Title: The Veranda
Series: Lavender Shores: Book Three
Author: Rosalind Abel
Narrator: Kirt Graves
Publisher: Self-Published
Run Time: 7 hours and 49 minutes
Category: Contemporary
At a Glance: Buy this book if you love joyful and unapologetic love. Buy it because this is the town and world we all wish we could live in. Buy it because Graves, with Abel’s words, is not to be missed.
Reviewed By: Mike
Blurb: Donovan Carlisle helps countless people in Lavender Shores with his skills as a therapist. It seems, however, that his ability to enable others to live their happiest life only works outside of himself. Donovan truly loves his life but isn’t able to find a relationship that satisfies his heart’s craving. Maybe the problem is that the only man he wants is off-limits.
Spencer Epstein came to Lavender Shores to find himself. Instead, he married one of the local town beauties. He’d thought his prayers had finally been answered. Then he met his pregnant fiancée’s brother. It turned out those answered prayers were just cruel twists of fate.
A decade later, after a divorce and the crumbling of all Spencer thought was set in stone, he sees his brother-in-law at a masquerade sex party. He takes full advantage of the anonymity and acts on the desires he’s held at bay all those years.
The problem is those silent and frenzied moments didn’t satiate anything. The fire and heat between the two men only grows as secrets are uncovered, and they must determine if the cost of their passion is too high….
Review: Donovan Carlisle is a therapist in Lavender Shores. He’s the scion of a founding family of the town known for its tolerance and acceptance of all races and sexualities. He is happy enough in his work, but one thing has always been missing from his life. While he’s helped many people solve their problems in his therapy sessions, he’s had a problem of his own for years that he can’t speak about to anyone.
Spencer Epstein came to Lavender Shores more than a decade ago, after fleeing his religious family and years of “reparative” therapy. Just when he was about to embark on the life of a gay man, he met and fell in love with a woman—who happens to be Donovan’s half-sister. On the night of their engagement party, Spencer meets Donovan. Obviously, they could not act on what each thought was a one-sided attraction. Until, Spencer divorces his wife after she leaves him for another man, throwing his life and the lives of their children into turmoil. Suddenly, things become possible that were once impossible to even think about.
Kirt Graves returns us to Lavender Shores and dives right in again with a costumed sex party. Rosalind Abel does not skimp on the steam, and Graves does not shy away from the words, but this isn’t erotica; it is a romance. A grand, decade-plus slow burn that cannot be denied. But, as Abel gives us the story, obvious problems arise. Kirt Graves makes you feel each obstacle as well as the passion of the romance finally realized.
A romance always begins as a secret in some ways. Here, the secret isn’t just understandable, it seems impossible to overcome. But Abel and Graves do a lovely dance with the words. Lavender Shores is tolerant, maybe too tolerant for Spencer and Donovan. When the secrets are exposed, Graves allows you to feel the deflation and real fear that exposure may be the end none of us wants to hear.
When the resolution comes, we are grateful Abel finds a way. We are also grateful that Kirt Graves is just as brave with the aftermath of exposure as he is with the truly steamy and completely enjoyable sex. Those scenes are read the way they should be—full of angst as lovers come together for the first time, and so deeply joyful at the expression of love. At turns playful and serious, and always with a baseline of love, Abel gives the beautiful words and her fictional town a sort of soft watercolor blending, but with enough well-defined outlines that we can step back and see them paint a lovely picture. Graves takes those words and colors and gives them life – for the third time—and he does it so very well.
Buy this book if you love joyful and unapologetic love. Buy it because this is the town and world we all wish we could live in. Buy it because Graves, with Abel’s words, is not to be missed. There are more books in this series and Abel will continue to give us joyful stories of men in love. I hope, for all of us, that Kirt Graves gets to read them all.
You can buy The Veranda here:
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