Rating: 2.5 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel

While Adrian is trying to romance his boyfriend, Martin, his car breaks down on the edges of nowhere. The only available phone access is inside of a scary looking leather bar and Adrian braves it alone. Adrian missed the rainbow flag tucked away inside of the bar initially and the patrons are much more friendly than he was expecting, especially Wyatt. Wyatt is a gorgeous, walking dream and lays a pickup line on Adrian that he cannot seem to forget about.

After Adrian and Martin break up, there isn’t much left of Adrian’s self esteem. Trying something new, Adrian heads back to the rural bar in search of the leather wearing, motorcycle riding man that he can’t stop thinking about. The men hook up for the night, but Wyatt’s life is on the run and he can’t offer Adrian anything. Well, maybe he can offer him just one more night, which turns into another.

The men have chemistry, but Adrian doesn’t really know who Wyatt is and while Wyatt thinks the mob is still after him, something is going on at Adrian’s job that sends not only the mob, but the FBI to his door as well. The men could have it all but not if the guns pointed in their direction have any say.

Well. I thought I did my due diligence by reading the excerpt available for this book before selecting it. That excerpt may just have been the best part of this book and most of this book did not agree with me at all.

So we have Adrian who has been with Martin for close to a year. They live together, but Adrian doesn’t really see how high maintenance and shallow Martin is until he turns downright mean. Adrian had little self esteem to begin with and Martin’s insults devastate him.

Adrian can’t get Wyatt’s suggestive comment out of his head and he returns to the scene of the crime to find Wyatt. The comment goes back to the title of the book and while it was touched upon in a few scenes, it never was fully developed to have such a place of importance. I could never warm up to Adrian. He’s completely self- deprecating every moment, he’s constantly apologizing, he has zero self confidence, he’s perpetually blushing, and he’s clumsy. It was simply too much for me for one character to have all of these traits.

Wyatt could have been interesting, yet he’s a mystery. Although, that is the point since he’s been running and hiding for 15 years, his story was also underdeveloped and what was there lacked execution, believability, interest–take your pick. The guys hook up and make plans to then hook up again. This was the first half of the book. They meet at a hotel, spend the night together, Adrian goes back to work Monday to tell his co-worker about Wyatt, and repeat.

Mixed in here are two separate stories about the mob or gangsters, they never could settle on a name to call them, because both Adrian and Wyatt have these type of men after them for entirely different reasons. Neither story line was well executed nor believable. The choice of language itself wasn’t for me as characters used phrases such as, “heavy petting,” and “froufrou.” There were also inconsistencies such as a watch being removed from the same character twice during the same scene without mention of it having been put back on. Then, Wyatt admits that he’s been running for so long that he doesn’t know how to stop and it’s possible he’s jumping at shadows at this point and then his problems just dissolve in a puff of smoke and a castle. At the end, my overall impression was that reading this book was not the best use of my time.

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