Review: Laugh Cry Repeat by John Inman

Title: Laugh Cry Repeat

Author: John Inman

Length: 200 Pages

Category: Contemporary

At a Glance: Laugh Cry Repeat is a beautiful love story that takes a slice of everyday life and creates a magical montage of sweet moments that leave the reader delighted.

Reviewed By: Sammy

Blurb: Wyeth Becker is a quiet man. Staid, serious, calm. A librarian. When he meets preschool teacher Deeze Long, he discovers joy for the first time in his life. With joy comes laughter, excitement, and a new way to look at the world through the eyes of the kindest, most loving man he has ever met.

When tragedy strikes and Deeze loses his joy, it is Wyeth who helps him find it again. It is Wyeth, the man who never truly understood happiness, who pays that gift back. Giving all he can of himself to the man who changed his life. Restoring in Deeze what he now so desperately needs.

But the road of their relationship doesn’t end there. The joys and sorrows of life are never-ending. As they set out to weather the highs and lows together, Wyeth and Deeze hang on to the one thing that makes all the tears and laughter worthwhile.

Love.

For only through love can life be truly savored at all.

Review: I make no bones about the fact that John Inman is an auto-buy author for me. He works in many genres, from horror to romance, and each time puts out a story that is captivating and well executed. What I feel makes this author stand apart from others is that his characters have a certain mass appeal. They are genuine, familiar men and women who have been crafted in such a way as to make them easily relatable and accessible. They are your classic ‘everyman’ who are crafted with personalities that are very appealing and immediately draw you in. Such is the case with Wyeth and Deeze, who are featured in Inman’s latest release Laugh Cry Repeat. An introvert and extrovert meet, and the resulting chaos quickly becomes a humorous and often poignant study in how to make a relationship work in both good times and bad.

Wyeth is a quiet, reserved librarian who lives a carefully tailored life. His daily routine includes walking his overly eager dog, and delving into a nice long book. He has had his fair share of relationships that have, as a rule, ended badly, with his heart once again the main victim. So, Wyeth leads a solitary life and has convinced himself he is content with that. He may not be happy, but then, who really is?

Deeze is a force of nature. A pre-school teacher who is studying to earn a secondary degree in the sports medicine field, Deeze is your basic optimist. Rarely daunted by the day-to-day problems that may arise, Deeze spends his time corralling small children and loving them. When he literally falls head-over-heels after tripping over Wyeth’s dog, he is determined to get to know the gorgeous, reclusive librarian who just happens to live right across the street. So begins a war, of sorts, with Deeze attempting to scale the walls that Wyeth has erected around his heart.

This novel was just lovely. From the clever and sophisticated dialogue to the winsome way in which Deeze pursued Wyeth, one could not help but fall in love with these men and their story. I so value an author like Mr. Inman, who dares to use vocabulary that is beyond the normal fare we often read in a romance. It may seem simple, yet giving these men a linguistic edge that sounded a bit more educated and cerebral actually made them that much more realistic to me. Wyeth held himself aloof, and did so in both his bearing and his discourse. Deeze met him syllable for syllable, and proved to him he would not be frightened away by the false air of superiority Wyeth employed in order to hide his insecurities and fears. It’s these little touches that make this writer and his stories stand out.

From the children, who play a minor yet important role in the story, to the crazy pets, we are fully immersed in the lives of the main characters. When Wyeth finally lets down his guard and the two men become intimately connected, the resulting scenes are romantic and intense and leave one breathless. But it is the ‘bad’ times that Wyeth and Deeze experience together that really make the biggest impact. Instead of dividing the two men, these scenes push them even closer and give the reader a taste of how transformed Wyeth has become under Deeze’s relentless joy and optimism.

Laugh Cry Repeat is a beautiful love story that takes a slice of everyday life and creates a magical montage of sweet moments that leave the reader delighted. I highly recommend it to the romantic that hides inside each of us.

You can buy Laugh Cry Repeat here:
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