Book Reviews

Book Blurb

When I inherit a building from a grandpa I've never met, there's only one plan: take the money and run.

Enter Nicholas, the florist with the little shop downstairs. I'm an awkward loner of a carpenter, a straight guy who is totally out of place in this unfamiliar city's gay district. I don't know what to do with Nicholas's easy smile or his hopelessly romantic worldview, so I just ignore how it makes me feel when he says my name.

But as I start on some quick and needed renovations, friendly and talkative Nicholas keeps catching my attention, and my eye wanders where I've trained it not to go. The future of his business lies in my hands and what I do with this old, falling-down building. I can't afford to think about him this way, but we make each other smile, and desires I've buried for years rise back to the surface with every loaded silence and moment caught alone together.

Nicholas doesn't let me grunt and trudge away. He surprises me one night with a proposal. Turns out, Nicholas with the sweet little flower shop has some desires of his own, and we might be the perfect match. With love and romance off the table, we can focus all our attention on the bedroom until I sell the building and leave town, and no one needs to know about it.

No commitment is perfect for me. I've spent my entire life building walls.

But the second I get my hands on Nicholas, they all start tumbling down.

 

Book Review

The two heroes are featured in a romantic gay story. With apt quality, the tale is neither excessively nor too rapidly sexual – although it is strong on physicality. Rather, the readers’ attachment to Nicholas and Clay is slowly and beautifully developed. And, against the rules, I’ll let you know that after a lovely, well-f*cked relationship, they will end up together – or else my Kindle would have been thrown in the trash and you would have missed reading this fine review!

 

This tale is replete with all the usuals – cute meet, idiosyncratic secondary characters, a tense underlying situation (the eventual planned sale of the flower shop property) as a future challenge. Yet, the beautiful forming of our heroes' personalities and their relationship is quite captivating – even though Nicholas is outreaching, and Clay is much the loner, coming “across as an asshole without meaning to.” Sure, the heroes are quite different, and that is the secret of their ideal match. Like oddly-shaped puzzle pieces, they nonetheless surprisingly fit each other, as well as being catalytic to joining all the secondary personae. Nicholas is archetypically gay, enjoying occasional casual relationships. Clay is aggressively straight, engaging in “meaningless sex with women around my own age who I meet in bars, and I’m clear I’m not interested in more.” Curious from time to time, he denies to himself being bi – though it sometimes creeps into his masturbatory incitements! Irony, that Nicholas is rarely drawn to super-masculine men, but Clay draws his attention.

 

The potential reader need note that sex is not the primary draw of the novel, but rather the brilliantly constructed personalities of those characters in whom we are interested, and the well-paced steps by which they become a unit – first as friends, than as sexual conveniences, and ultimately as lovers. Our libidos may be conveniently coitus driven, but the other head more usually seeks emotional fulfillment.

 

Looking for quality in fiction? Note how Nicholas, determined to preserve his flower business, is in thrall with Clay, who wants to fix and sell the place. Perhaps there will be a common compromise, or perhaps that will define a chasm beyond scaling. And yet… the connection is overwhelming and, kudos to our author, sex between Nicholas and Clay is developed with exquisite physical and emotion detail – slowly as befits two partners rapt with the other’s personality as well as their parts. This is when sex becomes romance! The discussion between Nicholas and Clay establishes commonality but also differences between romance and pessimism, between casual sex and relationships. Reading the author’s related text is appropriately elucidating.

 

Clay is rapt with attraction for Nicholas, which leads sometimes to spitting in his hand and an ad hoc ejaculation. So as not to match the tale’s length, let’s merely note that the relationship will grow and be challenged, the facts concerning the town and flower business will provide a masterful hook on which to hang the tale, and that the sex will be better and better – with more detail and more physical connection.

 

Clay’s past disappointment in in family is a problem for him.

 

Okay, here is a point of style: the plot seems to have an end point at which the heroes will go their separate ways, so sex is presented in slow steps of growing intimacy and physical detail, but with little certainty. This is not an exercise in fictive porn, but rather tentatively in romance and love. The factual plot also proceeds in steps that reflect character development leading to greater commonality and risk. Nicholas: “Where does your curiosity take you?” “Your ass.” I answer… “Can’t stop thinking about that ass.”. There will be good moments and crises, and prepare to be captivated. By the way, there is also no shortage of clever dialog. Example: Setting Clay and Nicholas on a date to Niagara Falls, where Nicholas acknowledges the wonder of their coupling as “the Niagara Falls of orgasms.”

 

The novel, as appropriate, comes to problems and choices, and a complete exploration of romantic coupling, with the need to give and share. Read this for the reinforcement of love, and thoroughly enjoy.

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by the author via GRRT for the purpose of a review.

 

Additional Information

Format	ebook
Length	Novel, 283 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	27-August-2024
Price	$3.99 ebook
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Shop-Arrangement-R-Cayden-ebook/dp/B0DCNR61HT