Rating: 3.5 Stars

Publisher: Lucy Lennox

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Bi-Awakening, First Time, Romance, Series, Small Town

Length: 360 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

One kiss changed everything.

As sheriff, I’m the guy people call for help.
But when my solo Hawaii trip gets hijacked by my clingy ex, suddenly I’m the one who needs saving.

My unlikely rescuer?
A gorgeous stranger who plants one breathtaking, reckless kiss on me in the middle of a crowded bar—sending my ex packing… and stealing my carefully guarded heart.

Tommy Marian kissed me like he knew me.
Like he wanted me.
Like I was his.
Like he was mine.

But he’s not.

He’s a straight, ambitious city doctor—here in paradise for his own damn wedding.
And I’m going home alone, as usual.

Six months later, I land a dream search and rescue gig in Legacy, Montana.
One summer. A break from my coupled-up friends. Zero distractions.

Except guess who’s freshly single… and bunking in my tiny cabin? The biggest distraction of my life.

Tommy Marian is still beautiful, still infuriating, and still everything I can’t want.

He says what happens in Legacy stays in Legacy.
I say I’m not even tempted.
At least one of us is lying.

Because when Tommy disappears on the mountain, I realize I’d burn the world to get him back…
And maybe this time, I won’t let him go.

Review –

I’d never kissed a man before tonight. Not like that. Hell, I’d never kissed a woman like that before. Not in the kind of way that took charge, that dominated… That owned me completely.

It’s been a while since I discovered the Made Marian world. There are a couple of books that snuck in without me knowing about them. Maybe I’ll read them someday. It wasn’t that long ago that I reread Borrowing Blue (#1). It’s kind of a comfort read for me.

Tommy is Blue and Tristan’s adult nephew.

The author has a note in the beginning of the book stressing that the reader not think too much about the ages of the characters with regard to the original series. I guess I could’ve pushed Blue and Tristan out of my head completely and saw Tommy as an adult, but then there was Aunt Tilly, Granny, and Irene. Those old ladies were probably pushing a hundred back in the other books. It was kind of hard to see them in all their pervy glory still alive, kicking, and stirring up trouble ‘decades later’. At one point the author describes Blue as ‘an older guy’. As much as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to see him as anything other than a thirty-something guy still trying to get into Tristan’s pants. 🙂

An older guy with strawberry blond hair approached and reached out a hand to shake.

Foster Blake is on a plane headed to Hawaii for the New Year celebration. All his friends and family are coupled up, and well, he’s not. The plan is to have a nice vacation fling and then go back to Majestic, where he’s the town’s sheriff.

Emergency Room physician Tommy Marian is on a plane headed to Hawaii for his wedding to Kari, the woman he’s been with for a decade. He’s sitting behind Foster, who is having vodka and cranberry juice sloshed all over him by his seat mate, a very intoxicated woman.

The two guys meet during the flight when they crack jokes that go completely over the drunk woman’s head. They meet again later at a bar at the resort, where they sit and chat for hours. When Foster’s ex shows up, they pull a Blue and Tristan and play fake boyfriends to get Matthew-not-Matt (the ex) to go away. This includes a kiss – initiated by Foster – that turns into another kiss on the beach and Foster borrowing one of Tommy’s shirts because the airline had lost his luggage. Nothing else happens between them other than a couple of heated kisses that Tommy didn’t allow to go further.

If you’ve read Borrowing Blue, a lot of this should be familiar. It’s very similar to Blue and Tristan’s initial meeting – an almost wedding, an ex, a fake boyfriend, an extravagent setting. That was obviously intentional.

Foster discovers the next morning why Tommy is in Hawaii, goes off on him, and they go their separate ways. The problem? Neither can stop thinking about the other.

The wedding is called off because Tommy has finally opened his eyes to his sexuality, but Foster doesn’t know that. Six months later, they’ve both been brought in as temporary instructors of a popular search and rescue program. Of course, they’re stuck rooming together. There’s obvious animosity from Foster because one, he’s convinced that Tommy only kissed him in Hawaii as an experiment of sorts, and two, he doesn’t know Tommy called off his wedding to Kari moments after they last saw each other.

The lack of communication was ridiculous, and honestly, this is where the book started to seriously drag. There was so much back and forth between them that I found myself rolling my eyes a lot.

Very long story short, they go back and forth quite a bit throughout the entire book, only now they’re playing around a little sexually. It’s Tommy’s first time with a man. There’s no talk of the future because Foster tried the long distance thing once before and it didn’t work, and Tommy has interviews at Stanford and UC. Any relationship would definitely be long distance.

All of the ‘I can’t allow myself to get too close’ went on too freaking long. I get where the author was going, but seriously, enough was enough.

It takes a Marian family emergency to finally bring the two men together, and even then, there’s that classic ‘big misunderstanding’ that we so often see in books.

They only finally get things figured out when Foster is forced to rescue Tommy after he gets lost on the mountain.

As much as I hate to say it, this book was seriously lacking. Where was all the humor? Not the inside joke humor referencing other books and series that some (like me) have never read. I’m also not talking about Tilly, Granny, and Irene, because they’re mostly just annoying, not funny.

“You look like shit, Muscles,” Tilly said, frowning up at me. Granny squinted at me. “Scars are sexy. Black eyes… not so much. Tell ’em it was a bear. Makes for a better story.”

I’m not talking about the big Marian clan who are more nosy than humorous. I’m referring to the banter between the main characters that I’ve loved in the author’s other books. It simply wasn’t there.

Which brings me back to other books and series that some (like me) have never read. Foster was apparently introduced in Marrying Mr. Majestic (The Billionaire Brotherhood, #2). I’d assumed it would be somewhere in the Made Marian or Forever Wilde world. Uh, no. It was a totally different series. A lot of Rescuing Dr. Marian referred to the characters in that one and a few other things that I had no clue about. I’ve already started reading it because I want to see where Foster came from, but I tend to avoid the billionaire books that are pretty much everywhere these days.

Man, these guys drove me crazy. I found the book dragged in a lot of places, like I said, and as with the others, the old ladies were more annoying than entertaining. Had I not read the original Made Marian books, I would have been completely lost when it came to them, especially Aunt Tilly. Good Lord, that woman would drive a sober person to drink. And because of something said at the end of Rescuing Dr. Marian, I know that Tilly is already up to her old tricks for the second book, Burning for Alexander (Made Marian Legacy, #2). Honestly, that doesn’t have me wanting to rush out and read it.

At the end of Rescuing Dr. Marian, there’s a link available for those who want to read a quickie short, Rescuing the Proposal. It was actually pretty sweet, and the reader is able to see Tommy and Foster without all the drama leading up to their proposal.

He was mine, and I was his.

No matter what.

Overall, I liked this book okay. Had it been shorter, I might have enjoyed it a lot more. It seems like every book these days is 300-plus pages. I get why, but I do miss the days when stories could be completely told in a lot fewer pages.