Review: Getting It Right by A.M. Arthur

Title: Getting It Right

Author: A.M. Arthur

Publisher: Carina Press

Pages/Word Count: 245 Pages

At a Glance: Tag from the Belonging series FINALLY gets his own story, and it couldn’t have been better.

Reviewed By: Jennifer

Blurb: Detective Nathan Wolf might just be a junior detective, but he tackles every case with the passion that he lacks in his personal life. A series of failed relationships with women has left him still single at thirty-four—because he’s too scared to admit to his longtime crush on his best friend James.

Dr. James Taggert likes to keep his profession as a psychiatrist separate from his party-animal persona. Known around the gay clubs as Tag, he’s the guy who screws them, leaves them, and never looks back. But James’s drinking is getting heavier, and when bad memories from the past resurface, he’s close to becoming the worst version of himself.

After a drunken blackout ends in a hot and heavy make-out session with his very straight best friend, James has no memory of the steamy affair. But Nathan isn’t sorry for the kisses that James can’t remember. Nathan finally musters the courage to tell James how he really feels, but a life-altering event might force them apart before they can ever be together.

Review: Having read the entire Belonging trilogy, I kept seeing this recurring character in the background just begging to have his story told, and it finally is in this first book of a new trilogy by A.M. Arthur. Ever since he first graced the page, I loved Tag’s character. He’s an unashamed flirt and self-professed man-whore, and I loved him. Even when he got rough with Ezra, I felt for him. And when he helped out Romy, my heart offered itself on a plate to him.

This book gives a peek into his side of the story for both Ezra and Romy, though you don’t need to read that series before reading this one. It just makes many of the characters clear, as they’re all tied into each other’s lives in some way or another.

Tag—James to Nathan—is made so real in this book, and my heart ached for him. Readers will get an entirely different view of him than the previous bits of him hanging out at the bar, picking up the men and bringing them home. In this we get to meet the man he’s been pining after for fifteen years, the reason he won’t settle down with anyone else, and though fifteen years is a long time, it’s worth it.

Nathan, like James, is a fully developed character with his own hang-ups and insecurities. He’s only dated women before, but he’s attracted to James. Does that make him gay? Maybe, maybe not. It just means he loves who he loves, and that’s okay with him (after he accepts it, anyway). And I really liked that about the book. He loved James and that was what mattered to him. He didn’t care about the label. He just wanted the man he loved.

This is not an easy story to read because the men go through a lot to be together. I cried a few times and cursed the author for breaking my heart. Both men are scarred and it take a long time for them to not only heal, but to even accept that they’re damaged to begin with.

Hang in there, though. If you’re a fan of Tag, his story is worth every bit of heartbreak along the way.

 

You can buy Getting It Right here: