Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Lexington Lovers

Love has a steep learning curve.

 

Assistant high school principal Blake Barnes has everything he wants—a chance to help troubled students and an outlet for his passion for theater. Well, almost everything—he still goes home to an empty apartment. Then his high school crush explodes back into his life, the unexpected guardian of two boys in Blake’s care.

 

Thane Dalton has always been a bad boy through and through. Not much has changed, including his mistrust of authority figures, and no amount of institutional bureaucracy will keep him from protecting his nephews from the bullies terrorizing them. If that means butting heads with Blake, so be it.

 

Blake and Thane have lessons to learn: that they both have the boys’ best interests at heart, that the tension between them isn’t just confrontational, and that sparks can fly when opposites come together.

 

Book Review

From the setup to the characters, the description of this story sounded good to me. On one hand, there is Blake: an assistant high school principal worried about two of his students, the need to find a way to protect them against the bullies they’ve been facing, and the boys’ irate guardian, Thane, to deal with. A guardian who just happens to be the bad boy Blake crushed on in high school. On the other hand, there is Thane: the tough owner of a construction company in charge of his two nephews now that their parents are deceased. Blake remembers Thane, but not the other way around. Thane doesn’t think much of Blake – on any level – and the sparks between these very different men fly from the beginning.

Blake and Thane are opposite in many ways, but they share quite a few important interests. Above all, they want to protect two vulnerable boys from bullies. The fact that their methods are very different doesn’t help, but since Blake is in charge, Thane has to grudgingly accept to try thing his way. Blake’s plan of involving the boys in the theater set-building group, which will integrate them into the new school more quickly and hopefully give them friends and some protection, is a good one even if it takes Thane a while to see the benefits. Thane’s ability to help with the construction side of things should be an asset, except he has a tendency to take over, where Blake just wants to teach…

There are many areas of friction and conflict between Blake and Thane, and they both have to learn to accept their differences if they want to achieve the one goal they share: protect the boys from more bullying. It was fascinating to watch two grown men deal with parenting issues, as they slowly realize that there is more to the tension between them than differing ideas about how to handle any given crisis. The fact that they met before when they were in high school gives this the additional dimension of a reunion, a do-over in a way, and this added a dimension to their romance I really liked – especially since it took Thane a while to even remember their past.

If you like love stories where opposites come together in an occasionally explosive way, if you think taking care of two teenagers is a tough job, and if you’re looking for a read full of snark, interpersonal tension, humor, the occasional moment of comic relief, and a slow-burn romance that explodes into fiery passion once it gets going, then you will probably like this novel as much as I do. It’s clever, entertaining, and full of true-to-life moments that made me smile more than once.

 

 

 

 

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

Additional Information

Format	ebook, print and audio
Length	Novel, 224 pages/56932 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	01-May-2017
Price	$4.99 ebook, $9.99 paperback, $9.99 bundle, $19.95 audiobook
Buy Link	https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/stage-two-by-ariel-tachna-8325-b