With so many fences between them and happily ever after, two men wonder if it’s worth opening the gate.
Ten years ago Eddie Crane, an actor on the rise, loved his costar and dreamed of the day they could be together. But his love, with his submissive nature, couldn’t handle fame, and before Eddie could help him, he died in a car accident—with Eddie at the wheel.
Now, guilt-ridden, Eddie buries himself in bad decisions and prays that a stunt—on or off camera—will go wrong.
Teenaged fantasies about the actor on his wall distracted Arthur Pike from real life—his dead father, runaway mother, gruff grandparents, and his unrequited love for his cousin’s straight husband. Now grown and off the farm, Pike is a horse stuntman hired to teach a reluctant Eddie to ride.
Pike is drawn to Eddie’s dominant nature despite the sadness clinging to the actor. Eddie let one lover down, but in Pike’s submissiveness, he sees the possibility for redemption.
My emotions through this book vacillated between mild interest, no interest, complete interest, puzzled, to this feeling of I don’t even know. This book really threw me through a loop. I don’t want to say I was bored, except for that through parts of the book, I really was. The slow pace in which the story is told is really good, but also not. Good in that the romance that builds between these two men isn’t some instant love fest. There is definitely instant attraction, but it’s just that. Then the trust starts to build, the friendship, all of that before love stuff. I really appreciated the care in which the author takes with Eddie and Pike because they’re very broken men. That’s another plus! I need flawed characters in my books, otherwise they’re not real enough to evoke any type of emotion out of me.
So this is all good, yes? But as much as I liked these things, the care and time it takes for Eddie and Pike to get there is long. That slow pace ended up being too slow and had me skimming some parts, mostly the sex. Unfortunate because the sex is smoking hot. Really. SMOKING… for a while. But then I just wanted to get back to the story, because in the story, Eddie and Pike are interesting guys. I wanted to understand them. Ultimately, the longer the book got, the less I felt connected to the characters. There is also a feeling of things left unsaid between our MC’s and supporting characters.
I don’t know. This is hard for me to review because I liked it. I almost loved it. I felt a connection, and then felt it severed at some point and couldn’t get it back. So I’m really in the middle on this one. Not sure how I really feel.