Book Reviews

Book Blurb

As a musician at the popular college café Coed Joe’s, high school senior Kai Manter is never lacking for male attention. Out, proud, free-spirited, and sexually aware, Kai sets his sights on his darkly Gothic and undeniably bad-tempered coworker, Jamie Arlotta, a freshman at the local arts university. Sporting long hair and alluring hippie style, Kai expects his interest will be reciprocated, with satisfying sex as the end goal. That’s what usually happens. But Jamie’s lessons in life have been harsher. Having been sexually abused by his older stepbrother for several years, Jamie has grown an impenetrable outer shell meant to keep the world at a safe distance.

Kai is angry at first when he takes the brunt of Jamie’s bad temper, but after Kai accidentally discovers the abuse Jamie has suffered, he wants to fix things. Kai’s plan is based on what he knows best—music—and he stages a “musical intervention” to let Jamie know he’s not alone and things can get better. When Jamie’s perspective changes and he emerges from his shell, Kai changes, too, gaining a whole new understanding of what sex can be when love is there too.

 

Book Review

It’s said that time is the great healer, but love can be every bit as powerful when it comes to mending the soul. This is certainly the case for one of the heroes in this poignant coming of age tale by Mia Kerrick. Written with real tenderness, and featuring a protagonist whose voice grabbed my attention from the opening sentences, this is one of those novels that made me feel all warm and tingly inside. It left me with the belief that, no matter how damaged or embittered a person may be, there is always hope, the chance that things will get better.

High school senior Kai Manter—talented, confident, and sexy as hell—is unaccustomed to guys turning him down. Moreover, his evening shifts playing gigs at the popular college café, Coed Joe’s, earns him plenty of male admiration. Therefore, when he sets his sights on Jamie Arlotta, his beautiful but unapproachable coworker, Kai fully expects his advances to yield some no-strings-attached sex. Nothing could have prepared him for the vehemence of Jamie’s hostility, or that this rejection would arouse in him a single-minded determination to gain Jamie’s trust.

With the aid of music, his most comfortable mode of expression, Kai reaches out to Jamie. He assures him that he understands he’s in pain, that he wants to be there for him. Little by little, Kai coaxes Jamie into opening up, and soon learns that he has deep-rooted issues, planted there by years of sexual abuse. It also becomes clear that he is fast losing his heart to the broken young man. Kai has no idea whether Jamie will ever heal sufficiently to return his feelings, but the one thing he does know is that he has to do whatever it takes to help him.

What appealed to me most about 'Intervention' was that it’s primarily a story of character development. As the narrative opens, Kai is a cocksure young man whose main concern, besides his music, is scoring his next quick lay. Jamie, on the other hand, is an emotional wreck, who uses his bitchy tongue as a weapon to hold people at arm’s length. The more deeply Kai falls in love, the more I realized the self-assurance conceals a genuine kindness, and the patience with which he draws Jamie out, gradually revealing the sweetness beneath the animosity, truly touched me.

 

 

 

 

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Additional Information

Format	ebook, print and audio
Length	Novel, 230 pages/75477 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	10-October-2013
Price	$6.99 ebook, $14.99 paperback, $14.99 bundle, $19.95 audiobook
Buy Link	https://www.harmonyinkpress.com/books/intervention-by-mia-kerick-57-b