Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Left at the altar by his long-time lover, Spencer, and in desperate need of quality health insurance, Dane Archer can’t say no when his best man and best friend, Gideon DeLuca, steps in. But Dane and Gideon have history, tangled and passionate and complicated.

After seventeen years of cat and mouse, Gideon has realized Dane isn’t the kind of man who ever wants to be caught, and he’s stopped playing Dane’s game.

For Dane, it’s never been a game, but sexual fidelity isn’t his strong suit. Love is too beautiful for limits, something he’s never been able to get Gideon the control freak to understand. Now Dane has nothing but limits, including the timeline on his paper-only marriage to Gideon.

Gideon’s the only person Dane trusts enough to lean on, and Gideon will do anything to get Dane through this crisis. Anything but fall for Dane again.

Living together forces Dane and Gideon to stop circling and face what’s been between them all these years. They just don’t know if they have the power or the time to make things right.

What they do know is that they’re not ready for it to be over.

Book Review

This third story in the ‘Ready or Knot’ series is very different in tone from the first two. The focus is still on two men who face challenges they may not be ready for but have to deal with anyway, but the level of physical and emotional challenges, the stakes of their situation, are much, much higher than those of Theo and Kieran in book one, or Jax and Oz in book two. Dane faces cancer and Gideon has to deal with his violent past (due to an alcoholic, abusive father) and his love for Dane that has been unrequited for as long as they have known each other – and it has been eighteen years. The pain both Dane and Gideon suffer as they deal with chemo and a growing realization for Gideon that he may never get what he needs from Dane is excruciating. Neither man knows how to break out of their codependence until it is almost too late – and I was on tenterhooks the entire time. Masterfully written!

The situation Dane faces having been diagnosed with cancer and facing the fact that he does not have the level of health insurance he needs to pay for the optimal course of treatments is bad enough. But when the man he has been living with for many years, the guy with just the health insurance Dane needs, ends up leaving him standing at the altar, things get worse than Dane could have imagined. And not just because of the threat to his health. His best friend Gideon, a man he has had a very close, on-and-off physical relationship with for years, comes through for him and they get married, so the health care issue is solved. Of course, that is not the end of their problems, and the emotional roller coaster that follows is exhausting. Add this to Dane’s physical challenges as the chemo treatments suck the life out of him, and you have a harrowing tale that does not sugarcoat the truth at all.

Gideon has a lot of issues. Many stem from his youth, when he was abused by his alcoholic father to the point of repeated serious injuries. But many result from the kind of man he has become: emotionally repressed, tightly in control of every aspect of his life, and helplessly in love with Dane for eighteen years. Physically, they are as close as any two men can be, but emotionally they have severe issues. Gideon jumps to Dane’s rescue without thinking about it, but living with him day in day out, married and in each other’s space constantly, Gideon is forced to face his feelings and fears. He feels that he can’t tell Dane the truth because he is afraid of rejection, but also because putting more pressure on Dane, who is fighting for his life, would be unfair. It takes a long time and another traumatic event in Gideon’s life for both him and Dane to realize what’s really important.

If you like drama and emotional roller coasters in your romances, if you want to know how two men who have loved each other for years but have not been able to admit and deal with their feelings, and if you’re looking for a read that is emotionally draining yet ultimately very rewarding, then you will probably like this novel.

 

 

 

 

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
Length	Novella, 140 pages/43844 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	19-October-2016
Price	$4.99 ebook
Buy Link	https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/take-a-chance-on-it-by-ka-mitchell-7651-b