Despite starting off with an abusive situation, and coping with the aftermath throughout, this story is mostly feel good fluffiness. Relatively low angst. Niall & Milo get good support & advice from friends, which is always pleasant. It’s a nice way to spend a few hours.
Where it fell out for me was the brother situation. I don’t even think it was squicky, I just didn’t think it was handled all that well. I thought Niall waking up to Milo as a love interest was fine. But the timing wrt the brother was not cool. First, if your bff with bennies reverts to just bff, he should be a bigger factor in your life, or thoughts, than the neighbors are. We didn’t see that friendship in action much, if at all, until Niall did a 180 in merely one month & finally noticed Milo. They didn’t overlap by a mere hair’s breadth. D shows up thinking he’s a FWB & walks in to surprise denial of services. Awkward.
Then, I think not enough later focus was on the fact that Milo had loved Niall for many years. Specifically the line “I’ve only just found [true love]” should have been “I’ve only just got him to realize he loves me too” or some such line that acknowledged the extent of their history. Make the lines fit the timeline.
Not to mention, there’s a whole ski vacation that was a toxic mess. And while it absolutely sounds like the kind of battleground nastiness one might find with entitled rich brats, and was a little funny, it was a lot of time spent with jerks. Why prolong readers seeing that whole mess when Milo could call up Oz and be “I hate it here but refuse to surrender ground” so we get more time with sane characters? Yeah, he kind of talks to his brother at the chalet, but again, I didn’t find how it was handled satisfactory. Ymmv, but we have Brother D who has been a casual bed buddy for 15(?) years getting tossed over for his brother in a month. D goes from being kind of ok with the change to rather possessive to okayish/not-ok, sorry/not-sorry. He oscillated back and forth making him an unpredictable meanie or sympathetic friend with no warning or context to predict which mood Milo would confront. And I get that D was hurt m, because even casual flings of long standing are important emotionally, but I didn’t see anyone helping him deal, they only focused on how it affected Milo, expected D to just drop it on command, and that wasn’t really very kind. And what I like about these stories is that they prioritize kindness, so this brother dynamic was out of place. It didn’t need a lot to fix what bothered me, another editing pass might have done it. Maybe it was left in flux because the next book is D’s. But I became less invested in the characters and story after the real housewives ski trip nonsense. (And Thomas’s poor date needed to be given the details for the WholeManDisposalService, should he want out.)
Story arc wise, Milo grew a lot, Niall flipped a switch, and both did Milos’s brother a little dirty. There was good detail arcing with Dotty the cat, the fun run, the living space transition, Milo’s job & growth, and Cora, so the arc with the bff not having the same finesse as the cat stood out. But the guys do love and support each other, have friends and skills, and get their groove on, so it’s not a bad time. Book 2 was not as good/engaging as book 1 but I’ll still get book 3.
Steam: Medium. Milo needs to get over past shaming, and whatever his faults, critically, Niall never fails Milo emotionally in the boudoir. It’s safe all the way. M/M discovery/recovery sexytimes worked pretty well, even when starting out accompanied by grim shadows. (The ghosts were busy elsewhere 🙂
Narration: Same narrator as last book. Good emoting, Didn’t try so hard for specific regional accents this time which made the narration a little smoother. Didn’t stand out for wrong reasons this time. Sound quality was good.