Review: Will and Patrick Wake Up Married by Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths

Author: Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths

Publisher: Self-Published

Pages/Word Count: 112 Pages

At a Glance: Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths are casting, scripting and directing our way through a funny, angsty, and what I think will end up being a touching little romance.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: After a drunken night of hot sex in Vegas, strangers Will Patterson and Dr. Patrick McCloud wake up married. A quickie divorce is the most obvious way out—unless you’re the heir of a staunchly Catholic mafia boss with a draconian position on the sanctity of marriage.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Will and Patrick don’t like it, or each other, but they have to make the best of it until they can find another way out of their marriage. To ensure the trust fund Will’s charitable foundation relies on isn’t revoked by his mobster grandfather, he and Patrick travel to Will’s hometown of Healing, South Dakota, posing as a newlywed couple in the throes of true love at first sight.

Complicating their scheme are Will’s unresolved feelings for his all-too-recent ex-boyfriend Ryan, and Patrick’s desire to get back to the only thing that really matters to him in life: neurosurgery. Will they fool everyone? Or will the mafia get wind that their marriage is a fake? Throw their simmering attraction into the mix and all bets are off!

Review: Doh! Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths, what have you done? You’ve created two characters who drew me into their story and then left me hanging, that’s what. Ah, the perils of episodic fiction. Well played, authors, well played!

Will and Patrick Wake Up Married is the first installment in the new “Wake Up Married” serial, and I for one can’t wait to see where the team of Blake and Griffiths take these men next. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas in this series, where, as the title reveals, Will and Patrick wake up married after a night of steamy-horny-drunken-rebound monkey sex, to the hungover realization that not only do they not want to be bound in this state of unholy matrimony, but now they can’t get divorced because Will’s gangster gramps left very specific stipulations on the money Will inherited. Now, let’s be clear: Will does good works (Seriously. Good Works is the name of his foundation) with this dirty money, so it’s crucial he abide by the caveat his grandsire has placed upon it. Namely, that marriage is a sacred bond and divorce is absolutely out of the question. So, there’s a wee glimpse at this delightfully twisted picture.

What Blake and Griffiths have done in order to make this scenario work is create some great friction between Will and Patrick. Sexual chemistry—check. That’s there in spades, but these two men couldn’t be more different if they tried. Will wakes up like he’s been rode hard and put away wet—which he was, and which Patrick gleefully reminds him of whenever he can—and his bashful realization that he’s bedded and wedded a complete stranger plays so well against Dr. Patrick McHotbutt McCloud—who’s a bit of a dick. More than a bit, actually. He’s a brilliant neurosurgeon with a bit of a God Complex. He knows he’s the best in his field, and doesn’t hesitate to remind anyone who needs reminding of it. But…reasons for his douchey-ness are also coyly doled out in wee pieces, which I’m sure will be explained further in later episodes.

Patrick wants to drop Will like a bad habit, NOW, but he’d also kind of like to sex him up a little bit (a lot) too, before the divorce, or annulment, or whatever loophole they can find in Will’s mob connected purse strings; and this is where their journey begins, with help from a little synchronicity. It’s also where the authors begin to layer the characters, intertwine their lives, and set the foundation for their relationship. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon ::winkwinknudgenudge:: to see where their story’s going, but all the fun will be in watching these two men catch on to their own story arc.

Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths are building a town and its residents from the ground up, as Will bundles Patrick up and takes him home to South Dakota with him, with more than a little hope that Dr. McCloud will take one gander at the neurological facilities at Healing’s hospital and want to join its staff. What are the odds of that happening? Well, first they have to convince the entire town, including Will’s Mafioso family (the South Dakota Mafia ::snickers::), that they’re truly, madly, and deeply in love with each other. Otherwise, it could be bad for Patrick’s health.

Fun, no?

Yes, it most definitely promises to be! And with all the conflict and witty banter, and these two guys who are quite honestly both a little bit broken, the next episode can’t be delivered to my Kindle quickly enough.

You can buy Will and Patrick Wake Up Married here: