Review: Walk With Me by Cardeno C.

Title: Walk With Me (Home Series: Book Seven)

Author: Cardeno C.

Publisher: Self-Published

Pages/Word Count: 288 Pages

At a Glance: A great ending to the Home series.

Reviewed By: Carrie

Blurb: When Eli Block steps into his parents’ living room and sees his childhood crush sitting on the couch, he starts a shameless campaign to seduce the young rabbi. Unfortunately, Seth Cohen barely remembers Eli and he resolutely shuts down all his advances. As a tenuous and then binding friendship forms between the two men, Eli must find a way to move past his unrequited love while still keeping his best friend in his life. Not an easy feat when the same person occupies both roles.

Professional, proper Seth is shocked by Eli’s brashness, overt sexuality, and easy defiance of societal norms. But he’s also drawn to the happy, funny, light-filled man. As their friendship deepens over the years, Seth watches Eli mature into a man he admires and respects. When Seth finds himself longing for what Eli had so easily offered, he has to decide whether he’s willing to veer from his safe life-plan to build a future with Eli.

Review: First there is Eli, young (eighteen), brash and gay. Then there is Seth, twenty-seven and just landed his first job as an associate Rabbi. And straight. Walk with Me is all about delayed gratification – you never doubt these two will end up together – but it takes literally years to get there. Eli has to grow up. Seth has to admit he has feelings for the boy and, well, life has to happen. Granted, Eli has the one up on Seth in that he fell in love with him during summer camp, where Seth was a counselor, but Seth can be a little slow on the uptake. The HEA we all wait for doesn’t happen until about 2/3 of the way through the book, when Eli has graduated from college, but when it gets there – WOW. Worth the wait.

Honestly, it takes so long for Seth to decide it’s okay to love Eli it seems a little surreal when it happens. What’s funny is that Eli has the same reaction, so the last third of the book is Seth proving himself to Eli. But prove himself he does, and in the end, you are really rooting for them as a couple. As Seth says, “What had started out as a complete lack of awareness when he was a kid, and then morphed into nervous and amused interest when he was a young man had grown and flourished over the years and now Eli Block was my confidant, my friend, the person who made me laugh with joy and relax in safety. It has been a slow, gradual process taking him from a boy I didn’t notice to a man who, to me, took over the room until I could see nothing else. Eli was my everything and my heart hurt looking at him.”

Throughout the book, Cardeno C. gives us lively and hilarious anecdotes of all the Jewish weddings Seth officiates, and these help to move the story along and keep us entertained. Oh, what we will do for love. I would recommend this book; it was a great ending to Cardeno C.’s first series. In the dedication, Cardeno C. says that she hopes it made us smile. It did.