Rating: 3.5 Stars

Publisher: Kate Hawthorne Books

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Bi Character (s), First Time, Opposite Attract, Romance, Single Dad

Length: 252 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi 

Purchase At: Amazon

This review has spoilers.

Blurb –

Gil Valentine knows three things: he doesn’t want kids, he doesn’t want a relationship, and he likes to be alone.

He spends Sundays tinkering in the garage, cruising on his motorcycle, and enjoying the luxury of a bed that he doesn’t have to share. After his last relationship with his best friend’s brother ended in disaster and nearly cost him a friendship, Gil swore off anything that might lead to complications.

Rowan Verne knows two things: being a single dad is hard, and being a single dad to a pre-teen is harder.

After the death of his wife and a tough few years as a struggling single dad, he’s determined to give his son a better life in a new town. Between moving into a fixer-upper and handling the demands of parenting a twelve year old, he’s juggling more than he anticipated—and then his son turns up down the street, talking to a very handsome, and very single neighbor.

Rowan is everything Gil doesn’t want and Gil is everything Rowan doesn’t think he needs. Even though they’re opposites, the chemistry between them is undeniable. What’s supposed to be a one-time thing quickly turns into something both men want to continue. And when tensions get high and memories from the past flare their ugly heads Gil and Rowan realize everything has changed, but they both know one thing to be true.

Once is never enough.

Review –

Rowan and his twelve-year-old son Fisher have just moved to a new town. Their recently purchased house is a major fixer-upper, but thankfully Rowan knows a little about DIY. A mortgage broker, he’s your typical nerd, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. He wears his button-ups and bowties, and while he may know some DIY, he knows nothing about fixing cars or bikes or anything like that.

This is where we meet Gil.

Gil has been working on restoring his old Cougar for years. It doesn’t run, and that’s okay. It’s his project. My husband has one of those, an old Fairlane. 🙂

Gil also wears leather and has a motorcycle. He’s in his garage one day when a preteen boy comes up and asks if he can help him fix the brakes on his bicycle. Gil’s not exactly the most welcoming guy in the world, but he does teach the boy how to fix it. Rowan, unable to find his son, eventually sees him at the neighbor’s house, so he walks over.

The moment Rowan sees Gil, he’s shy, blushing, and basically falling over himself. Personally, I didn’t find that endearing in any way, but that’s me.

As a thank you for Gil fixing Fisher’s bike, Rowan buys him food later, along with beer – really bad beer. After a couple of mishaps, Rowan ends up showing up at Gil’s place and they have sex. Gil makes it very clear – to the point of being VERY annoying to the reader – that he’s not looking for a friend, a boyfriend, or anything other than sex. End of.

“I’m not looking to make friends, Rowan,” I warned, taking a step to the side to expose more of the doorway. “If you come in, it’s for one thing and one thing only.”

Even so, the sex is really good for both men, even if this was Rowan’s first time with a man. Because it was good, it keeps happening over a few weeks.

Two things, and two of the main reasons why my rating isn’t higher…

The bumbling and shy Rowan is second-hand embarrassment cringe. Seriously. He also came across as super clingy when Gil never made it a secret that he wasn’t interested in anything other than sex.

Which brings me to…

Gil’s ‘I don’t do anything other than sex on occasion so I make a point in being a jerk about it’ attitude got super old really fast.

For the record, he was even rude to Fisher a few times, though with him, it kind of came across as more gruff than rude.

Then there’s Jack, Gil’s best friend and the brother of Gil’s most recent ex-boyfriend. There’s a lot to unpack with that family and the former relationship, so I’m not going into it too much. Suffice it to say that Gil and the ex didn’t want the same things so they split up, which was perfectly fine as far as the ex’s family was concerned. They didn’t approve of the relationship. Except for Jack anyway. But I never really got a good read on him. Honestly, I felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of a book with a couple of different backstories – Jack and Gil’s and Rowan’s – that wasn’t explained very well.

I do know that Rowan had been married to a woman, Lisa, who was Fisher’s mother, and that she had died. I also know that Philip, Gil’s ex, came from a homophobic family and that the deal breaker in their relationship was that Gil refused to even discuss having kids. He never wanted them and it split them up. It was a bad enough split that it was kind of a shock that Gil and Jack became/remained (wasn’t explained) best friends.

Jack irked me more than once. Instead of just spitting things out like a normal person would, he’d throw out little tidbits and expect Gil (and the reader) to understand what the heck he was trying to say.

I also would’ve liked to have known what both men did for a living. Their jobs were mentioned but not what they were.

Fisher was your typical twelve-year-old. I raised three sons and twelve is when the fun (not) begins, so I understood him to a point.

Gil and Rowan continue to meet late at night for sex only until one night they have words and that’s the end of their little not-so-secret sexual relationship.

They did eventually come together, obviously, but there was so much of Gil’s internal monologue of why he couldn’t be in a relationship that got old pretty quick. When they finally did work things out, I wasn’t really feeling it as much as I would have had Gil gotten over his hesitancy sooner; hell, if he would’ve even hinted that he was getting over it.

Overall, I liked this, though it probably doesn’t seem like it. I just wanted more couple time, more emotional moments, more actual conversations instead of words said strictly during sex. And I wanted to see more family time with both men and Fisher. Remember, Gil’s last relationship ended because he didn’t ever want kids. It was the dealbreaker in that relationship, and now he’s treating Fisher like a son.

One last thing… there were way too many chances taken as far as sex was concerned with Fisher being in the next room or nearby. There’s being in the moment, and then there’s knowing you should be more discreet and more quiet.

I’ve enjoyed both of these authors before, so I guess I was just expecting more. I will say this, though… I would definitely read a second book if it was Brian (Rowan’s coworker) and Jack’s story.