Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Rivera Publishing

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Enemies-to-Lovers, Humor, Opposites Attract, Romance, Series

Length: 206 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

An enemies-to-lovers MM medical romance where opposites attract… and combustion is inevitable.

Dr. Maxwell York has a protocol for everything. As Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Max is a man of precision. He likes his coffee at exactly 180 degrees, his office silent, and his life sterile. They call him the “Ice King,” and he has no intention of melting.

Dr. Jax O’Connell is a disaster waiting to happen. The Head of Trauma is Max’s exact opposite. A former combat surgeon who drives a mud-splattered Jeep, blasts AC/DC in the OR, and treats rules as mild suggestions. To Jax, medicine is warfare, and he’s the “Trauma Cowboy” leading the charge.

Oil, meet water. When a hospital renovation forces their departments together, Max and Jax are shoved into a shared office. A single strip of blue painter’s tape on the floor is the only thing separating Max’s pristine order from Jax’s beautiful chaos.

Max wants him gone. Jax wants to see exactly how far he can push before the Ice King cracks.

But as the pressure mounts, the friction between them sparks into something neither can control. Max is realizing that chaos might be the one thing his life has been missing. And Jax? He’s discovering that the Ice King burns hotter than anyone he’s ever known.

Sometimes the only cure is a little… Bedside Manner.

A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy with serious heat. Perfect for readers who love sharp banter, slow-burn tension, and two stubborn doctors who are the last to realize what everyone else already sees.

Review –

This is a true opposites attract story. Think Felix and Oscar from The Odd Couple, which is actually referenced in the book. Maxwell was totally Felix.

I’m showing my age because I knew exactly what the author was referring to.

Maxwell York, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at St. Jude’s Medical, has to move offices because of construction in the hospital. That’s bad enough, but then he meets who he’ll be sharing an office with.

Jax O’Connell, Army veteran and Head of Trauma at St. Jude’s Medical, is about as different from Maxwell as he could get. While Maxwell is a neat freak, Jax is, well, not.

Standing in the doorway is a man who looks less like a doctor and more like someone who has been dishonourably discharged from a pirate ship.

They’re like oil and water from the get-go. Maxwell, known as Ice King around the hospital, is all about order. He doesn’t do dust, disorganization, or anything that doesn’t fall into his very neat bubble. To say he’s not a fan of Jax and his chip crunching and AC/DC listening ways is an understatement. They only have to coexist until the renovations are done. Jax loves it. Maxwell, not even a little bit.

When Maxwell sees Jax in action during a mass casualty event at the hospital, he starts seeing him in a somewhat different light. Jax is a brilliant doctor, even if he’s a walking disaster in every other way. Not long after, they’re having an angry make-out and grinding session in a storage room.

He crashes his mouth onto mine. It’s not a kiss. It’s a collision. It’s teeth and tongue and anger. He kisses like he operates – intense, demanding, and overwhelming.

They may not like each other, but they sure want each other.

This isn’t like making sweet love. This is rage induced lust. This is a week of arguing over tape lines and corn chips and surgical techniques exploding all at once.

Things kind of change when Jax is forced to meet the Ice Queen – aka Catherine York – Maxwell’s bitchy and snobby and all around horrible mother. Judgmental is much too nice of a word to describe her. She takes one look at Jax and is criticizing him before there’s even a proper introduction.

I absolutely despised Catherine.

Maxwell’s family literally owns the hospital. His father, Alistair, is a retired neurosurgeon, and he totally gets off on throwing his power around. Alistair was a blast. I wasn’t sure how I felt in the beginning, but I ended up loving him every time he was on page.

Maxwell, to piss his mother off, invites Jax to a Christmas Eve Eve (December 23rd) dinner at the York home. I say it’s to piss her off, but it’s really because Jax is the only person Maxwell knows who would be able to hold his own with the woman. It’s also to keep Catherine from pushing other more suitable men at him. This involves getting Jax a new suit, which also involves a little oral action in the dressing room.

That was pretty hot.

The dinner is everything I could’ve hoped for. Catherine is Catherine, but she doesn’t ruffle Jax in the slightest. It also helps that Alistair’s only goal in life is making his wife miserable, so that played a big part as well. Throw in some heavy making out between Maxwell and Jax – outside, not in front of the family – and it couldn’t have been more perfect.

That dinner party is what changes everything for them.

Then there’s Preston, Maxwell’s eighteen-year-old brother, who was every bit as awesome as Alistair. The two of them together is priceless. Preston was the ‘spare’ heir, meaning Maxwell was the one who had to be perfect, but Preston basically did his own thing. His book, Conflict of Interest, is next. He was twenty when this one ended – there are even a few paragraphs in his POV – so I’m assuming his book takes place when he’s a little older.

“I told her I’m considering dropping out of prep school to become a DJ named ‘Trust Fund Baby’. She hasn’t spoken to me in four hours. It’s been bliss.”

~~~

“Scotch?” he asks.

“I’m eighteen,” I remind him.

“We age in dog years. Besides, it’s medicinal. It prevents you from turning into your mother.”

I can’t forget Dr. Sterling, the head of the hospital, who is a total jerk. For some reason, he had it out for Maxwell and Jax, especially once he discovered they were coming together as a couple. By the time the dinner party was over, Dr. Sterling had learned things about the two men that could easily destroy one of them. I hated him even more than Catherine, which is saying a lot.

Something happens that pushes Maxwell and Jax apart in a public way. That broke my heart. I knew why things had to happen the way they did, but it still made me sad. All that changes when there’s an emergency situation that puts one of their lives in danger. I admit I got a little teary-eyed a couple of times during all that. I just wanted to hug both of them.

This was the gay romance version of The Pitt in a lot of ways. The similarities were all over the place, right down to Jax being a lot like Dr. Robbie, and I’m not just referring to him being a doctor in an emergency room.

I loved watching these guys come together. Both Maxwell and Jax were fighting their own battles – Maxwell with his mother, and Jax with survivor’s guilt from when he was in the military. They were as different as night and day, but they worked well together.

This is a really good book. For the past week or so I’ve had the hardest time finding something to read. Most of what I’ve read lately has been dark romance with quite a bit of violence. It was nice stepping away from that and finding a sweet, funny, and well-written romance that was anything but dark.

I’d never read this author before, but I’ll definitely be checking out more after I finish this series.

4.5 stars.