“I realized I’m in love. It’s always been right in front of me.” – Richelle Mead
Author: K-lee Klein
Publisher: Amber Quill Press
Pages/Word Count: 84 Pages
Rating: 5 Stars
Blurb: Bryan Monroe has always catalogued his life in terms of moments—right moments, wrong moments, perfect moments. But when his best friend and partner on the police force, Chrys Delos, is shot in a raid gone bad, it’s one of the worst moments of Bryan’s life.
Bryan’s been secretly in love with Chrys for years, and the shooting is a wake-up call that it might be time to tell Chrys the truth. The problem is, Bryan’s never been with a man before, so in addition to worrying about Chrys’ injuries, he’s an indecisive wreck over the future.
But with the help of two unlikely matchmakers, Bryan knows it’s time to find the courage, and the perfect moment, to tell Chrys exactly how he feels…
Review: Partners. Cops who depend on each other for everything—for that one person who will always have their back. It’s all so simple until the day that Chrys takes a bullet meant for Bryan, and the lid comes off a virtual cauldron of repressed emotions that leave Bryan scrambling for purchase on the slippery path of love.
Straight but not quite, Bryan has finally come to terms with the fact that he is in love with his gay partner Chrys. But now he is racked with guilt over trying to find that one right time to express how he feels, and hopes that Chrys will not shut him down or, worse, toss him out of his life. But the potential reward far outweighs the risks, so Bryan watches and waits for the moment he can tell his partner that he loves him.
Author K-lee Klein takes a perfectly normal occurrence, falling in love with a best friend, and turns it upside down. In this novella, Never The Perfect Moment, she adds layers to the friendship that exists between her two lead men, and makes the big reveal on Bryan’s part fraught with anxiety over potentially losing his best friend, then adds danger in the form of a bullet from a desperate criminal into the mix. For a major part of this story, we get bits and pieces of how Bryan arrived at this point. We meet his clever ex-wife and his adorable four year old son, and realize that he has slowly, over the previous two years, come to understand that his marriage could never have continued as he has denied what is so apparent to those around him—his love for Chrys. There was just the right amount of worry and angst in this book. I never felt as though the story was rushed and therefore, I fully accepted the premise that Bryan wanted Chrys but was so terrified of screwing it all up he kept botching attempts to tell him. Add to that a wonderfully loose and sarcastic dialogue between our two main characters, and you have a delightfully tender love story that felt so very compete.
Never The Perfect Moment solidifies for the reader that this author really excels at writing exquisite short stories that leave you wanting more. It is a beautifully written story by one of my favorite authors. Who could ask for anything more?
You can buy Never the Perfect Moment here:
