LGBT Romance

Blurb:

Casey Preston is the guy with the plan. The list-maker. The one who micromanages his own life.

Spontaneously offering to be his best friend’s fake boyfriend to get Ethan’s annoying team captain off his back?

That’s not thinking things through. It’s not even smart given Casey’s been fighting his feelings for Ethan for years.

Ethan Rain just wants to play hockey and get his college degree. Adding a fake boyfriend to the mix? He doesn’t need that complication.

If Casey were his real boyfriend, though? If he got to keep Casey forever? Now we’re talking.

But what if Casey doesn’t want to be kept?

Review:

Keeping Casey is a sweet college romance that contains many of my favorite tropes/elements: gay hockey players, friends-to-lovers, and fake-dating, so I was super excited to delve into this book. The story follows Casey and Ethan, who have been best friends throughout their entire lives. Ethan is demisexual, and Casey is gay, and both of them have a secret crush on the other — but neither has ever been brave enough to act on their feelings, each certain that their love is unrequited. Thus, there’s plenty of angst as well as mutual pining going on. What’s fun is that pretty much everyone around them assumes that they’re a couple because of the way they act towards each other, and their friends call them out on it more than once.

It’s also worth mentioning that the boys are bonded by a shared family tragedy: they both lost a parent in the same horrific construction accident, so this tragedy has overshadowed their decisions in life and affected each of them in different ways. They take care of each other, support each other, and provide that unconditional yet unspoken love that really is what they both need so desperately.

Their relationship takes a turn when, on the fly, they decide to become fake boyfriends in order to put Ethan’s homophobic team captain in his place. Suddenly, their intense feelings for each other are forced out into the open with some unexpected results. I love how these two move through so much indecision and inner doubt as they toy with the idea of falling for each other.

Note that this is an extremely slow burn and low heat story — in fact, they don’t even kiss until near the end of the book. In this way, sex is secondary to the intense emotional bond that the men share. So if you’re looking for a steamy romance, this isn’t it. What we do have, though, is a deep love and bond between two men who have intimate knowledge of each other’s faults and imperfections. Yes, both characters are flawed and slightly broken — but their complementary characteristics balance out their flaws.

Though this is a tender, lighthearted romance, there’s also a serious aspect to it as the story delves into topics such as homophobia, love, grief, parental distancing, chronic illness (Ethan is living with rheumatoid arthritis), fear, insecurity, and sexuality. The sprinkling of humor throughout, however, kept the story from being too heavy.

Though Keeping Casey may be a bit cliché in the way that it ends up resolving some pretty big problems and conflicts, it is an endearing romance that allows a reader to enjoy a bit of escapism into a beautiful relationship that never really falters. Their love is engaging and passionate — and Casey and Ethan have become one of my favorite couples. They both become different people by the end of this book, and it is lovely to see it happen. So though a tender romance is at the heart of this book, the story is also about facing unimaginable heartbreak and loss — and coming out stronger on the other side, no matter how long it takes you.

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Blurb:

Their collections may clash but their hearts are a perfect match.

Moving to eclectic New Hope, Pennsylvania, and running The Beautiful Things Shoppe is a dream come true for elegant and reserved fine arts dealer Prescott J. Henderson. He never agreed to share the space with Danny Roman, an easygoing extrovert who collects retro toys and colorful knickknacks.

And yet here they are, trapped together in the quaint shop as they scramble to open in time for New Hope’s charming Winter Festival.

Danny has spent years leading with his heart instead of his head. The Beautiful Things Shoppe is his chance to ground himself and build something permanent and joyful. The last thing he needs is an uptight snob who doesn’t appreciate his whimsy occupying half his shop.

It’s only when two of New Hope’s historic landmarks—each as different as Danny and Prescott—are threatened that a tentative alliance forms. And with it, the first blush of romance. Suddenly, running The Beautiful Things Shoppe together doesn’t seem so bad…until Danny’s secret threatens to ruin it all.

Review:

The Beautiful Things Shoppe, which is the second book in the Seasons of New Hope series, is a sweet enemies-to-lovers/opposites attract romance. It completely stands on its own as this story focuses on different characters, though a couple of the characters from the first book (The Hideaway Inn) do make a guest appearance.

The two main characters in this story are Danny and Prescott, are so much fun! Here we see two opposites who find themselves in somewhat of a forced business situation. I loved how different they were from each other, with Prescott being a stuffy, elegant, almost snooty fine arts dealer and Danny being an easy-going extrovert who collects retro toys and colorful pop culture tchotchkes. I enjoyed the plot device of having these two opposites sharing the same retail space when they thought they’d leased the entire space for themselves, all of which resulted in plenty of comical situations and snarky banter.

Our two characters, each of whom finds the other attractive, come to realize that they actually complement each other in ways they didn’t expect. Once they stop bickering, they eventually discover that there’s a fantastic chemistry between them, and I enjoyed watching their false assumptions about the other come crumbling down as they wormed their way into each other’s hearts. The rich and quirky secondary characters also really added to this story’s charm, and I loved seeing a couple of familiar faces from the first book.

It was heart-warming to see how both of the guys set their differences aside in order to come together to help save a couple of architecturally significant buildings. So, all in all, I found The Beautiful Things Shoppe to be a light-hearted yet addicting and engaging story that oozes with romance yet is layered with complexities of identity and judging people by outward appearances. It’s an emotive story with distinctly drawn, genuine characters, and I loved watching their relationship play out on the page. I’ll definitely be picking up the third book in this series.

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This is a fun enemies-to-lovers/opposites attract type of romance that follows Teddy Spenser, our narrator, who works for an up-and-coming Chicago design firm called Reddyflora. Teddy is not amused when his boss puts him on a high profile project with his nemesis — the stodgy and abrasive software engineer Romeo, who also happens to be quite cute. I also learned about “smart vases” in this story, something I never even knew existed.

If working together wasn’t enough, their boss then sends them on a business trip together to Seattle to meet with a wealthy and eccentric potential investor, Joyce Alexander. Oh, and there was a mix-up at the hotel and not only did they have to share a room, but it was a room with only one bed.

I loved watching these two learn about each other over the coming days and seeing both of them overcome their hostilities. It was fun to see how their initial impressions of the other slowly fell apart once they discovered new and admirable facets of the other person, all of which led to a fierce devotion on both of their parts by the end of the book. Their transition from enemies to lovers is quite sweet and heart-warming and I ended up adoring both of these characters.

There was kind of an unbelievable aspect of the story, where the two of them were sent on sort of a contest and needed to perform a set of quirky missions. Though unlikely, I found this aspect of the book to be a lot of fun and I didn’t mind suspending disbelief for a little bit here.

The only thing I didn’t really like was the insta-love aspect of the story. They went from barely knowing each other to eternal declarations of love within a few days. But Insta-love aside, I enjoyed this delightful low-angst book and found both of our characters to be lovable and admirable, with just enough tension to keep the narrative compelling.

All in all, a sweet and tender perfectly constructed story with diverse characters and a heart-warming storyline. I loved the way the story progressed culminating in a beautiful epilogue.

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This book is about a baker and a hockey coach, a copy of my favorite things in stories so I was excited about this one. It follows our two main characters, Ben Daniels and Adam Bernard, both Jewish.

Ben runs a Jewish kosher-style bakery in Boston, and he’s just barely getting by. Three years ago, he was a champion speed skater, and Olympic hopeful before a horrible accident on the ice put an end to his dream. Adam coaches a teen hockey league in Montreal. Once a professional hockey player, he also had given up on his dream of playing in the NHL to take care of his ailing father, a retired Rabbi.

When Adam is invited to a prestigious tournament in Boston, which happens to take place during the week of Hanukkah, he accepts, even though he’s hesitant to leave his father alone for the holiday. But he doesn’t want to disappoint his young player. So when Adam and his team pay a visit to Ben’s bakery, the attraction to the two men is instantaneous, and the two embark on a week-long fling. The more Adam hangs out with Ben and gets to know the man, the more he wants to stay in Boston with Ben.

When Ben receives a coaching job offer from the NHL to coach a team right there in Boston, Ben begins to wonder whether it is feasible to start planning a future with Ben. But we learn, Adam has some religious prejudices that could destroy their relationship before it even gets started.

The two main characters had some great chemistry between them that was damped by the continuous spats surrounding differing views of “what it means to be Jewish, with the disagreements ending ultimately with Ben telling Adam to get out of his bakery or apartment. In this regard, I found Ben to be unnecessarily judgmental and kind of a jerk, though he always did come around the next day. But it seems that Adam went out of his way to start disagreements with Ben, which resulted in an eye-roll from me more than a couple of times, especially given that they’d only known each other for a couple of days.

There’s are actually a couple of points where it seems they just are not going to be able to conquer their differences. But each misunderstanding is resolved quickly.

So in this way, religion was a huge theme in this book; more specifically, the way one does or should exercise one’s faith. I found the discussion about the role of religion in one’s life, the complexities of faith, the manner in which people exercise their religion as well as religious belief vs. cultural influence, all of which I did find fascinating.

But for people who are somewhat religion adverse, they might find it a tad off-putting.

The highlights of this story for me were Adam’s junior hockey players. They were so much fun and had me giggling more than a couple of times. They had such delightful personalities, and the banter between them and their coach was priceless, all of which really added an extra enjoyable element to the story.

Though their relationship had a few ups and downs, complete with angst, spats, judgments, and differences of opinion, this ultimately ended up being a sweet and heartwarming holiday romance, with a few “matchmakers” in the story pushing our guys together.

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Secret Admirer is a super-sweet friends-to-lovers slow-burn romance that follows our two main characters Ace and Benji, who attend the same university. Ace is a couple of years older than Benji and is the best friend of Benji’s brother Jeremy. Ace promised Jeremy that he would keep an eye on Benji to ensure that he doesn’t feel too alone at the university. Jeremy and Benji were supposed to attend the same university together, but then Jeremy accepted an internship elsewhere, so he’s feeling a bit guilty for abandoning Benji.

Now Benji has had a lifelong crush on Ace, even though he is supposedly straight. And as for Ace…well…he may not be so straight as everyone thinks. He is beginning to accept that he’s bi-curious and can no longer ignore his ever-growing attraction to Benji. He initially decides not to act on his feelings, given that his friends asked him to keep an eye on his brother, not try to seduce him.

But when Benji begins feeling kind of down in the dumps, Ace begins sending him anonymous gifts and notes from “A Secret Admirer” in the hopes of cheering Benji up. But after Ace begins sending the gifts, he can no longer deny his feelings for Benji and decides to come clean. But of course, things don’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped, and all sorts of hijinks ensue.

I loved this low-angsty tender story about a young man discovering his sexuality and subsequently falling in love with someone he feels he shouldn’t. I enjoyed getting this story from both of their alternating perspectives, allowing us to see the drama unfolded from each man’s point of view and how each man’s view of himself differs from the other man’s view of him, an element that I always enjoy in stories.

I also loved the secret admirer angle in the book. I mean, who wouldn’t love having a secret admirer? Though, of course, there’s a fine line between that and stalking, I guess. But still, I thought it was sweet, and I loved the emotion and reasoning behind it — merely trying to make Benji feel better about himself. It’s also worth mentioning that Benji doesn’t really believe anything Ace tells him, figuring that Ace is just being nice to him because he’s best friends with Benji’s brother. So from Ace’s point of view, the secret notes and gifts are a perfect solution.

All in all, this book about bisexual awakening, a mildly forbidden romance, complicated families, and first love was a hit for me. DJ Jamison is a new to me author, and I certainly will be checking out more of their work.

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