A review by lezreadalot
Sapphire Storm by C. Travis Rice

4.0

In Ethan’s experience, when you ran from grief, you ended up running on grief.

3.5 stars. Not perfect and not my favourite in the series, but this was such a heart-warming, intense, emotional age gap romance. It does move way faster than I would usually like; the bulk of the romance takes place in about one week, and by the end of the book, only maybe a few weeks have passed. That's usually a big no-no for me, but the author managed to sell me on the chemistry, even though they are two characters who, on paper, should not work together. 

So we're back at Sapphire Cove, with two completely new characters: Ethan, the new chef, and Roman, who is the best friend of the celebrity bride of an upcoming wedding at the resort. It turns out that they have a pretty fraught history, and the book follows them as they work through that and start falling for each other despite the odds. Roman finds himself in a messed up situation, and the lengths that Ethan goes to in order to protect him, and ensure that someone is looking out for him, just made my heart so full. Especially given the fact that Ethan didn't actually need to do those things for him. The instant protectiveness did really get to me. Especially when he cooked for him! And you could really sympathise with Roman's position and how he had been taken advantage of in his time of grief. Despite the complicatedness of the situation, there's also a lot of humour, a lot of lightness and this just succeeded in making me smile so many times. It's one of those romances where you really do feel the age gap, but in a light, fun way. (It did get a little bit taboo, but not in a way that I minded; mileage may vary.) They were a really sweet couple; they balanced each other well. 

The book did lose me a couple of times. Some of the dialogue was just a little bit cringey, even though I realised that it was just in service of emphasising that the two men are so different and from different generations and whatnot. I found the villain very horrendous, but also that whole plot-line got a liiiiiittle bit nonsensical to me, especially down to the end. Sometimes I don't mind when things get overblown in service of a cool plot or a dramatic rescue for example, but the last quarter of this book kind of just made me lose my patience. Just a little bit. Also I don't usually mind epithets all that much, but at a certain point they were being used so much it became noticeable and annoying. Eh.

Listened to the audiobook as read by the author and, as always, it was pretty good. I really enjoyed all of the couples in this series and I'm not sure if the author plans to continue, but that would be great. I would love for Jonas and Donnie to get stories of their own.

“There’s always been a storm inside of me for as long as I can remember, but I feel like no matter how big it gets it would never blow a man like you off course.”