Reviewed by Nikyta
Title: Here For You
Author: T.K. Paige
Heroes: Mason & James
Genre: M/M Contemporary
Length: 32k+ words
Publisher: Totally Bound
Release Date: July 25, 2014
Available at: Totally Bound & Amazon
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads
Blurb: When James falls for the new guy at the station is he just setting himself up to be burned?
Welcome to Deacon, Oklahoma. Straight population—seven hundred and ninety-six. Gay population—James Hara. Except it really isn’t that bad, because when he came out to his hometown, something wonderful happened. They still loved him…most did anyway. The only problem is the lack of a dating pool.
Then he meets the new firefighting volunteer and he has a bigger problem. Mason is gorgeous, friendly and straight. Soon James is doing his best not to fall for his new friend. Hard to do when Mason is everything he dreams of, with his humor and flashes of vulnerability.
But after a set of stressful events, he finds that maybe it is not impossible after all. If he can be patient with a man wounded by his past.
Reader Advisory: This book contains references to past sexual assault.
Review:
This is a pretty cute story about volunteer firefighters James and Mason. While James is openly gay, he thinks Mason is straight. As they get closer and the feelings start to develop, Mason finally comes clean about really being in the closet and his reasons why. Now the question is, can they be happy with keeping their relationship a secret? And what happens when tragedy strikes? Will they be able to keep their feelings for each other a secret when they need each other the most?
James and Mason are a super cute couple. I liked the friendship they had together before they took things to the next level. I absolutely loved that James was so understanding of Mason’s relationship and he didn’t try to push him into doing things he didn’t want to do. For Mason, I was so sad to hear what happened to him but happy to see that he was able to move on and willing to take a risk with James. I adored them together and I liked the relationship they developed and especially where they ultimately ended up.
While I enjoyed this book, I had a few issues with it. For one, it took me a while to get into this story because of the POV. It’s very slow and since it’s first person, I kept putting it down and picking it up because he’s a little dramatic. I mean, it took me two years to read this story because it just wasn’t holding my attention. After this last time, though, I finally got far enough that it kept my attention. I liked the relationship between James and Mason but towards the end, I started getting a little frustrated with them because I missed seeing them actually become friends, your just dropped into them already friends with a brief telling of when they first met. Add to that, there wasn’t much firefighterness to it which was disappointed and I wasn’t feeling the lead up to the ending. I felt like it was sorta rushed and then we missed the whole coming out thing with Mason, which was even more disappointing!
In the end, I liked the story. It was nice and sweet but I felt like it was just too short to really get into the meat of things. The author spent a lot of time in James’ head but not enough time explaining or exploring anything that happened so a lot of it felt like it was told instead of shown. Still, if you’re looking for a short, sweet story, you should give this one a go!
Overall Impression: I liked it!
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in return for a fair and honest review.*
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