Rating; 4
Steam: 3
PoV: single, 1st person
Genre: contemporary romance, MM
Tropes / tags: forbidden, age gap, hurt / comfort
Cara Dee didn’t pull any punches at the beginning of this story – Noah really had the rug pulled out from under him, and his story was a heartbreaking and emotional read, with some sweet hurt / comfort and slow burn romance.
It took a little bit for me to fall in love with Noah and Julian’s story, it started off heavy, with both Noah and Julian struggling and turning to each other for comfort, and it was quite a lot to take in. The relationship development between Noah and Julian was realistic with ups and downs, and kicked off for real once they got to Paris, where Noah was finally ready to give in to his attraction and connection to Julian. They had a ton of chemistry and their story was full of passion, with a certain role playing scene that added all the fire!
I loved Noah’s PoV, he was a very self-aware character and sometimes a bit self-deprecating, and I enjoyed seeing his process from grieving to starting to heal and accepting his feelings for Julian. There were continuous time jumps, but I felt like they were necessary to move the story forward – they both needed time to be ready before anything serious and deeper could happen between them.
Noah was a tender and emotional story, and it was easy for me to feel for Noah. I loved Cara Dee’s writing here, the feelings between the characters, the details to the story and Noah’s job were fantastic. A gripping and captivating story with a great combo of angst, hurt / comfort and steam!
Book links:
Amazon | Goodreads | BookBub | StoryGraph
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