Rating: 4 Stars

Publisher: Hodgkin & Blount 

Genre: Gay Romance   

Length: 239 Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon

Blurb:

Keeping your eye on the prize isn’t always a good thing.

Nico knows he’s difficult; he has the string of exes to prove it. But staying sharp was the only way to stay safe in the cutthroat world of modeling, and it turns out, graduate school isn’t any gentler. Career first. Boys…later.

Jadon knows he’s burning out; his partner at the Metropolitan Police is more than happy to remind him of that fact. But the last time he let himself get distracted, people died, and he’s not going to let it happen again. And Nico was nothing but a distraction.

When a chance encounter brings them together again, Nico isn’t interested in apologies, and Jadon isn’t interested in Nico—or at least, that’s what he tells himself. But when the stalker Jadon has been trying to catch marks Nico as his next target, they have no choice but to stick together. And the longer they’re together, the more they realize that what they want might not be what they need.

Review:

First of all, even though this is a side series to the Hazard and Somerset series, you can actually read Follows with Intent as a standalone, but I felt it did help me having some knowledge of what’s happened to both of these men previously.   

I was actually a big fan of the Borealis Investigations series. However, more readers love the Hazard and Somerset series, the author as well, so Shaw and North (Borealis) lovers get them now as characters revolving around Emery Hazard and John-Henry Somerset. I stayed the course for a while but just couldn’t handle some of the issues that truly pissed me off in the H&S series.

Jadon Reck is a detective who first appeared in the Borealis Investigations series as a love interest of Aldrich Shaw. Yeah… love interest is really a way of saying a messed up relationship with someone that wasn’t North. Jadon also found himself at the mercy of a serial killer and was pretty fucked up afterwards. I wanted Jadon to find some happiness and someone who didn’t use his devotion for their own ends. 

Nico was Emery Hazard’s boyfriend at the beginning stages of the H&S series. He was too young for Hazard. Too flighty, but really, he simply wasn’t John-Henry Somerset. Again, messy relationship. 

At some stage, past when I stopped reading H&S, Nico and Jadon must have become text buddies – I’m going with shared trauma bond – until Jadon ghosted Nico. Nico was kidnapped by serial killer The Keeper of Bees. Two serial killer survivors. Now, they’re at the Chouteau campus for a respective seminar and symposium and they bump into one another. Literally. Jadon doesn’t want to be at the symposium, he has ‘too much to do’, a major LGBTQI+ crime to solve, but he’s been intense lately, not sleeping, spending a lot of time at work, or anywhere but having important down time. Mostly, he’s certain that a string of college assaults are due to one man he can’t make out in the video he has of him. His superiors don’t believe him while simultaneously thinking that he is heading for a breakdown. His partner doesn’t want him to lose his job. That Jaydon should a) attend the symposium to improve his standing with the captain then b) come to her and her partner’s Halloween party and mingle with friends and colleagues, and bring a plus one. Also making him look like he does something other than obsess about work.  

“I’m telling you, the questions the captain was asking—and the fact that she was the one asking them, and not trying too hard to hide what she was doing—that’s a bad sign. They’re done waiting for you to self-destruct, Jay. They want you out, and if that means making a case that you’re not fit for duty, that’s what they’re going to do.”

Nico is at what (I personally consider) would be the worst seminar in the history of seminars – Christianity, ethics, and philosophers. Like Kierkegaard. Like the contradiction of marriage and subjectivity’s concept. No. Nooo. Nope. But Nico wants to be seen by professors who can get the paper he’s presenting at the seminar published and then he may be taken into a doctoral program. Nico is an ex swimwear model who, I gathered from this book, has been working for Hazard while studying… something. I forget. Maybe philosophy. Anyway, Nico has a bit of imposter syndrome and wears fake glasses and proper (Hazard approved) attire that is required to be worn if he’s to be taken seriously by academia. He wants to be more than a pretty face but it really doesn’t matter what you do or have done for a living, Nico. Anyhow, because of the above Nico is packing it that he won’t be taken seriously. 

  Because the minute Nico let his guard down, Dr. Chapman would appear, or Dr. Young, or Dr. Meza, and they’d see him flirting and hanging out and wasting seminar time, and that would be the end of it.

So, Jadon and Nico meet again and then are thrust together, definitely having a few interesting, freaky few days at Chouteau. They have a slow burn, push-pull romance (I wish the romance side got in depth exploration), simmering and reigniting in amongst the shitty communication and the anxiety and angst and fear and stalkery’ness, and the ‘I must show I’m independent’. Jadon works out that someone is following Nico but Nico won’t listen, even when there is quite a degree of proof. Urgh! to people who go for a run or walk after dark on their own when they actually have a stalkery stalker after them.

It was nice to see Jadon again. He deserved some happiness. He is patient, for the most part, is appreciative of Nico, supportive, but he has a moment of being OTT. He knows Nico is being targeted and won’t listen/is being stubborn. He is falling, has really already fallen, for Nico. He wants to keep him safe, and Jadon is exhausted.

There are multiple people who could be after Nico and if this had more page time this could have elevated to a really great mystery/suspense and romance. Having said that, the bottom line is I enjoyed this book. Jadon and Nico have chemistry, there’s no denying that. Gregory Ashe is a good writer if you’re looking for on-off, push-pull romance, some angst and physical and emotional pain, then some pleasure. Maybe. A bit of humour as well. This was a piece on the side of a series that never seems to die, no offence, but I would be very happy to see some true standalone books from Ashe. I really would have loved this to have been fleshed out a bit more, not rely on the fanbase of H&S. Having said that, I did inhale it in one sitting, a virtual impossibility for me these days.

He lay there, looking at Jadon. Or maybe looking past him. Out into the great dark. Jadon thought about closing the blinds. And then he thought no. Because he’d looked into the dark too. We carry it with us, he wanted to say. We carry it around inside us. So, you can close your eyes. You can rest for a while. You don’t have to keep looking, not right now.

What Follows with Intent (clever title) delivers is a semi-angsty read – I say semi because I have read full-blown-Ashe-angst and this isn’t that. It’s also spicy, has a must-work-for-it romance, and is easy to digest reading.    

Oooh, and also, I love that cover. I found this book as I was cruising around one night, not knowing exactly what I wanted in a book. The shallow side of me saw the cover waaaaayyy before anything else. Any author who doesn’t think a cover is a hook is kidding. I saw it, didn’t know whose book it was at first, and thought, ‘fuck me. That cover. I must have it!’ *One click.   

Overall:

I had a good time reading Follows with Intent. It had interesting characters. Had some nice spice. It got gripping, got the heart racing, not good for me but you only live once. Jadon and Nico have real chemistry. They’re a good match. The ending was satisfactory. 4 Stars!