Rating: 3.5 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Max’s best friend has finally convinced him to go out for a drink. Max is incredibly focused on school and graduating and then getting into law school, which all takes up most of his time. However, Max has only agreed to the one bar and has no intention of joining the group on a pub crawl. When his friends leave, a gorgeous man sits down next to him and it takes Max no time to recognize the college’s football running back, Patrick Guinness. The men hit it off and after an entertaining conversation at the bar, end the night back at Max’s place for the hottest one nights either of them have ever had. But in the light of day, they go their separate ways, Max to law school, and Patrick to the NFL.
Three years later, Max is returning home with one month to go before the bar exam. When Max takes his car in for service, he has no idea he will come face-to-face with the one man he has never been able to forget. The men come from different worlds and Patrick knows a smart guy like Max would never want anything serious with a mechanic like him. But the sparks fly once again and they might just set out to prove that opposites can not only attract, but can last.
This was a lighter opposites attract kind of book for a good portion of it. We see Max and Patrick meet for the first time and the attraction clearly sparks. Max was always been focused on school as his father is expecting him to become a full partner in the family law firm, while Patrick has been focused on getting to the NFL and being able to help his family financially. But, despite their differences, they totally connect, hit it off, and are way good together.
When they reconnect three years later, the attraction is still there, but the divide is even bigger. Patrick’s life has changed considerably as the NFL didn’t work out and he took over the family auto shop after his father died and now has custody of his teenage brother. While Patrick can barely stand to even look away from Max, he knows that he could never fit into Max’s upscale world and thinks Max could never be serious about a mechanic.
The conflict for most of the book is the financial divide. When Patrick’s brother has legal troubles, Patrick gets a first hand look at the kind of life Max lives and can’t get past it. Max, for his part, says he could be all in with Patrick, but Max’s father still calls the shots and as long as Max doesn’t show up publicly with a man on his arm, all will be fine. Max has yet to stand up to his father.
The men take tentative steps towards each other and then their relationship consists of them exploring each other intimately. The scenes were all well written, but there was little given to show why else these men wanted to be together and we were just simply told it was so.
The book was moving along at an even, although at times uneventful, pace until Max’s father, who was primarily an off page character, came on page. Then, there was drama with the father, drama with Patrick’s brother, work drama, and relationship drama all one after the other. It was at this point the book sort of starting spluttering along for me.
The epilogue moves the story slightly ahead where we see Patrick, as well as Max’s father, have a complete change of thought process and there wasn’t enough there for me to get fully on board with how fast they changed what had been the core of their character for the entire book.
I liked the outline of the story here and it did have some good moments, but ultimately didn’t have enough depth in some areas for me. This was the first book I have read from this author and overall there just enough that could tempt me to check out what she puts out next.
