Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Lies are the chains that keep you weighed down at rock bottom. 

Officer Noel Carlson isn’t out to anyone in small-town Stratton, Pennsylvania, only to distant friends and family, so a relationship is out of the question. That doesn’t stop him from wanting one, though.

When a night-shift call brings him face to thonged butt with a hired stripper whose girl-party gig went terribly wrong, Noel takes pity on the guy and lets him go. But he can’t get the encounter out of his mind.

Shane has big-time debts to repay, especially to the brother who sacrificed nearly everything for him. His two jobs, in a deli and as a stripper, leave him no time for a social life. But a non-date of hot sex and takeout food with Noel? He can squeeze that in.

The bond they form is stronger than either expected or wanted. Especially since the step Shane’s about to take to put his brother—and his soul—back in the black isn’t quite legal. And he never calculated just how much his determination to make things right will cost him in the end.

First Edition published by Samhain Publishing, 2015.

Book Review

I was excited to finally have the chance to jump into a book by a new-to-me author. I'd heard so many wonderful things about 'The Truth as He Knows It', and the blurb whet my appetite for more. I had no idea I was going to get so much more than I expected. A story about two lonely men, both with baggage and serious pain in their pasts, not only finding each other but discovering a way to deal with everything life has handed them.

"One day soon, he would put Shane Joseph to rest, and finally figure out who Jody McShane really was."

Shane and his brother, Jason's, lives have been crap for the past fourteen years. Jason is eight years older and their stepfather threw him out when he was eighteen. It wasn't until months later that Jason found out the hell Shane had been living through. It took everything Jason had, particularly as an ex-con, to get custody of his little brother. Then it took more when disaster struck Shane in his teens. Now, both brothers are working themselves into the ground, more Jason even, than Shane. And both brothers have a lot of secrets to hide.

Noel is a recently relocated to the area cop with some secrets of his own. He knows Shane is a puzzle, and there's a lot he doesn't know, but the attraction between them is instant. Shane wants to spend more time with Noel, but he's afraid of telling him anything that might get him and Jason into trouble. The fact that both Noel and Shane are incredibly stubborn isn't helping the situation. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" When tragedy hits in the form of a serious health problem for Jason, meaning restricted work, etc., Shane has no choice except to do what he has to do to keep their little family alive. Unfortunately, it's just one more secret on a tower that's starting to wobble.

Shane and Noel's characters and their relationship, as difficult as it is, may be one of the most realistic ones I've ever seen in fiction. They struggle - a lot. Shane has huge trust issues, and Noel doesn't always see things from both sides, instead he looks at everything as a cop. The fear Shane has, and his guilt from all these years, is eating him up from the inside. Noel's anger and upset over what happened to his best friend, Tristan, three years ago, and to himself, has caused emotional baggage he's not even aware of. My heart, literally, broke for both of them.

“Is that what you want? Me to turn you in, so you go to jail, and prove what a horrible human being you are? To break us up for good, even though you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me? To take you away from Jason just when you have time to enjoy each other again? To let Thom win for starting this whole shitstorm when you were ten years old and helpless to stop him?”

I have never loved a book so much, and hated the ending, like this one. I cried, A.M. Arthur, and it was a big, ugly cry. I wanted to hate you for it, but I couldn't, because this story was so beautiful, and so perfect.

 

 

 

 

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Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 298 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	13-March-2017
Price	$4.99 ebook, $16.00 paperback
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Truth-As-He-Knows-Perspectives-ebook/dp/B06XKR6YCQ