Title: Boats in the Night
Author: Josephine Myles
Publisher: Self-Published
Pages: 164 (.pdf)
Characters: Smutty, Giles
POV: 3rd Person
Sub-Genre: Contemporary Romance
Kisses: 5
Blurb:
Like two ships passing in the night—if one was a narrowboat and the other a luxury yacht.
Disgraced private school teacher Giles Rathbourne has been sent home on extended sick-leave and is stuck in a rut of obsessive housework and drinking. His ex may have been a snobbish bastard, but without him, Giles is adrift, rattling around his huge, lonely house. When a dreadlocked narrowboater’s engine breaks down at the end of his canal-side garden, Giles is furious at this invasion of his privacy—for a while.
Smutty might not have ever held down a proper job, but the fire-dancing, free-spirited traveller can recognise an opportunity for mutual benefit when he sees it. Giles’ extensive gardens are in as desperate need of attention as the upper-class hunk is himself, whereas Smutty knows a thing or two about plants and needs a place to moor up.
A simple business arrangement between two men who have nothing else in common? It would be—if they could keep their hands off each other!
Review:
All the charm and wit of Josephine Myles’ Barging In is back in Boats in the Night, an opposites attract story that touches on the world of narrowboating but at its essence is the story of two men who seemingly have very little in common, with the exception they’ve both been burnt in the past, making trust a bit difficult to come by.
Smutty and Giles couldn’t be more different—the dreadlocked boater with little to his name and the posh teacher with the comfortable financial portfolio—but a chance encounter when Giles is at his lowest, after a bitter break up, proves to be exactly what he needs to discover that love defies both explanation and expectation, and that sometimes finding the person you want to be with means having to let go of some preconceived notions about what you thought you’d always wanted and needed.
This is the story of two men who come to discover their pasts are more closely linked than they could ever have imagined, and find a connection to each other, one based on little more than the simple fact they’ve both found someone who doesn’t necessarily reflect who he is on the surface, but offers everything he didn’t even know he wanted until faced with the possibility of losing it.
Smutty and Giles are incredibly engaging characters who drew me into their world as I cheered them on, watched them connect, and proved that love truly is the great equalizer.
Reviewed By: Lisa