Honor CRating: 3 stars
Buy Link:
Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel


When Honor was a young school boy he met the beautiful Jorge. They developed a special relationship over the years that became physical and, while Jorge was out and proud, Honor lived in fear of his violent father. Honor convinces himself that he is not gay and breaks Jorge’s heart when he ends their relationship to marry Rebecca. Eleven years pass and Honor has a son and a successful architect and design business. While he does love Rebecca, she is jealous and suspicious and their relationship is beginning to crumble.

When Jorge returns to the area, passion still flares hot when he sees Honor again as no man has ever replaced him. The attraction between the men is palpable, but Honor convinces himself that he can just work with Jorge on a business project. But life with Rebecca is strangling him and when Jorge has a medical crisis, Honor has to figure out how to finally take control and stand up for who he is.

throwback thursdayHonor is a man that is truly conflicted. He tightly closed the closet door years ago, but even as he was having a physical relationship with Jorge, he convinced himself that he was not gay. There is a large focus here on Honor coming to terms with himself and coming out and the relationship between the men is more secondary.

The book opens in the past as we see the men spending their last night together. There are only glimpses of their relationship shown until the story moved to present day. Their time shown together was so minimal that there was a distance to them as a couple.

This is the story where you know how it will end, but it’s the journey to get there. They get there through multiple viewpoints, which include Honor, Jorge, and Rebecca. The men are such different characters, but they had similar voices, which had a tendency to interrupt the flow of the narrative. Rebecca’s view was clear and while it tempered her hostility somewhat to be inside of her head, she wasn’t a character I was interested in spending time with.

On one hand, Honor is so afraid of who he is and on the other hand he leaves a mess of destruction in his wake and I never got the feeling he was truly sorry or completely got what he did to both Jorge and Rebecca. Jorge is not a well developed character and then he just goes along with whatever Honor wants and barely stands up for himself. There is a medical issue that seems to come out of nowhere since it is only explored at the end and it’s a classic case of finally realizing that time is limited. The book was released within the last three years and the talk of CDs, fax numbers, and pay phones read as dated even for the time it was released.

The book is well written in a lot of areas and the longing in the air between Honor and Jorge is palpable when they reconnect. But, there are huge portions of the book where they don’t spend time together. While that is the story that is presented, the amount of time Honor spent with introspection did not hold my attention all of the way through. There were parts of this book that I enjoyed and then parts that were just okay for me. It won’t be a book that will stay with me, but if you are looking for a book that offers a coming out tale shown from several sides this may be one to try.

A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.

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