Rating: 4.5 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Welcome to Cozzi Cove, New Jersey, a place where men fall in love. In true Joe Cosentino style, this book is packed full of drama! This cast of characters will have laughing out loud one minute before ripping your heart out the next. Unlike some previous stories written by this author, there are multiple main characters here, each with their own story to tell.
The story starts off with Cal and Lance greeting this week’s guests to Cozzi Cove’s seven rental cabins. Cal’s great-grandfather built eight cabins on the New Jersey cove and nowadays, Cal is the caretaker and is helped by Conner, his nephew. The guests include identical twin brothers Mario and Harold, who may look alike on the outside but are as opposite as can be on the inside; Tim, a young man who struggles with the aftermath of abuse; Sean Guile, a romance novelist who can’t write a sex scene to save his life; Chuck Caliber, who is vacationing under the pseudonym John Johnson to hide his real identity as a porn star; Greg and Josh, an older married couple and their son Christopher; Mark, who is dying of lymphoma; and a computer geek named Arthur who falls for a merman. There is one special guest – Michael – who Cal rescues and brings home with him.
While each of these characters brings something to the storyline, my favorite couple out of the group was Tim and Mark. Though they didn’t know each other before arriving, within a week their story was uplifting and heart breaking all rolled into one. I will warn readers, their storyline made me blubber like a baby.
This story has plenty of spice to it. From Conner with his “turn down” service, to a porn star whose equipment seems to be failing and is intent on showing a romance writer how to add some sizzle into his writing, to a computer geek who has a thing for mermen, it’s no wonder the cabins come stocked with condoms and lube.
I have two issues with this book. My first complaint is that it ended too soon and now I have to wait until the second book comes out to find out what happens between one of the main couples. I am an old school kind of romance reader who wants to have a story follow one couple from beginning to end in a single story. With this couple we get the hint of a relationship coming, but all we really get it them struggling against their feelings for one another for the majority of this book.
My second complaint is really not so much a complaint as it is an observation. While I think the author did a great job giving us a multitude of different characters and storylines within the book, I found that there were characters I really liked and I wanted to read more about them…and then there were characters I didn’t like all that much and was irritated that they kept popping back up.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and anxiously await the second in the series. If you haven’t given Joe Cosentino’s books a try, this is a great one to start with! Highly recommend.
