Cringe-y, sophomoric twaddle.

So totally over-the-top stereotypical, eye roll inducing, sophomoric cardboard drama, where completely unbelievable plot movers, including, but not limited to, over the top bigoted sports dudes, ridiculous villainous violent parental figure, overly macho hero 'violence fixes violence' and finally over the top, flowery HEA, complete with - gasp - marriage proposal and baby surrogacy, combine to create the saccharin confection of cringe-y simple minded, for woman, by women M/M fiction. Utter twaddle... but the sex scenes were acceptable.

6 people found this helpful

The Cover Illustration Is Better Than The Story

Skip it. Although it doesn't mean to, unsophisticated writing comes really close to normalizing physical violence in the form of criminal assault and battery.There are good attributes of this story, but they are few and far between. It's jarring to hear explicit writing done in such a juvenile way. Yuck!

5 people found this helpful

Better than Reading it <3

Im not one to go out & purposely buy a M/M book , i have done in Series that i love as its part of the series .. but Lila Rose did a Fantastic job on writing this book , i had already loved Julian & his Histerical ways but even more so after this book was written , Julian was Mattys firsts in all ways which was sweet but its just the way the whole book is written .. you laughed, cried , was thinking wholely christ at some parts , WThells ... Just loved this book & it was Awesome to Listen to it the second time round . <3 :-) Its a must have . Hope Lila puts more of her books to Audio .. Ill certainly Buy .

4 people found this helpful

Romanticized sexual assault and age gap DNF

If you want to read about a teenage kid who just started college and is just discovering his sexuality, get taken advantage of and sexually assaulted by a middle aged man at school, this book is for you.

Characters are 19 and 36, 17 year difference. The 36 year old himself states that pursuing anything between them would be problematic due to their age and experience difference. Then he decides, “fuck it”, and grabs the 19 year old’s genitals while they’re in a professional setting (19 year old is at school, 36 year old is at work on the clock) and starts jerking him off while the 19 year old *repeatedly* tells him to stop to no effect. A content warning for the “romance” that focuses on middle aged man sexually assaulting a barely legal teen would’ve been nice. Not my cup of tea and I would’ve been able to save some of my time.

Before all this happened the author spent a lot of time fetishizing the hatred and abuse LGBT people experience. I appreciate realistic accounts of our struggles but the author made her characters into punching bags for the audience to pity and it was gross.

Overall a gross, fetishizing mess -3/10

3 people found this helpful

Mattie & Julian’s love story

The author has written the back story for Matthew & Julian, who have been featured all along in the series. It is a romance with a HEA, but with MM, not the usual MF.
Evans & Casteri handle the narration well with an Aussie accent.

2 people found this helpful

Cute

I liked it in general, although it had a few things that didnt convince me entirely. First, I would've liked a dual narrator, because sometimes I didnt know if it was Julien or Mattie talking. Second, it was a little bit chicks-with-dicks. And third, why did both of them acted like teenagers when one was supposed to be 36? Actually, there were parts in which the 19-year-old sounded more mature.
Either way, it was a sweet story. I mostly enjoyed it.

1 person found this helpful

Coming out?

Jan 2018 - I'm not sure what to say about this book. Overall it was alright. It might have been better if I had some back story from the other books in the series (but I have NOT read them). You wont be totally lost just reading/listening to this one. But there were a few places I was confused, some characters are brought up that don't make a lot of sense. Especially the Epilogue, it was a lot of info that wasn't included in this book so I'm not sure why it was added.. Anyways....

The Audio is Great!!! I could seriously listen to this Narrator All day long. I love his voice. He could read the phone book and I would be happy to listen to him.. LOL.

Nov 2019 - Update - Ok.. Now that I've listened to, and/or read some of the other books that reference characters in this book, I am less confused by some of the stuff mentioned. And this book was a bit more enjoyable the second time around. Still really liked the narration as well.

1 person found this helpful

Okay Can I get it completely out of my Library?

I thought this was a social commentary - it's just straight up porn.

I would not share or recommend to anyone. I hate that now my recommendations are filled with porn.

1 person found this helpful

This narrator!!

I Can get over the Australian accents! Love them!!

This story is so Freaking amazing. You get it all in a short story! Love it! I am obsessed with this whole series.

Julian and Mattie

An amazing story about discovering one’s self and loving who you are. Julian and Mattie are absolutely adorable, and a little too hot to handle. I adored this story. Paul Casteri was perfect for this story, he was a fantastic narrator. I enjoyed listening to this charming story.