Title: Building Forever
Series: This Time Forever: Book One
Author: Kelly Jensen
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Length: 337 Pages
Category: Contemporary
At a Glance: Building Forever is a really lovely romance that promises hope and love and reminds us that family is more than just those you are born with, but also that which you create and hold most dear.
Reviewed By: Sammy
Blurb: Charlie King is doing fine. Sure, he’s a widower raising a teenage daughter who just got her first boyfriend, his book series isn’t writing itself, and he has a crush on his new neighbor — the guy next door. But everything’s just fine.
Simon Lynley is doing better. He moved to Bethlehem to fall out of love and rebuild his career. An affair with his neighbor isn’t part of the plan, but the attraction between them is too hard to ignore.
But when Simon’s ex follows him to Pennsylvania seeking reconciliation, and Charlie’s life starts to feel like a video on repeat, everything comes apart. Charlie worries that he’s failing as a father, and Simon is a distraction he can’t afford. Meanwhile Simon doesn’t know if he could survive being left again, and he hasn’t come all this way to make the same mistakes. But despite their fears, it’s only together that they’ll find the strength to slay old foes and build the forever they’ve been waiting for.
Review: I am going to just flat out say that I loved this story despite the “twist” at the end, which was pretty predictable. Despite that small niggle this was, hands down, a delightful romantic comedy with a few serious spots here and there, low angst and two main characters that begged the reading audience to fall in love with them. Kelly Jensen is a new author for me, but I have already requested the sequel to Building Forever because I was so impressed with this novel.
Charlie is a worrier with no filter, a running inner dialogue that usually comes to surface at the most inopportune times, and a new neighbor that has shaken up some long-buried feelings. Charlie is also a widower—an in love, happily married, once-upon-a-time, widower with a teenage daughter who is on the cusp of graduating high school and spreading her wings, which has Charlie fairly terrified. When his new, very handsome, very male neighbor drops by, Charlie is flustered, attracted, unhinged, attracted some more, and unsure as to why he is any and all of the aforementioned. But what Charlie is not is scared to admit that his long-buried attraction to males means he is definitely bisexual and ready to embrace that truth with all he’s got.
Simon, is the polar opposite of Charlie in almost every way. Gay, alone after a twelve year relationship had ended, starting fresh as a partner in an architectural firm, and trying his best not to brood over the mistakes he has made in the past. He knows he wasn’t responsible for his ex cheating on him and yet each time it happened, Simon stayed, trying to make it better and failing each time. It didn’t help that his ex was also his business partner at the time. Now Simon is starting over, doing the type of work on historic reclamation projects that he has always wanted to do, and trying to fight off the attraction he feels for his very flustered but undeniably cute neighbor. Surely he’s just not ready to take on a man who has just discovered his bisexuality and all that entails…or is he?
I loved—no, I adored—Charlie. He was just a huge ball of fun, and his decisions to expose his bisexuality to his closest friends and daughter was so brave. I enjoyed his fumbling attempts to woo Simon and how he almost always blurted out exactly what was in his head, no matter how awkward it made a situation. Simon was the perfect foil to rambunctious Charlie. Simon with his quiet, wounded soul that was so much in need of being loved, was just the right man for someone like Charlie, whose heart was big enough for so many to call home.
Building Forever has just the right amount of sexual tension, acts of intimacy, a few moments of real angst, and a beautiful romance between two deserving men. Both Simon and Charlie had lost someone they loved—for Simon that really meant forgiving himself and believing that he was worth any effort Charlie put forth, something that was not easy for Simon to accept. While the twist in the fairly smooth plot was a bit too easy, it did reveal just how much Charlie really struggled after his wife’s death, and that was important to understanding Charlie fully. It also gave Simon’s character a chance to realize that Charlie was worth fighting for, and that made the plot twist worth it in the end.
Building Forever is a really lovely romance that promises hope and love and reminds us that family is more than just those you are born with, but also that which you create and hold most dear.
You can buy Building Forever here:
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