Take a photo of a barcode or cover
deepreadbelle's Reviews (1.15k)
As the last person on Planet Earth to read this book, I can state definitively that it deserves every shred of goodwill and hype it receives, and this is coming from someone who rarely feels satisfied by gentler love stories. Cat Sebastian works actual magic throughout this story of two men who are each others’ sun; the unfolding of their friendship and immediate mutual orbit, with Nick (gay) smitten from the jump with the boss’s son Andy (bi awakening), the reluctant entanglement of attraction, and then the inevitable realization that the other is it for life. The atmosphere of late-fifties New York City is beautifully rendered, as if Sebastian is also telling a love story of New York alongside Andy and Nick. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long, long time.
I can’t help feeling that Elizabeth Hoyt became less enamored with the “traitor” arc of this series about halfway through, which means this final installment of Legend of the Four Soldiers feels quite flimsy. It’s difficult to talk about this book with specifics, as its existence alone is a spoiler, but it’s the weakest of the series by far; when it opens with a note from the author and three “prequel” scenes that didn’t make the final books....like, what are we doing here, other than highlighting the wanting nature of the book on the whole? I do think there is actually a really good book here outside of the series’ plot conceit, and I would very much like to read that book with far more character and relationship development. This just makes me ask: WHY?
The third entry in Hoyt’s Legend of the Four Soldiers series was a lot of fun in a vaguely chaotic way, even if it doesn’t all hang together quite well. But so many of its individual pieces are delightful: Alistair’s sister and their relationship, the on-running joke of a dog name, Helen steamrolling Alistair in order to be the housekeeper he didn’t ask for, Alistair being so dazzled by Helen’s breasts from the jump and then the book going all in on him being a boob man (trust me, it’s a thing), and a very hot scene involving citrus birth control that was *chef’s kiss.* Could I have done without the POV of Helen’s 9-year old daughter? Wasn’t my favorite, but I appreciate why Hoyt employed it. The A+ mucho-excellent chest hair representation made up for it.
For the life of me, I do not understand the audiobook’s choice of narrator.