Rating: 4.5* Stars

Publisher: Ana Ashley

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Disability, Opposites Attract, Series, Small Town, Virgin

Length: 212 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

The first thing I learned at Vet school was to always expect the unexpected.
Well, I sure never saw Santiago Torres or his adorable Great Dane coming.

Santi is everything I’m not. Tall, confident, overbearing, and if I’m to believe his advances, he’s also very experienced in…well, you know what.

I always play safe, but it’s time to ditch the v-card. We couldn’t be more different, but that doesn’t matter because this is just a one time thing.

I’m not going to want more, right?
I’m not going to fall for him, right?

How to Catch a Vet is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series and features an opposites attract story between a virgin and a player, a Great Dane with a tendency to rescue- read kidnap- other people’s pets, and a small town like no other.

Review –

*One thing was not resolved that needed to be – not in this book or the one after it. Had it been, the rating would have been a solid 5 stars. 

Now to my review.

The title of this book is fitting. Santiago is a military veteran. Micah is a veterinarian. The two guys are as different as night and day. Santi, a known player, has only recently been medically discharged from the military and is physically fit. Micah is a thirty-year-old virgin who is a little overweight. Santi can converse with anybody. Micah, not so much. Animals, sure. People, no way. Santi was super popular back in high school. Micah was bullied.

I needed to get over this dry spell for good. Was it even a dry spell if you’d never been with anyone? It wasn’t as if I’d ever had a wet spell. Maybe it was just a spell? Whatever it was, it needed to end before I went into my thirties a pathetic virgin.

Santi has come home to Chester Falls to lick his wounds after learning that he has an incurable eye disease. When his parents retired to Florida, he inherited their Great Dane, Duchess Olive McPickles. What the dog is called at any given time is whatever feels right when Santi’s talking to him. He’s Duchess, Olive, and Pickles, with Olive being the main one used. That’s what I’ll be using in this review.

Olive adopts a duck. Somehow, some way, the duck and the big dog become fast friends. There’s literally no separating them. After checking with the neighbors to see if they lost a duck, Santi calls the local veterinarian who just happens to be Micah. They end up meeting by chance in a park not long after that phone conversation. Apparently, Olive wanted to adopt Micah. 😉

Before it’s all said and done, Olive has adopted Micah the vet, Gus the duck, Alfie the kitten, Doug the Boston Terrier puppy, and George the foul-mouthed parrot. They all cracked me up – the animals anyway – but not like George the foul-mouthed parrot. George didn’t become part of the family until much later, but he was hilarious.

“Good morning. Fuck. Micah. Ooh fuck.”

“Ooh, pretty dick, pretty dick.”

” Take me, take me. Ooh fuck.”

Micah’s plan when he inherited his grandfather’s veterinarian practice has always been to use funds also left to him to open a pet sanctuary. Unfortunately, he paid contractors up front – a big no, no – only to have the company go bankrupt, leaving Micah out a whole lot of cash. No, it wasn’t smart, but knowing that doesn’t get the money back. Santi just happens to be there when he reads the letter.

It doesn’t take long before Santiago and Micah are spending a lot of time together. Santi has taken on the project of emptying out an old building on Micah’s property in hopes of helping him have that pet sanctuary he’s always dreamed of having. It’s really good for Santi to be doing something, not dwelling on the fact that he’ll likely be completely blind in a matter of years. In the middle of it all he’s falling hard for Micah. Micah falls for him pretty fast, but then again, he’d always crushed on Santi when they were in high school. What Micah didn’t know is that he’d also been noticed (in a good way) by Santi back then. He just didn’t act on it.

There are a few kisses here and there and a little bit of hand and frotting action. It actually takes quite a while before they graduate to more than that. Even so, what they do early on is pretty hot.

Micah has always been down on himself because of his weight. He’s dated here and there over the years but nothing ever became of any of them. He doesn’t get why Mr. Perfect Santiago is showing interest in him. And he knows that Santi is really interested. He sees it every time they look at each other. What Micah doesn’t get is that Santi is having his own self-doubts, that maybe he’s not good enough for Micah.

Micah deserved a man who’d take his arm for a walk by the river and talk about smart things. Not a veteran who’d take his arm because he couldn’t see where he was going and didn’t know how to have an intelligent conversation.

Santi’s trying hard to come to terms with losing his vision. He doesn’t want to make promises that he probably won’t be able to keep. But the thing is, whether he has a disability or not doesn’t matter to Micah. Santi knows he’ll always be there, if only he gives him a chance.

There’s some serious bullying going on with some of the mean girls from the old high school, a woman named Christie in particular. She’s the reason I’ve rated this 4.5 stars instead of 5. There was a lot of building up with her, quite a bit of anticipation of something bad happening, for it to simply go away and nothing else be said about it.

Tom, one of my all-time favorite fictional characters ever, jumps right in to help Micah find the funding for his animal sanctuary. Tom being Tom, he organizes a bachelor auction with all the money going to Micah’s endeavor.

I read Antagonist before this book because I’d walked away from the Chester Falls series for a while. The bachelor auction talked about in that book also happens in How To Catch A Vet. With my reading them out of order, all I can say is now I get certain things that I didn’t get while reading about Harrison and Fletcher.

Which brings me to something else. Harrison and Fletcher are two different characters. In How To Catch A Vet, Harrison’s name is Harrison FLETCHER. In his and Fletcher’s book, he’s Harrison DAVIS.

The above two paragraphs explain yet again, the name change aside, how I don’t believe the Dads of Stillwater series is a standalone series. It’s all tied to Chester Falls, which is fine, but a little frustrating for me because I would’ve gone back and finished the Chester Falls series before jumping into that one. Even so, it’s doubtful my opinion of Antagonist would’ve changed because I just didn’t like Harrison that much. Hell, the author may have announced somewhere that they’re linked. If so, don’t mind me. 😉 It doesn’t affect my rating for either book one way or another.

All the favorites from the other Chester Falls books are here. It was really nice seeing Wren, Tom, Charlie, Prince Kristof, Indy, Luca, and some of the others again. And while Miss Bubbles (aka Miss Bite-A-Lot) the turtle wasn’t actually in this book, she was mentioned. She was hilarious in How To Catch A Bodyguard.

Santi and Micah are really sweet together. There wasn’t a whole lot of weirdness when they started having feelings for each other. There were a few issues with Micah’s body image, but Santi was right there to let him know he’s perfect just the way he is. There is one pretty major misunderstanding but thankfully it’s cleared up quickly.

I knew that just like Charlie caught his prince, Tom caught his rival, Connor caught his bodyguard, Indy caught his bachelor, and Aiden caught his biker, so had I caught my sexy vet.

A really good book.