Title: Forbidden Friend
Series: His Best Friends Brother: Book Two
Author: R. Cayden
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 193 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 3.5 Stars
At a Glance: Forbidden Friend is a sweet and satisfying story of giving in to temptation and getting a happily ever after as a result.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: At work, at home—my best friend’s twin brother is everywhere I look, tempting me.
Leo
Keep your filthy hands off my brother.
It’s Kai’s one rule before his brother moves into our condo. I tell him no problem; I can handle that. He and River look identical, after all, and it’s not like I’m crushing on Kai. Or anyone, for that matter. I’m a one-night-only type of guy. And River is apparently the opposite: a hopeless romantic, totally incapable of staying single. We’d be a disaster.
So after he moves in, why is it that I suddenly can’t stop thinking about how good it feels to make him smile? Why am I torturing myself, fantasizing about his touch?
My best friend’s brother is forbidden, but Kai is right.
I’m desperate to rub my filthy hands all over him.
Review: In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde wrote, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” The line goes on to mean much more than that, but its essence is something the Romance genre has successfully built an entire trope around—wanting someone who’s off limits and then thinking that giving in to the lust “just once” will be enough to satisfy it and move on. That’s the premise of Forbidden Friend boiled down to its simplest form, when a man is told to keep his hands off his best friend’s brother, and they then go on to pay a temporary price for indulging in their attraction to each other.
Author R. Cayden has penned a sweet and sexy novel that combines self-denial with the temptation of forced proximity (at home and the office) when River—whose level
of relationship success borders somewhere around disaster—moves to Pittsburgh with little more than the clothes on his back to live with his identical twin brother, Kai, and Kai’s best friend and business partner, Leo—whose idea of a satisfying relationship is maybe getting the guy’s first name before they have sex and then never see each other again, so Kai demanding that Leo keep his hands off River isn’t exactly a hardship. Leo gets that River needs time to get his life back on track after yet another messy breakup where he’s given up everything and gotten nothing in return. Leo also thinks it’s going to be easy. He’s not attracted to Kai, after all, so why would he be even mildly attracted to his brother?
Then, as right place/wrong time, or wrong place/right time, would have it, River inadvertently provides a pretty compelling reason why.
It’s not exactly lust at first sight when River meets Leo, though. First impressions being what they are, River finds Leo’s personality a bit of a turn-off, and they’re opposites in a few ways beyond their opinions about relationships, so naturally everything leads to both men craving what they can’t have . . . until they let themselves have it, but under two conditions—one, it’s just sex, and two, Kai doesn’t need to know about it. When feelings inevitably enter the picture—because don’t they always?—the question becomes not if Kai will find out, but when.
One of the things I liked about this story, and what gives it that added sweetness, isn’t the conflict itself but the way Leo and River handle it. They don’t make unilateral decisions for the other’s own good, or give up on the idea of a relationship with each other and then wallow in the resulting pathos and self-pity. They just give Kai time to get a grip and get over himself while remaining committed to the fact that they belong together. I always appreciate when characters handle their problems rather than avoiding confronting their issues head on. And of course, there’s a good bit of romance to the story too, in the little things Leo and River say to and do for each other.
Forbidden Friend stands alone easily, even as book two in the series. The main characters from book one are a part of Leo’s and River’s lives but not to the point I felt like I was missing something not having read their story. I can say I liked this book so well that I bought the next book, The Geek Next Door (Kai’s romance), but was unfortunately underwhelmed by it. The premise is once again sweet and sexy, but the execution at times left me with the weird feeling that the book wasn’t written by the same author, so I’ll hold this book up on its own as a lovely and satisfying read.
You can buy Forbidden Friend here:
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