Rating: 4.25 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
A stalker threatens the life of pop star Samuel Gibbs while his band is on tour. As the tour winds down, Samuel is looking forward to a much needed break, one without his 24/7 security detail. With the threats to his life, however, his security team decides to hire Ryan Halston to secretly protect Samuel. Moving in next door, Ryan’s job needs him to be accessible, approachable, and friendly with Samuel so that they can keep him safe while providing the illusion of privacy. What Ryan doesn’t expect is that the reported womanizing pop star flirting with him is gay. Ryan’s attempts to keep their relationship strictly professional when he finds himself falling in love with the pop star. When the stalker becomes bold and attacks while the band is performing, Ryan’s cover is blown. Samuel is devastated when he realizes Ryan lied to him. Can Samuel get past Ryan’s betrayal and allow him to continue to protect him? Can Ryan separate his personal feelings for Samuel and focus on the job at hand?
This book was a fun read. I love delving into books where the main character is rich and famous, yet desires to be normal. Much of Samuel’s life is dictated to him by members of his public relations team, security teams, and agent. Though he has “friends,” most of them want something from him or expect him to act in a certain way. When the band goes on break, he just wants to be ordinary for a little while. Samuel is also in love with the idea of being in love. With many of his bandmates having someone to go home to, Samuel feels like his life is missing something.
When Samuel meets Ryan, the sparks fly as the two engage in bantering back and forth. I found this interaction to be both adorable and sexy as Ryan tries to maintain some degree of professionalism while Samuel takes his bantering as a ‘maybe.’ As the romance heated up, I found myself falling more and more in love with Samuel as he came across as genuine and caring. There’s a scene where he’s at his mother’s house talking to Ryan on the phone that cinched him being a candidate for the best book-boyfriend ever.
Ryan is relatively young to be handling such an important assignment. Yet, as the story unfolds, we find out why he got into the field, and why he takes his job so seriously when his own demons emerge. As the hunt for the stalker heats up, Ryan struggles to separate his feelings for Samuel in order to keep him safe, knowing one mistake can spell disaster.
The plot was engaging as the identity of the stalker keeps you guessing throughout the book. Is it a deranged fan? Is it someone close to Samuel? When the identity was revealed, I was genuinely not expecting it to be who it was…but then it really all made sense! This was a fun read. I will be looking forward to reading more of this author’s works!
A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.
