Rating: 3 Stars

Publisher: Mia Monroe

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Best Friends-To-Lovers, First Time (ish), Gray-Ace/Demi Character, Romance, Series

Length: 204 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

I’ve been in love with my best friend for years. It’s about time I do something about it.

Everyone knows I’m in love with my best friend. Except him. Jerryn and I are like peas in a pod, like peanut butter and jelly, like all things good that go together, but in spite of our bond, the romance has never sparked. At least not on his end. 

I’m not exactly sure when I fell so hard for him, but it’s been ages since anyone else has even caught my gaze. He thinks I’m a serial dater with a packed calendar of casual flings, and I let him believe that because it’s safer than admitting the truth-  there’s no one but him. 

As each of our friends move from single to committed, the urge to tell him how I feel grows. I have to be willing to put it all on the line, to show him that I know him better than anyone and I still want him, and that all the men who have failed him before were nothing but roadblocks to our forever.

I could be the man of his dreams. I just have to be brave enough to prove it.

Love Potion is book five in Last Call, a contemporary series set in the New Onyx universe. You can expect tons of pining, a dash of insecurity, secret feelings, grey-ace demi rep, a touch-starved affectionate bond, and finally two men realizing what’s always been right in front of them.

Review –

I can’t believe it’s taken me twenty years to get up the nerve to romance my best friend, but I guess it’s better late than never, right?

I went back and forth on my rating for Tall, Dark, & Ginger (#4), and I’m doing the same with Love Potion. I didn’t find myself wanting to rush through reading the last one like I normally do with books I’m really into. I figured it was just me coming back into a series and having to refresh my memory about all the other books and characters. I gave that one 4 stars, and I’m going to leave the rating as is, though in my head I’m still going back and forth.

As for Love Potion, this is the book the readers of the series were waiting on. I love a good friends-to-lovers story, and I just knew Bane and Jerryn’s book would be the perfect ending to a nice series. It could’ve been a really nice story, but there were just too many things that drove me crazy.

Bane and Jerryn, 42 and almost 42, have been best friends for over 20 years. They, along with four of their longtime close friends, moved back home to Willow Bay to open a gay bar that becomes very successful almost from the start. Bane and Jerryn are inseparable. To any outsider looking in, they’re a couple. They’re touchy-feely, always holding hands, and they act like a legit couple everywhere they go. They spend almost all their time together, often even sleeping in the same bed cuddling.

Only they’re not a couple, though Bane has been in love with Jerryn almost from the start. Jerryn is oblivious. I mean, he’s really oblivious. Everybody can see it but him.

After watching all the others find their HEA, Bane is finally ready to make his move. It takes Jerryn getting a message from an ex for Bane to finally say enough is enough. The ex treated Jerryn horribly when the relationship ended years before, but he still agrees to meet up with him.

So Bane, with the others’ help, puts a plan in motion. He’s going to date Jerryn without Jerryn realizing what’s happening. They already spend almost every waking minute together, so why not add a few extra outings and dinners to the mix?

All that was sweet, and it did finally kick things up a notch. The only problem was Jerryn and his woe-is-me-I’ll-never-be-enough-for-Bane that almost constantly had me wanting to throw my perfectly good Kindle.

Bane may be the perfect guy, but I’m not the perfect guy for him, and I have to remember that before I do something stupid and mess everything up.

~~~

Am I dreaming? Or is this some kind of pity move on his part? Has he got so desperate that I seem like a good idea?

Now to why Jerryn feels that way, and I’m not making light of it at all, so please don’t take the above paragraph to mean that I am. I’m just saying that the woe-is-me stuff was on every single page, and it got old fast.

The author describes Jerryn as gray-ace/demi, though he’s not sure how to classify himself until long into the book. He has romantic feelings, but he almost never gets aroused. If he does, it’s fleeting. I did like how the author had him seeking out answers to why he wasn’t all about sex like Bane had been in his younger days. I love how the author wrote his feelings and his frustrations, and I love how things came together when he and Bane did, in fact, become a couple. She explained everything well so the reader, who might not be familiar with gray-ace/demi, understood it without an issue.

What I didn’t like? EVERY SINGLE PAGE was Jerryn going on and on in his head about how he’d never be enough for anybody, much less his best friend who he’s always loved and not just as a friend. The ‘he could do so much better’ and ‘I could never keep him because at some point he’ll be tired of having a sexless relationship’ and… I could go on. I get it. Really, I do. He was frustrated and convinced that he could never have a so-called real relationship, especially with Bane. But, again, it was EVERY SINGLE PAGE. I went from having a lot of sympathy for the guy to, “You’re right. Bane’s much too patient for somebody who can’t be bothered to see that Bane loves you for you, not the other stuff. Be alone and miserable for the rest of your life because you won’t give him a chance.”

Harsh, sure, but after 204 pages of more of the same over and over, you get frustrated.

“I’m on the ace spectrum,” he says, and I know it took a lot to get the words out. “And demisexual.”

“Not to be dense, but what does that mean?” Kit asks.

“I resonate with gray-ace and demi, which means I feel infrequent or inconsistent attraction, but its only possible when there’s an emotional connection.”

As for Bane, I absolutely loved him. If ever there was a patient fictional character, it’s this guy.

Then there are the other friends and their significant others, all of whom I’ve watched come together over the past books. I always like seeing characters from other books. What I did think was totally not necessary was what one of the friends told the group about something in his past at the end. I think it was Kit. Why? He had his own book. Why bring all that out now? It was a total waste of words. I also thought the epilogue was completely unnecessary. Again, it was about other characters, not the two that Love Potion was written about. None of the others needed any type of closure. We got that in their own stories. Again, very unnecessary. I’d understand if there were things left unsaid or undone in the previous books, or something needed to come full circle, but that wasn’t the case at all.

I hate when I read several books leading up to the main one I want to read only to be really disappointed when I finally get there. This could’ve been a great friends-to-lovers book. The author could’ve written about Jerryn without having him go on and on about how he’s not or ever will be good enough. I understood where the author was going, but too much is too much.

I do want to say that I seriously applaud the author for the ace and demi representation, and how she wrote Jerryn’s struggles. His being ace and demi isn’t my issue. My issue is that she turned Jerryn into a whiny and unlikable character. I’d not be a fan regardless of how he identified or his sexuality.

There are a couple of other things that bugged me, but I’ll just stop here.

3 stars.