Rating: 3.5 stars
Buy Link:
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Length: Novel


David Webster left small town New York ten years ago and made a new life. He has a successful dream job as an art historian at a Chicago museum, but his life is a bit lonely. When his father has a stroke, David leaves his job to return back home to care for him, but there is unfinished business waiting back home. That unfinished business has a name, Nick Patras.

Nick and David were the closest of friends and then their friendship turned into more. But Nick has always longed for his father’s approval and that approval does not factor in being gay. Nick broke David’s heart and married his high school girlfriend, but the marriage didn’t survive and Nick has been divorced for two years. Nick is now thriving as the owner of an organic farm and his biggest regret is David.

When David and Nick reconnect, the sparks and the longing are still there, but the men don’t know each other any longer. Nick is still not out and David knows he won’t survive Nick breaking his heart all over again. The men will have to learn to trust each other to live the dream they always wanted together.

David and Nick move from friends, to lovers, to not speaking, to friends again, and then lovers once more in this debut novel from K.D. Fisher. They were close in high school and shared a lot of firsts together, but Nick couldn’t admit to anyone he was gay and broke David’s heart and shattered their friendship. David has moved on with his career and has had a few relationships, but he has never gotten over Nick.

The book employs quite a number of plot devices and clichés early on with David being called back home to assist an ill parent, learning the reason the men are no longer friends, interference from the female BFF, and the beats of them getting back together. On that basis, there is nothing new to see here, but it is easy enough to fall into sync with David and Nick and root for them to figure it all out. There was one thing early on that was not well explained, however. It is stated that David has not been back home for ten years and we are told why. Yet, he returns immediately when his father has a stroke, but from my view it seems that he has not seen his father in those ten years and that didn’t fit into the context of the rest of the story without further explanation.

The rest of the story is the men figuring out if they have a future together. The chemistry between them is not a problem, but Nick hasn’t come out to his homophobic family and David is starting a new career and they have a lot going on and they come together only to push each other away again for a time. There are a number of side characters here and as support for Nick and David, they were fine. But, we were also given snippets of the relationships these characters were having off page and it didn’t add anything to the main storyline and if there were setups for future stories, it was clunky.

This type of story can be a comfort read for some readers, but for me it was too predictable without that extra something to make it shine or stand out.