I was very excited about this book because it is narrated by Joel Leslie, who is a fantastic narrator I love very much. His performance was incredible, emotional and realistic.
Ben is a construction worker that after finding out two men in the construction company have secretly gotten married starts questioning his own sexuality. Tom is an actor turned cleaner after the death of his boyfriend a few years back. A chance meeting brings Ben’s awakening attraction to men to full force and they soon fall into bed. Ben is still unsure about being with men, as well as how, and if, to tell his 10 year old son about it.
I like the gay-for-you/first time gay troupe and the story was sweet and sexy. Unfortunately the story had some believability issues I could not ignore.
I wish this book was better, because the good parts worked beautifully, the banter between the characters was funny and cute, it’s just that the gaps were the issue for me. Mainly I feel that the ease and suddenness that Ben’s attraction towards men, and Tom, was very cliché and even thought it was the conflict of the book, will he come out as bi and have a relationship with a man there is no point in which the conflict is resolved. They talk about it, and the same things come up over and over, but the parts were it came to a head, of sorts, were smoothed over too easily. The story also contradicted itself a few times, where same sex relationships are acceptable but they cannot display affection in public and it’s described as if they are very afraid of the consequences of such displays. It interrupted the flow of the book and made it look like it needed a lot of editing. This book was a dance around conflicts instead of focusing on one or two and letting the characters go through the emotions and process of dealing with it. A few issues were never addressed, like Tom’s trauma after losing his boyfriend, his escape from the theater into the life of a house cleaner and ben’s son took it all too well for my liking. He didn’t need to object, but everybody around Ben just understood and did not even try to understand how it happened. It like the author did not know how to deal with these conflicts so they were gone the minute they appeared.