Audiobook - 5 Stars

Story - 3.25 stars

The Good

This was a solid mm romance story, without the unnecessary miscommunication thrown in.

JF Harding's narration was great as always. Eargasms galore.

It was sweet and light.

The characters were very likable.

Marshall and Fox had chemistry and that helped me to connect with them and the banter was good.

Sam stole the show, he was funny and had some amazing one liners.

The Rest

The story felt rushed especially halfway through, i wasn't given time to know the characters and see how their relationship developed.

There were so many things left hanging, Fox's relationship with his family, more about Marshall's background and his relationship with his mother.

Sam's story was unnecessary, IMO, it was meant to create the angst that was not really needed.

Fox being gay all of a sudden, that took me a while to adjust, the way it was done didn't feel authentic but i just rolled with it.

Overall it was an okay story. ( )

This started a bit slow in my mind, but a real connection was formed and believable by the characters because of that. It took me a bit to really get into it, but then I really became invested. Marshall and Fox had relatively interesting pasts that brought them to a path where their lives were flipped. Marshall was the bullied kid turned slightly more confident billionaire, Fox had a good childhood but severe PTSD from the military. They were a great match. I loved watching them become friends and really get to know each other before any romantic relationship happened. I loved Sam as a character and he was a ton of fun. Marshall and Fox were perfect mentors for him, and he was perfect for helping them as well. Very enjoyable story.

I am voluntarily reviewing an ARC provided by LesCourt Author Services ( )

This is a heartwarming tale of a bullied out teen returning to the town he grew up a success. Surprisingly there isn't much interaction with the town and its people, but on one visit Marshall discovers his high school crush hiding in a bush. This is a lovely scene and really gives the listener a sense of what Marshall is about. Fox has PTSD and Marshall appears to be the first person to actually ackowledge this fact and act accordingly (God, I hate Fox's mum so much). He gets Fox to move in to his house to be a live in gardener. These early scenes where Fox is finding his feet and they are dancing around their attraction to each other are just delightful.
Once they had sex it slipped a bit for me. There were too many sex scenes and Fox turned into a super confident dominant type in the bedroom, despite having never been with a man before and his PTSD having him questioning everything.
I felt some things got lost in favour of more bedroom/kitchen/office/any flat surface scene. Sam seemed to get forgotten about for a while, and Fox relationship with his parents was dismissed with one line--they live in the same town, they will bump into each other, I'd have liked to have seen this confrontation.
There's very little in the way of relationship angst, but that is not to say there aren't some anguish-filled moments. Fox's PTSD and the symptoms, his mother's treatment of him, the treatment of one of the secondary characters, the bullying of Marshall at the beginning.
Honestly this was heading for a 5 star read but ended up as a 4. Such a shame.
Overall a heart warming read with engaging characters (Marshall's mother is a delight).

ETA (review of audio)
The narrator did a great job. I've not listened to anything of their's before but I would pick up another book performed by them. ( )

This was a great story. I love the fact that Fox and Marshall had some not good history, but that Marshall could get totally past that in order to help Fox out.

These guys build such a wonderful connection and are so tight together, even before they start a relationship, and the romantic part of it just deepens their whole relationship. I also really like the fact that they become mentors as well. ( )