Title: A Bolt of Blue
Series: Angels: Book One
Author: Nicky Spencer
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 399 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Menage
At a Glance: This is my first menage book, and I had fun reading it. I’ll keep checking for a release date for book two in the series!
Reviewed By: Ky
Blurb: Ian Golinski has been in love with his best friend since he was fourteen years old. When he finally decides to confess his feelings, he finds that his perpetually single friend isn’t so single anymore. What’s a boy to do when he has to share the love of his life with someone else? Especially someone so damn hot?
Dusty Smith has finally found The One. The only problem is The One clearly has feelings for someone else, even if he doesn’t realize it. Dusty has to convince his lover that they’re meant to be. But how does he do that when the other man turns out to be perfect for them both?
Mitch Becker likes things nice and simple. But as his relationship with his boyfriend heats up, he starts developing feelings for his best friend. Suddenly his life is one big complication. How can he choose between two soul mates?
Find out what happens when three men ask the question: What if we don’t have to choose?
Review: A Bolt of Blue was my first book with an M/M/M pairing. I’ve wanted to read one for a while now and was looking at blurbs for one that would grab my attention. My problem with any blurb so far was that the story involved an established couple, usually together for many years, deciding to add a third person to their relationship. I wasn’t feeling comfortable with that dynamic, so I stayed away from this trope until now.
What’s so different about this book that it made me take the step and finally read a ménage story? Here, the established relationship was the friendship between two of the characters. Ian and Mitch had been best friends for many years, but never anything more, so even though Dusty began a romantic relationship with Mitch before anything happened with Ian, in the end it was a relationship between three people that felt like it was starting at the same point for all of them. Dusty had intimate knowledge of Mitch before Ian came into the relationship, but Ian and Mitch knew basically everything about each other because of their many years as close friends.
The most important thing is that all three felt like equals in the relationship. There was jealousy in the story, but only before they all got together. After that there was communication, trust and affection. A lot of those things were brought to the table by Ian, so even though Mitch and Dusty were saying that they didn’t feel like something was missing before Ian, he was the one who gave the relationship the possibility to be a strong and lasting one. Each of the three was secure in his place in the relationship, and they all worked very well together. They supported each other, comforted each other, and were there no matter what. The relationship between all three of them was as strong as it was between each individual twosome.
It took a while for all of them to get together, but I liked the process. The book includes all three POVs, in equal measure, and through each one, we see the process of realising they’re each in love with two people—their confusion when it started, their desperation when it wouldn’t go away, their hope for the solution they found.
The first half of the book has all three of them battling their feelings for one, or both, of the other two. There is jealousy in this part, hopelessness, disappointment, distance. It’s hard to read at times, because you see how happy Mitch and Dusty are together and how miserable Ian is that he is just looking in from the outside. Still, even through their happiness, it’s apparent that something is happening with Ian. They don’t feel like anything is missing from their relationship, but Ian is like a magnet that pulls them in. I think that Ian completes them and make them come closer together. He was the one who made them talk about all the important things, even before he entered the relationship, and made them continue to do so whenever an issue arose after all of them got together. The second half is about the workings of their new relationship, the way society looks at the three of them together, the acceptance or rejection of their friends and families.
Throughout the whole book, each character has to face additional personal problems. I was okay with that, except for the side plot with Mitch’s sister, April. It felt like it was there for the sole purpose of creating some friction in his relationship with Dusty before Ian. It didn’t really add anything to the story and the solution came easily and exactly at the most convenient of times.
I liked both parts of the story equally, and had fun reading my first book with this trope. After some digging I found that the second book in the series will be about Erik and Hank’s relationship, and specifically about how they met and became a couple. In this book they have been together for a bit more than five years, so the next one will be set in the past and we’ll learn a little more about what they had to face as a new couple. There is a big age gap between them, and Hank is divorced, with kids. Sounds like an interesting story, right? I’ll keep checking for a release date!
You can buy A Bolt of Blue here:
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