Why I read it:  Mandi from Smexy Books recommended this one so I bought it.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads)  Austin Huntley and Cameron Nash are like night and day. One is a family man, works in a nice office, drives an expensive car, and is content to be content. The other one is an antisocial car mechanic with a short fuse.

Some things don’t change. Others definitely do.

After surviving a five-months long kidnapping together, they struggle to return to normalcy, all while realizing that they’re more drawn to each other than they ever could’ve imagined.

“I know I’m not normal, but I’m not fucking stupid.”

“Define normal,” Austin countered quietly, meeting Cam in the doorway. “And for not being normal, you’re the only person in the world who makes sense right now. What does that say about me?”

What worked for me (and what didn’t):  I had been warned that the kidnapping and torture to which the men were subjected weren’t pretty – they weren’t but they also weren’t as bad as the average episode of Criminal Minds either.  Spending five months locked in a cell together with little light, little food and water and no answers, with the occasional violent beating thrown in is sure to have a profound effect on a person.  Austin and Cam had a shared experience which made them very different men. I didn’t have any trouble believing they would become close and, even the development of their sexual feelings toward one another seemed to grow organically out of it.  I had expected a bit of an angst-fest, but it wasn’t really that.  There were parts of the book which I enjoyed very much but other parts with bothered me.

Austin is married to Jade and has a ten year old daughter, Riley.  He’s a devoted dad and a “content” husband – if content is defined as not rocking the boat.  When Austin returns to his family after having been incarcerated against his will for five months and three days, he doesn’t really get the reception he’s hoping for from Jade.  I found this really difficult to understand.  We are introduced to Jade by Austin’s memory of her telling him he needs to put the past behind him and look to the future – effectively, to get over it.  Jade sounds like she has no interest in what happened to him and no empathy for him at all.  Possibly some of this is because it is told from Austin’s POV but it still jarred.  Their marriage wasn’t sparkly rainbows and butterflies but he had been happy enough and they had been together for nearly 15 years.  What made her reaction even harder to believe was that she was a social worker.  Yes, that’s right, she’s a SOCIAL WORKER.  So not only does she show little empathy to Austin, she’s actually been trained in this stuff.  She, more than many other wives, would know the kinds of things which would help Austin and not allowing him to process what happened is surely not one of them.  Also, it appears that the therapy Austin and Cam and the other survivors were receiving did not include couple’s counselling.  So, Jade and Austin didn’t appear to have support as a couple.  Jade surely went through some unpleasant things when Austin was away too – not the same but still.  And, after such a time and such an experience, reconnecting would have it’s challenges.  Well, that’s what I think anyway.  But Jade seemed to not care.  Maybe there are people like that who are so entirely self-absorbed that they would not notice another person’s pain but would those people really be social workers?  I felt that Jade was demonised to give Austin a “get-out-of-marriage-free” card and to make his initial encounter with Cam feel like not-cheating (but it still was cheating).  The storyling relating to his marriage didn’t sit right for me.  I felt Jade wasn’t rounded as a character and there were plenty of opportunities missed there.

I liked how Cam and Austin communicated and connected.  I felt their relationship was based on good things, even though it came out of an horrendous experience.  I liked the inclusion of Cam’s and Austin’s wider family and the generally positive representation of sexuality shown by both families.  I liked that there were women more positively represented in the story – even though Jade was (I felt) demonised, their therapist is female and, Cam’s sister-in-law and both the men’s mothers were not.  These other characters were mainly sketched, but it wasn’t an “all women bad” book.

I also liked that Austin had previously had attraction to men – he’d never acted on it, but it wasn’t something which came up out of the blue and Cam identified as bisexual from the beginning.  I liked that by the end, both men identified as bi even though they were making a monogamous choice to be with only each other.

Cam has Aspergers and I felt that this aspect of him was something that faded in and out of the story depending on the demands of the plot.

Their time incarcerated is told in flashbacks and I found myself being often more interested in what had happened then, than what was happening now.  But, as the story progressed, I did better understand the connection between the men. Some parts of the story felt a little stilted or sketched in (for example, Cam’s return to work)  but some parts made more of a positive impact on me.  The scenes with Cam’s family and with Riley were probably my favourites.

I found the story entertaining but I think my expectations were a little too high. I had imagined nail-biting tension and have-a-tissue-box-handy reading but it was more low key than that.  I liked it well enough but it didn’t blow me away.

Grade: C+

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