Dreamspinner Presents
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=6775
Blurb
No bank is going to give a nomadic thrill seeker a loan, even if Tom Flynn wants to develop and run a retreat for disabled kids. Good thing he’s finally old enough to pull from his trust fund. However, it would mean settling down—because accessing the money requires him to be married—so he asks his best friend, Luke, to marry him.
Luke Marten’s goal is simple: don’t go on one more crazy adventure with Tom. Knowing how successful he has been in the past, Luke has a backup plan: don’t fall in love. He’s a goner when Tom not only proposes but confesses to one seriously hot kink.
For their friendship to survive this marriage, they’ll need to face DOMA, conservative judges, and long-held beliefs about each other. Talk about getting caught by the short hairs.
Review
Tom and Luke have been friends forever. Tom is bi-sexual but Luke (who is gay) doesn’t know this. Tom’s been wandering the world doing a bit of this and that until his inheritance comes in at 35. He doesn’t realize he has to be married to get it. When he does he asks Luke to help him out.
Luke agrees to the plan – it really is for a good cause – and the two explore the feelings neither has let the other know.
**
So… I liked this. I did not love it. The writing style was such that I found myself having to read and re-read parts to get who was doing what and why. It just didn’t flow smoothly for me, even though there was no high-brow concepts or anything standing in my way.
On the one hand I appreciated that the writer was kind of going for a more “minimalist” approach and letting each word/phrase/sentence fill with more meaning as a result, but the effect left me a bit confused rather than intrigued.
Tom and Luke are both compelling characters and I wish we’d had more story to get more deeply immersed with them. I was a bit bewildered by the added drama of the friend and the almost divorce and the angst surrounding the land. I’d have thought there was enough to deal with as it stood with the gay marriage and the time line and the friends to lovers and the “I’m bi-sexual”, etcetera.
I also never quite got a handle on how Luke and Tom felt toward each other before the deal. There was tension and I’m not sure how Tom managed to hide his sexuality from his BFF for so long – or why – but in the end I was still happy they found each other and could achieve their dreams.
I rounded this up from 3 to 3.5 simply because I appreciated the effort the author took to give us something new and different in terms of writing styles and I hope to see more from her.
