Rating: 2.75 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Addy and Beau have been best friends through their teen years and college. Beau supported Addy through coming out in a small town with a conservative family and the death of his father, and Addy supported Beau through the loss of his NFL dream. Addy has been in love with Beau for years, but what Addy doesn’t know is that Beau is in love with him as well, but still hasn’t figured out how to come out and tell Addy.
When their relationship starts to change, Beau has to figure out if he risks their friendship by telling Addy how he feels or if he will walk away for good.
When I see a best friends-to-lovers book, I will usually select to read it and that was the case here as well. Addy and Beau are best friends, but much of this book didn’t work for me. When we meet Addy and Beau, they are out of college, have their careers, and are roommates in the small town where they grew up. We get POVs from both men and we do learn a lot about each of them. However, there was no new ground covered here and what was covered wasn’t all that enticing for me. Addy came out to his mother and brother after his father died, and they were cruel and unsupportive. His family members were not well developed characters and they were stereotypical religious caricatures that Addy kept trying to have a relationship with for years. Beau has been fully supportive of Addy, but it got maddening that he never told Addy who he really was or shared his feelings and in a sense left Addy on his own.
The men don’t get together until way late in this book. Everyone in town sees that they are in love, Beau’s parents see it and fully support it, yet these guys who spend all of their time together see nothing. They have zero communication and when the smallest thing makes them think they have no chance, their immediate reaction is to contemplate leaving town. There is then almost no time to see them a couple. The writing in places was bland and felt forced and when Addy and Beau finally have their moment, the spark and the sizzle that should have been there fizzled out for me.
From the timeline presented, Addy and Beau were in their late 20s and still related to each other like teens and there was little growth or maturity to their relationship. This was not the book for me and not what I look for in a best friends-to-lovers romance.
