Title: Over and Over Again
Author: Cole McCade
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 596 Pages
Category: Contemporary
At a Glance: If you have time for a slow simmering, emotionally raw and fraught romance, then you’ll find much to love in Over and Over Again.
Reviewed By: Jovan
Blurb: A ring of braided grass. A promise. Ten years of separation.
And memories of an innocent love with the power to last through time.
When Luca Ward was five years old, he swore he would love Imre Claybourne forever. Years later, that promise holds true—and when Luca finds himself shipped off to Imre’s North Yorkshire goat farm in disgrace, long-buried feelings flare back to life when he finds, in Imre, the same patiently stoic gentle giant he’d loved as a boy. The lines around Imre’s eyes may be deeper, the once-black night of his hair silvered to steel and stone…but he’s still the same slow-moving mountain of a man whose quiet-spoken warmth, gentle hands, and deep ties to his Roma heritage have always, to Luca, meant home.
The problem?
Imre is more than twice Luca’s age.
And Luca’s father’s best friend.
Yet if Imre is everything Luca remembered, for Imre this hot-eyed, fey young man is nothing of the boy he knew. Gone is the child, replaced by a vivid man whose fettered spirit is spinning, searching for north, his heart a thing of wild sweet pure emotion that draws Imre into the compelling fire of Luca’s frustrated passions. That fragile heart means everything to Imre—and he’ll do anything to protect it.
Even if it means distancing himself, when the years between them are a chasm Imre doesn’t know how to cross.
But can he resist the allure in cat-green eyes when Luca places his trembling heart in Imre’s hands…and begs for his love, over and over again?
Review: Over and Over Again is a beautifully written romance between two men who may be separated by a generation in age, but whose souls recognize one another as home. Cole McCade’s lovely way with words and ability to create characters that you alternately root for and want to strangle are displayed to full effect in Over and Over Again. To his parents, particularly his father, nineteen-year-old Luca is directionless, feckless and too much for them to handle/parent, so they ship him off to a family friend, Imre, hoping that time on the farm and hard work will straighten him out. As expected, Luca is less than pleased to be “tossed out like trash,” but beneath the brattiness is years of hurt, vulnerability and a sense of responsibility for his family’s future that is cutting him to pieces. Beneath the acting out and sullen silences is a young man who has been desperate to be seen and feel loved since he was a child.
Luca seemed to make noise just by existing: the bright noise of his repressed emotions, bursting to get out and screaming even when he didn’t say a word.
Imre met Luca’s parents at university and established a close friendship and bonds that were only strengthened by all the time they spent together on Imre’s family farm, Lohere, before Luca’s family moved away when Luca was nine. In the intervening years, Imre has contented himself with his orchard and animals while shouldering his loneliness and the belief he will be alone for the rest of his life with the same calm acceptance of a Stoic. For Imre, on the one hand, having Luca back at Lohere is an unexpected gift because of the connection he feels between them that makes it feel like having a family again. On the other, being around Luca is maddening torture because he can no longer see the child that used to call him “Unka Immie”. Instead, he sees a beautiful, fragile and lost young man that makes his farm feel like a home for the first time in years, a man that he wants to help heal, shelter and hold on to for his remaining days. Unfortunately, Imre cannot have what he craves, because he believes it would be a betrayal of his friendship with Luca’s father and that to Luca, he was “not a man, not a human with aches and that deep lonely twist in the centre of his chest; not a person but an idea, an impression, a sense of place and protection and home.”
However, Luca not only sees Imre as a shelter but as a man to love, and he and Imre spend most of the story fighting with themselves—fighting their mutual needs, feelings of inadequacy and fear. Imre is determined to be a friend and confidant to Luca as he struggles to figure out who he is and his place in the world while keeping Luca at an emotional distance. Yet, Imre’s own compassion, protectiveness and unguarded honesty only serve to draw Luca closer to him and also hurt him when Imre draws away emotionally. Luca’s vulnerability and inability to handle his roiling emotions and insecurity make him easy to hurt, a bit volatile and prone to varying degrees of petulance, despair and a needy desperation to be seen and loved.
“Haste [isn’t] Imre’s way,” and if it’s yours, you may have a hard time appreciating this book. Imre and Luca’s journey is full of screaming silences and attempts to have “honest” conversations where the honesty rarely reveals what they truly want, feel or need. They make tentative forays into one another’s walls and boundaries, only to be bounced out again by everything they are afraid to own about themselves and their emotions. They spend much of the book “letting each other have their careful evasions and deflections while everything they didn’t say slipped through their fingers.” With McCade’s knack with words, the reader will feel every hurt, longing and frustration involved in their relationship as Imre and Luca discover that Imre isn’t as strong as he seems, Luca isn’t as fragile or weak as he appears, and that growth, change and learning about yourself continues throughout life.
So, if you have time for a slow simmering, emotionally raw and fraught romance, then you’ll find much to love in Over and Over Again.
You can buy Over and Over Again here:
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Beautiful review. I’m sold.