Rating: 2.75 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Nash Davis is finally feeling settled. He’s working with his brother and his brother’s wife at their rental cabin property and looking forward to making their business a success. Nash had a difficult childhood, but the one bright spot was Adrian Walker. Nash thought they were forever, but Adrian left him without so much as a backward glance and Nash has worked hard to never think of Adrian. That is until Adrian and his fiancé rent out the cabins.
Adrian Walker’s life has been planned for him from the start. His father is a powerful conservative senator and Adrian has always been expected to do just as his father has demanded and now that means marrying a woman he doesn’t love. Adrian doesn’t want the life he is trapped in, he doesn’t want anything to do with politics, and he knows a marriage to a woman would never work because Adrian knows that he is gay. When he sees Nash again, the fire is still there between them, but Adrian can’t come out and Nash isn’t so sure that Adrian deserves a second chance.
When I read the blurb for Backslide, it gave me the impression that the book was a second chance romance for Nash and Adrian. And while it is, the blurb did not mention anything about politics or homophobic, controlling parents and, if it had, I may have passed on this book.
The story opens with Nash and we see him with his brother, Lawson, and Lawson’s wife, Rae. While Backslide is not listed as part of a series, Nash was introduced in Lawson and Rae’s book and the first part of this story gets us caught up on Lawson’s life, which didn’t fit well for what is supposed to be a standalone book. We are told small details about the brothers’ childhood with abusive parents, but I still felt like I was missing part of the story. It was the same with Nash’s past relationship with Adrian; we are told a little bit about it, but we don’t see any of it here and it’s been many years since the men have seen each other. It was then difficult to feel the connection between the men when they see each other again.
The overall set up of the story didn’t work for me. Nash’s family owns a rental cabin property that is not rated, has a rustic, campfire feel with hot dogs for dinner, yet Adrian and his prominent senator father book the cabins for two months. We then learn that Adrian’s fiancé, Samantha, is a social media influencer and she was going to review the property for her followers. It didn’t make sense that the senator was there, and it was never clear why they needed two months at the property, and then the senator leaves after one night anyway.
Nash and Adrian still have all the feelings for each other, but of course Nash is mad. They never really talk about what happened years ago; they sort of talk around it and then Adrian just seems to have this great epiphany that he’s going to come out. There was no character development, no depth to the story, and their second chance story didn’t flow well for me.
