was obvious a few times, especially when it came to the early pushiness with Grey, but he was really no less mature than people much older.

Hailey, Josh’s girlfriend, I loved. She’s the only one who really had her head on her shoulders in the whole book.

Grey does stick up for himself at one point, but honestly, it was too little, too late, in my opinion. Even when he did it, he was still allowing the witch ex-wife to control him in some ways. I mean, honestly, why was the woman given so much power, especially now when Josh is almost 18? Grey was scared of her. I get being scared of losing visitation of Josh when he was younger, but he’s older now and the woman shouldn’t even be in the discussion.

I actually liked Grey and Quinn together once Grey got over his guilt about Josh. And when it counted, after the truth came out, he did the right thing even knowing it could make things worse with his son. And as odd of a couple as these guys were, they worked. I didn’t see it happening early on when they first started playing around, but I totally did before everything was all said and done. It was nice watching Grey go from being the down on himself guy who’d been treated like crap by pretty much everybody in his life to finally going after what, who, he wanted, the consequences be damned.

I will say that there was entirely too much sex in the book. Yes, you can have too much of a good thing. Even so, I enjoyed it and will likely read more by this author. And I can’t not mention Winter, the one-eyed dog they picked up on their travels. He wasn’t in the book much, but he was still a nice addition to the story.