Coming Alive with You

by Penelope Rivers

In high school, Farrell was cruel toward Toyo Hayashi, the transfer student. Ten years later Farrell is in an abusive relationship with a man named Allen that cheats and lies, and he works a dead-end job with a terrible boss. All that is about to change, however, when he gets hired on at a new wing of his company. Unfortunately, the last thing that he expects is that his new boss is none other than Toyo Hayashi, the boy that he used to bully. Farrell is determined to prove that he's changed, but will Toyo give him the chance?

Warning: After reading, a strange need to seduce your boss may occur.

Genres: M M Romance, Romance, Contemporary, Enemies To Lovers

144 pages, ebook

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

Penelope Rivers is a good girl from Utah with a naughty side!

Penelope Rivers is a bestselling erotic novelist of M/M romance novels and short stories. A hopeless dreamer, she spends her day thinking about all things fantasy, romantic and not. It is her view that when you start choking on the occasionally dry bread of life, you need something sinfully delicious to chase it down with. Currently, she lives in Utah with an abnormal amount of pets.

The first four erotic M/M short stories, Eyes on You, Lollipop Lick, The Naughtiest Student, and Dr. Perfect in Penelope's new series, Lust at First Sight, are now available from New Line Press.

Reviews

[Arthur · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars

Ugh... I read the blurb and the first several pages on ARe, and thought I liked it. Couldn't be more wrong. The characters are not likable. One is whinny 'O woe me' style, the other is manipulative and vindictive to the end. It has more drama than soap opera. It's the "I love you but I cannot be with you since I hate you" from the beginning to the end. Thrown in a kid who calls the MC 'dad', despite they just met an hour before.. Everything is 'solved' with sex.

I liked some of the authors' short stories, because I thought she could put good drama in such limited space. I didn't expect that the amount of drama increases with the number of pages.

[Kera · Rating 1 out of 5]

The is the second book I read today that missed its mark, badly. Where to start? I wanted to like this book so much. It started off interesting and feel apart about ten pages into the book. Farrell is a walking, talking, whining nightmare. He's so needy and had so many to stupid to live moments during the book I literally wanted to crawl into the story itself and shake the everloving shit out of him! What the hell? The only redeeming/interesting thing he does is immediately take in his ex-lover's boy unconditionally. That was cool-maybe not the most realistic thing I've read-but cool nonetheless.
Toyo was one dimensional. He's angry, he loves Ferrall-he hates Farrell-over and over---BLECH!
What sucks is this could have been such an awesome book! It had potential but fell off the wayside in a very big way.
I do not like writing bad things about the books I read. I feel bad for the author. I know they work hard, but I have to be honest how I feel about it.
I will try to read a book by this author again. Everyone deserves a second chance.

[Arzu · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 stars, but I'll rate it 3 stars because of the unselfish love and acceptance towards Ty.

[Elisa Rolle]

I think the author put together an original ensemble of characters: Farrell, the former high school bully, is a classic example of kid who is projecting the difficult situation he has at home outside, plus he is also fighting the realization he is gay, when his family is uber-conservative and anti-homosexual; Toyo is the fat kid, the one with a very low self-esteem, the one that today, successful business man, is still looking behind his shoulder believing everyone is laughing at the “fat kid”; even Allen, Farrell’s “bad” boyfriend, is, in a way, a good character, so vain that he is almost a farce. Maybe the only complain I have is that all these characters were too “harsh”, their edges were not smudged, and in this way, sometime, they scratched my reading. Farrell’s tendency to always fall in tear, Toyo’s stubbornness to always see the worst in Farrell, Allen’s selfishness, Ty’s mother being so uncaring, all of them were on the edge, like their faults were magnified by a lens.

But I applaud to the author’s plotting skills, and even if on the edge, their characters were for sure not ordinary. I above all liked that, even without being common, these characters were not extraordinary, and please forgive me the strange contraposition: the author managed to build an original story with ordinary characters, Farrell is not some unrealistic romance hero, Toyo is not a knight in shining armor; Farrell is generous, able to great kindness towards Ty, but Farrell is also the kid who was torturing Toyo; Toyo managed to build a new future for himself, but he is not turned into a fitness model, he is still an ordinary man, struggling with maintaining the right weight, still with his self-esteem issues.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0077AWYC8/?...

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried like a baby...and my heart got all fuzzy and warm. This story had some almost cliche moments but it took common issues that are seen in tonnes of books and the author made them uniquely her own.

There was parts that were so damn sweet that I just LOVED Farrell. Then there was parts that were terribly human, I think that is what I loved most. Farrells reactions were so real, I think everyone lacks self confidence in their lives and this book deals with that issues sooooooo beautifully but also so gut wrenchingly honesty.

I recommend this to EVERYONE.

[~RMG · Rating 1 out of 5]

Writing style wasn't too my liking. The story itself was just...all over the place (couldn't even stand the MC most of the time).

[Lacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an ok read. I wasn't sure if the the two MCs were going to end up together especially since there really wasn't much relationship development between them.

[Caroline Brand · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 Stars rounded upto 4

[CB · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very angsty novella where I was extremely glad the MC's came together after all they had been through. I was way more sympathetic to Farrell than I thought I would be when I read the blurb.

[Lila Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 out of 5