This one in the series has a world of angst going on! Grady loves his longtime friend Eli, but the love isn’t reciprocated. Meanwhile Rome has loved Grady for years without that love being returned. So when Eli turns up at Grady’s birthday party with a new boyfriend in tow both of these worlds collide. Grady is understandably devastated in that moment and Rome hates to see him hurt like that, so he jumps in to tell Rome he’s Grady’s boyfriend. Rome is gorgeous, he’s a really sweet, caring, sensitive man with an absolute heart of gold. Hands down he’s my favourite character in this book. He also has incredible patience and his patience with Grady along with his nurturing nature eventually makes Grady see that his future lies with Rome. Rome’s announcement at the party makes Eli step back and think, and I don’t mean think in a good way. He didn’t think about the amazing opportunity he’d missed with Grady, but instead he realised how much he enjoyed Grady’s enduring love and devotion. I found Eli narcissistic, his world revolves around himself and he likes other people’s worlds to revolve around him too. He’s also a master manipulator and reels poor Grady in only to push him away again time after time. So now Grady’s with Rome he makes it his mission to get Grady back to where he likes him, at his beck and call. It almost felt like a battle of magnets with Eli at one side and Rome at the other with both of them exerting a force over Grady – one for his own wishes and the other to protect Grady. Grady himself I didn’t find to be a strong character, there were times his lack of backbone frustrated me, but there were other times I realised he’d been so controlled by Eli for years that he had lost the ability to step back and consider what he himself needs and what is right for him. It was a great story, but did have a lot of angst.
I received an arc of this audiobook and am voluntarily leaving an honest and unbiased review