Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Andrew Wilson met Flynn Barnett when his friends dared him to pick up the guy at the bar where they were celebrating closing their latest case. What Andrew never expected was to run into his one-night stand the next morning at work and find out that he’s his new partner. As the two learned to work with one another in and outside of the bedroom, Andrew found himself falling for Flynn until Flynn made a mistake that nearly cost Andrew his life. Tucking his tail between his legs, Andrew walked away from his job as an FBI agent, fled his home, and left Flynn behind.
Three years later, Andrew spends his time running a restaurant and planning his sister’s upcoming nuptials. His former best friend (and the man Andrew credits with helping him escape his former life) calls to ask for one last favor – he needs Andrew to put up an ex-agent for two weeks. What Andrew doesn’t expect is to find Flynn knocking on his door.
As the two are forced to spend the next two weeks together, they quickly figure out that those old feelings they had for one another are still there simmering beneath the surface. As the two find themselves in a cycle of fighting and making up, they decide to give themselves the chance to figure out whether there is anything left of their relationship to salvage.
In this second chance at love story, Andrew is tricked by a former co-worker into providing his ex-boyfriend and FBI partner hospitality for two weeks. During this time, Flynn needs to prove to Andrew that he is worth a second chance…but he will also have to deal with Andrew’s family who isn’t thrilled at his untimely arrival.
I really liked the first part of this story where we get to watch Andrew and Flynn meet each other after Andrew’s co-workers bet him he can’t pick the sexy man up at the bar. I am a sucker for one night stands that have a habit of reappearing at the most inconvenient times, and this one does! I also liked seeing these two men as FBI agents as they work together to take down a drug ring. Despite this story starting off with a bang, I quickly found myself losing interest.
With the whole premise of the story being that Flynn wants a second chance, it may have helped me want to see them reconnect had I seen them actually be a real couple beforehand. As the story starts off, I expected to find myself falling for these characters as they fell for each other – except, I never saw that happen before I realized that we had fast forwarded three years and Flynn is asking for another chance. I could accept this had I felt as if there had been something more in their relationship beforehand, but instead much of what we learn after they reunite is that even the simplest things about these guys as individuals was unknown by the other. So I couldn’t stop wondering what these two saw in each other and why Flynn so desperately wanted it back. How can you want something that you never really had? Had the author downplayed their earlier relationship to being something of just a one-night stand or a couple of one-night stands and the story continued three years after the incident, I may have found myself more engaged. Instead, I kept thinking “why?”
The other issue I had with this story was that it seemed to me as if the book was so focused on action scenes (with the FBI and with the wedding planning) that the romance was overshadowed by everything else. There was so much potential for there to be more, but it always seemed to fall short. For instance, Andrew’s anger over what had happened before he left the FBI had enormous potential to explode, but we barely got more than a minor tremor – or we’d have the sexual tension between these two being off the charts, only to have the lights continue to go out. Then when the lights stayed on I was expecting fireworks, only to get a bottle rocket.
Despite this story not being my cup of tea, I think readers who like romances that tend to focus around a protective family and have an abundance of sexual tension without a lot of explicit sex scenes can find things to like in this book.
A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.
