Rating: 5
Steam: 2
PoV: dual, 1st person
Genre: contemporary romance, MM
Main tropes: age gap, hurt / comfort, found family
“Don’t start something you’ll regret, bright spot.”
Oh good, so we’d started.
Why the fuck would I regret anything that had to do with him?
I’d become downright obsessed in, what, thirty-six hours?
The Guy in the Alley was a beautiful and emotional story, with characters that I totally fell in love with and fantastic hurt / comfort!
I loved the journey that Cara Dee took me on with this story – it was a sweet, tender and slow burn romance, with a lot of banter and affection. The easy connection between Trace and Ben was lovely, and it was very entertaining to read their back and forth and ribbing. I just adored the way they were with each other!
While there was some spice early on in the story, I still considered this to be a slow burn, since it took Ben and Trace quite some time before they got to the same page and started to trust that a relationship between them could work, and last. Ben was stubborn and he had some concerns about their differences and age gap, but Trace was determined and continued to patiently reassure him. I loved how sure Trace was that Ben was it for him, and overall I had a great time reading Trace’s PoV, his personality really came through and he made me laugh quite a few times.
It was difficult and frustrating to see Ben struggle, he was so stubborn about receiving help and didn’t want to be a bother to anyone. It caused a little bit of angst, and I just wanted him to accept Trace’s offers and help. My heart ached a lot for him, and I was rooting hard for him to get his life back on track again. His hesitance and pride. made sense though, and Cara Dee did an excellent job at portraying his struggles in a realistic way.
The Guy in the Alley was a fantastic read that I can’t recommend enough – this is definitely a book that should be added to your TBR if you enjoy emotional hurt / comfort books with memorable characters! The ending was highly emotional and had me in tears, it meant everything for me to see Ben and Trace get their hard won and well deserved happy ending.
“I want you to keep losing your mind over me too, so we can quit acting like this is casual.”
Book links:
Amazon | Goodreads | BookBub | StoryGraph
The Secret Librarian 