Title: Love Me Harder
Author: Remmy Duchene
Publisher: Loose Id
Pages/Word Count: 172 Pages
At a Glance: Love Me Harder is a solid interracial romance.
Reviewed By: Carrie
Blurb: Life hasn’t been perfect for Mathew Chance. Between not knowing who his parents are, and being bounced from foster home to foster home, he’s had to work for everything in his life. But lately, he seems to be overdoing it. With two jobs that barely give him time to breath, love is the last thing on his mind. He doesn’t know whether to bless fate or curse it for shoving Asher Mulgrew right into his path.
Wealthy divorce lawyer Asher Mulgrew has it all worked out. From a successful practice to a supportive sister and a fantastic niece, life is good. But he’s lonely. Though he’s not actively searching for a man, he isn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth when he meets bartender, Mathew Chance. Mathew has a wall built around his heart and Asher isn’t sure he can break through even if he wants to.
Review: Mathew Chance works hard—too hard. Being on his own since he was eighteen, and aging out of the boys’ home the foster system had placed him in, all he has done is work. There has to be more to life than working himself into an early grave, but Mat doesn’t know what that is. Taking the easy road has never been his thing, and he refuses to bow to the pressures of his life now.
Remmy Duchene does a great job with Mathews’s character. She writes his hamster-on-a-treadmill life in a way that you both sympathize and empathize with his troubles and his way of thinking. How many of us feel trapped by life, unable to change the status quo because of finances or emotional instability? All we can do is try to keep going, hoping for something better, and that is Mat’s character to a T. Of course, Mathew’s something better comes wrapped in the package of Asher Mulgrew.
Asher runs his own law firm, and is sexy and established both in business and his personal life. He always longed for someone to share his life with, but so far, no luck—until he scopes out a quirky little bar where his sister wants to go, and runs into a gorgeous, reserved man named Mathew. Again, Remmy Duchene writes a character with feeling. After meeting Mat, Asher describes himself as feeling “intimately bankrupt,” and sets out to change that with Mathew. This is a romance in every sense of the word. The road is a long one for these guys, they begin the journey worlds apart, but they make it to their HEA in the end.
I felt like the story could have had a little more depth; the premise is a tricky one, with the poor black boy and the rich white guy, but I will say I never felt any part of this book to be gratuitous in its portrayals. The main characters are on an even keel in this one, despite their differences (as a matter of fact, their races are hardly mentioned). Love Me Harder is a solid romance between two men doing the best they can, and finding the road easier with someone to love by their side.
You can buy Love Me Harder here:
