Rating: 3.75 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel

Jesse Jamison has one goal in life and that is to be on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. He’s getting closer as his band is taking off and he’s being recognized more. The downside to that is there’s a blurry photo of him online kissing someone that’s not his girlfriend, and also not a girl at all, and Jesse knows he needs to stay in line for the sake of career. When Jesse gets a new manager, he’s told they only way to play it is to play it straight all the time and since Jesse likes both men and women, he makes the deal.

A chance meeting on a train has Jesse spending some time with Dr. Hunter Wyatt and the men click immediately. Hunter is fresh off of a break-up as his former boyfriend refused to come out of the closet and Hunter has no interest in being someone’s secret ever again.

When Jesse starts doing charity work at the hospital Hunter works at, the two men become the closest of friends. The attraction runs through both of them but for as close as they are, Hunter has no idea that Jesse is into men. And Jesse knows that Hunter deserves a whole lot more than what Jesse can give him. But the men are a perfect fit and Jesse has to figure out how to be a rock star and have Hunter at his side.

Show me a book with a rock star and that’s a book I am more than likely to read. Jenny Holiday is a new to me author and I was a bit up and down with this book the whole way through. The set up here is cute as Jesse and Hunter meet on a train and just click. We get dual point of view, which really helps here to understand both characters. Jesse knows he’s bisexual but hasn’t had much of a chance to explore it and now that his career is taking off, he needs to keep that part of him locked down. Hunter is out and wants to stay out. He was with a man for years who treated him as a roommate in public and Hunter is so done with that. The one issue I did have with this meet-cute was the manner that women were portrayed as Jesse was assessing his best options for a seat mate on the train. The comments were cliché and over-generalized and the kind of comments that do nothing but give women a bad name. It did improve going forward.

Jesse and Hunter become the best of friends with Jesse visiting sick patients at the hospital where Hunter works. Jesse is charismatic and charming where Hunter is a little more buttoned up and serious, but they play off of each other extremely well.

Their romance is a slow, slow burn and talking personal preferences it was too slow for me. While I enjoyed seeing them become close friends and building a solid foundation, the romantic part of their relationship was too slow burn for my tastes. And, I have read some version of this story many times over. Gay/bisexual rock star stays in closet for the sake of career, finds the love of his life, says he’ll come out, things happen, pushes love interest away, cue the grand romantic gesture. It was all a little too formulaic for me and I would have liked to see them together as a couple a little more because even when they finally got together, they weren’t quite together yet. (Yes it makes perfect sense in context.)

The epilogue does give us great closure and while the author pulls out some great emotion during key points of the story, I would have liked more of that during the course of the book. On a side note, this book is billed as book two in a series, the first was m/f, and this works fine on its own.

I would give the author a second glance for future published works and I would say that if the true slow burn is your thing, then to give it a try.