This review is from 2018 and is kept here for reference. Titles, prices and availability may have changed.
Melanie Hansen
Book ArchiveContemporaryGayMolten
Only love can heal an impossibly broken heart
There’d forever been a thread running through Trevor Estes’s life—his son, Riley, strong and constant like a heartbeat. But when Riley is killed in combat, everything in Trevor’s life unravels into a mess he doesn’t know how to mourn.
Then Jesse Byrne, Riley’s friend and platoon mate, arrives on Trevor’s doorstep with a box of Riley’s things. Jesse’s all-too-familiar grief provides an unlikely source of comfort for Trevor: knowing he’s not alone is exactly what he needs.
Trevor never imagined he’d find someone who fills his heart with hope again. As the pair celebrate Riley’s memory, their unique bond deepens into something irreplaceable—and something neither man can live without.
But diving into a relationship can’t be so simple. Being together means Trevor risking the last link he has to his son…leaving Jesse to wonder if he’ll ever be enough, or if Trevor will always be haunted by the past.
This book highlights the high price that military families pay. I love that, even though it is a love story, it charts the grieving process. There is no magical “everything is better” moment, You live every bit of anguish with Trevor, a Gold Star father and Riley, his son’s platoon mate. And after a slow burn, the sex is phenomenally hot! This story rates a bottle of wine and a box of tissue!
A taste
It was amazing how one man’s life— and death— had changed the course of so many others’, leaving people as adrift as pieces of flotsam on an angry sea.(…)
“If there's one thing I've learned, it's that grief is a journey, except there's no point A to point B. It's a fucking twisty-turny, up-and-down, forward-and-back piece of shit. It's one good day….hell, maybe it's only a few good hours…..in the midst of a shit-ton of bad ones. But you don't give up, and you keep going.”
With a sob Trevor put his back to the wall and slid to the floor, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I miss you, Riley James.”
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