The two find friendship in the bottom of a shared bottle. When the friendship turns to love, it shakes two straight men to the core and flips their lives inside out. Kids, families, careers that are not gay-friendly -- can all the love in the world overcome the obstacles to faith and fidelity?
Comment: I've had this book to read for a long time. For some reason I never picked it up but this month I decided to just start it and see if I'd like it now as much as so many readers did when it was released. Thankfully, this was an engaging story for certain.
In this book we meet Evan, a recent widower who can't seem to grasp he's alone with four children after losing the only woman he has ever loved. In a party for a colleague about to retire, he meets Matt Haight, an ex cop who isn't well seen by most his ex colleagues because of what he did when he found out a cop was dirty.
Matt is a very lonely man and his work isn't fulfilling, he has no close family and is terribly depressed. At first he and Evan only got together tot alk about each other's sadness and to drink. With time, their nightly drinking meetings get weirder and weirder and it looks inevitable the two guys start sharing more than their problems.. but how can this be when none had ever think about men like this?
Well, this story wasn't as difficult to believe as I imagine when I saw it would feature a GFY (gay for you) trope, where one or both protagonists have never been gay of had gay inclinations but now fall in love with a man.
I think the author did a good job in letting thing happen very gradually, which means the reader had some time to bet used to what was happening between the to guys. However, I also think the steps from just being to new buddies talking and drinking to being in emotional love (and not an obvious case of lust) wasn't that obvious. Perhaps one or two more scenes where they both monologues for themselves these new feelings or the idea of them might have made it easier to visualize.
The two main characters seemed very interesting but I confess I felt Matt was better characterized and my sympathy towards him was easier to find. It was very easy to feel empathy when thinking about how depressed Matt was because his loneliness and sort of isolation wasn't his choice, he did his job and he was punished because of those rules no one should break in the force but...Matt privileged his honor and working professionalism and he was punished. I get it but I felt more because of him.
Evan had a terrible thing happening to him and I can commiserate but his character was always more difficult for him because I felt he struggled more to process what he was feeling. Understandable of course, but still. The way he dealt with everything, however, was credible and that is why I could see things with a positive impression about their relationship.
The plot had some weaker moments but all books seem like that at some point. There are different conflict points in this book, some were dealt with in quite reasonable ways, I did find the situation regarding the perception by both of what would happen, how would others react to this to be believable but the process was a bit too dramatic. I can totally understand in real life it's certainly so but the path in the book made some scenes feel a bit too much. Just my impression.
Paradoxically (for me), some reactions weren't what I expected and the end was too much abstract and subtle but since there are more books in the series I suppose some things might be addressed there.
All in all, this was an interesting and emotional story, I liked reading it. I don't think I'd say it's a favorite ever but it was easy to appreciate the stronger scenes so... a positive reading, all things considered.
Grade: 8/10
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