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Wyatt loves Graham. Graham is still in love with Jase. But things could be worse. They could be camping.

A new short story by Josh Lanyon.

28 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 28, 2012

8 people are currently reading
402 people want to read

About the author

Josh Lanyon

223 books5,416 followers
Author of 100+ titles of Gay Mystery and M/M Romance, Josh Lanyon has built her literary legacy on twisty mystery, kickass adventure, and unapologetic man-on-man romance.

Her work has been translated into twelve languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first Male/Male title to be published by Italy’s Harlequin Mondadori and Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan’s annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list). The Adrien English series was awarded the All-Time Favorite Couple by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. In 2019, Fatal Shadows became the first LGBTQ mobile game created by Moments: Choose Your Story.

She’s an EPIC Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist (twice for Gay Mystery), an Edgar nominee, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads All Time Favorite M/M Author award.

Josh is married and lives in Southern California with her irascible husband, two adorable dogs, a small garden, and an ever-expanding library of vintage mystery destined to eventually crush them all beneath its weight.


Find other Josh Lanyon titles at www.joshlanyon.com
Follow Josh on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

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5 stars
330 (31%)
4 stars
438 (41%)
3 stars
233 (22%)
2 stars
43 (4%)
1 star
8 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews
Profile Image for Baba  .
858 reviews3,995 followers
December 9, 2014
4 stars. Review posted October 24, 2014

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Graham still loves Jase who died three years ago in a hit-and-run. The accident perpetrator was never caught and that makes it even harder for Graham to find a sense of closure. He thinks he doesn't deserve to love again and to be loved. During one of the Eugene Gay Men's Social Network outings, he meets Wyatt who can't help and fall in love with Graham. Yet Graham isn't ready for anything permanent and the L-word is a huge red rag to him.

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The very thought of his soft sleepy mouth finding mine in the lambent light of morning made me want to drop my pack and crouch down, hugging myself against what felt like a body blow. A mortal blow.
How did people get over this?
They obviously did. Every day someone fell in love with the wrong person and had to pack up all their fragile, misguided hopes and unwanted affection, and move on to the next picnic table.


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A Perfect Day is once again a poignant and beautifully written short story by Josh Lanyon who finds the right words to evoke so much emotion from his readers. Though a clean read, it hit all the right buttons for me. Unrequited love is painful and while one man struggles for the love and feels it might stay out of reach forever, the other one has a hard time to express how excruciatingly sorrowful his memories are. Letting go of a deceased partner is a difficult process. A sad, emotionally-charged and quick read, accentuated by an uplifting undertone of a love lost that will never evaporate and a new love found that reinforces a hopeful perspective to enable a happy ending.

Few authors write short stories like Lanyon does. He's a true master of his art.

Recommended read.
Profile Image for Snjez.
1,018 reviews1,030 followers
August 15, 2020
Another great short story by this author – sweet, deeply emotional and beautifully written.
Profile Image for Otila.
364 reviews28 followers
January 20, 2015
Lanyon really knows how to pack a punch into such a short story.


It was beautiful and touching.

Well, cue Sam Harris. The Bonnie Raitt version is better.

'Cause I can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something it won't
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I feel the power
But you won't, no, you won't
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't.
Profile Image for Cat the bookworm (semi hiatus ish).
920 reviews178 followers
March 30, 2025
Short, but loved it nevertheless.

I know it’s a short story. And I struggled a bit to actually spend money on it for that reason (it’s not on KU), but the blurb and the reviews intrigued me, and I gave it a go.

It’s… good. I know there’s not much happening plot wise (did I mention that it’s a SHORT story?) but an author like Josh Lanyon can make you FEEL things even without a murder mystery, or a complicated character development.

I could actually FEEL Graham’s grief, and how it impacted Wyatt. And I could appreciate how Wyatt dealt with his inadvertent declaration of love.

I would have actually given it 5 stars (you can’t rate a short story the same way you would if it were a book), but the ending came a bit out of nowhere, so 4 stars it is.

„Hearts got broken every
day. Nobody died from that. But it did kind of fade the sunlight and drain the color from the days. And the nights…the nights would feel too
long to live through.“
Profile Image for Drache.... (Angelika) .
1,519 reviews218 followers
March 21, 2025
Sweet.
The author's writing in the main part of the short story was so convincing that I was a bit blindsided by the ending. Oops.
Profile Image for Sheri.
1,418 reviews196 followers
April 4, 2015
Sometimes I crave simplicity. I have always found that Lanyon delivers no-nonsense, solid and polished stories.
They don't need a lot of 'filler'.
They don't have to be over-the-top.
They dazzle me with the beauty of a powerful core.
Simple, clean, and smooth.

A handful of pages packed with deep emotion.
Tragic yet hopeful.
Letting go and holding on.
A tender burn that I'm thankful for.

*4 stinging-stringing-clinging stars*
Profile Image for Ami.
6,239 reviews489 followers
May 29, 2012
4.5 stars
Sometimes you cannot help to fall in love with someone who is wrong ... like one who can't love you back. Wyatt has been seeing Graham, who lost his partner three years ago after hit-and-run accident. Graham hasn't been over Jase -- but Wyatt can help to fall in love with him anyway. He tries to not say it, because he knows what to expect. But over a heat of the moment, those three little words are said anyway ... But Graham cannot return Wyatt's affection, right? So what should Wyatt do next?

--------

When he wrote about this little story in his blog, Josh Lanyon said, "But it’s such a simple story. Really…not much happens in it at all.. I say, PHOEEY, WHAT AN UNDERSTATEMENT!! I feel so moved with this story, a lot more than some of the longer novels I have read so far.

Within 8,000 words, Josh was able to capture such complicated nuances about love and acceptance and closure. It's not an easy feature, which makes this story (borrowing one reviewer's words) a close to perfection. Even when the scene is only Wyatt and Graham are going camping in such a perfect day, but we get everything we need to know, written amazingly from Wyatt's first person point of view. We know how they meet, how Wyatt fall in love, his insecurities since Graham's doesn't return his love back and inner contemplation about what he should do next.

However, at the same time, we also understand why Graham clings so hard to the notion that he "shouldn't" move on, the survivor's guilt, the fact that he can be happy but not with Jase, anger over Jase being taken away from him in a blink of an eye, and later his contemplation about what Wyatt could mean for his life.

The only reason for me not giving it 5-stars is a later bit of "deus ex machina" plot; an unexpected intervention that leads to the final conclusion. It's quite a common plot for this kind of issue, so I wish it has been explored differently. That's the only niggle that stops it from being perfect, personally.

It's still a thoughtful story, one that makes you care about what's going on with the lives of the characters. I know that Josh Lanyon is taking a sabbatical ... but if he comes up once in awhile with short story as beautiful as this, I truly have no complaint.
864 reviews229 followers
March 19, 2015

Perfect Day is the perfect short story. Review done.


...ok...just kidding.

Sometimes, I read Josh Lanyon books and I think "this is SO good but it just wasn't enough!". And then there are times when I read Josh Lanyon books and I think "this is SO good and it's just right!"

Perfect Day is the latter. Don't get me wrong...I would LOVE more of Wyatt and Graham's story. But Lanyon wallops quite the punch in a short 28 pages as is.

Wyatt loves Graham. He tells him so in the heat of passion...while they're camping. Problem is, Wyatt believes Graham will never love him back. His heart belongs to Jase. (there's a backstory there to enjoy as well).

I won't say more so as not to spoil even the nuggets in 28 pages...because there are many.

But I'll just say that this story was lovely...romantic, hopeful, at times sad, at times heartbreaking, lovely, hard...all the emotions. And did I mention it's only 28 pages? 28 perfect pages.

It will take you 30 minutes, tops, to read. Add on the 30 minutes after that you're hugging your kindle just thankful for the story. And it will all be so worth it.

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Profile Image for Emma Sea.
2,214 reviews1,227 followers
September 14, 2012
A beautifully touching short story. And the writing! The writing is so goooood! Do you know what I would give to get writing this good in all m/m books? Well, a lot. Zygotes would be involved.
Profile Image for Mandy*reads obsessively* .
2,197 reviews341 followers
February 15, 2013
I like it when a book really makes me 'feel' for the MC, and I really felt for Wyatt, not so much from Graham, probably because we see more of Wyatt's feelings.
The 'usual' was used to move the story to its conclusion and I sort of wished it had been something else , but all in all a great meaningful short read that I wished had been longer, because I'm greedy that way! :)
Profile Image for Annery.
517 reviews156 followers
November 1, 2017
Let's call this what it is: a perfect short story. I've read this at least five times. It works on so many different levels and to my mind improves on each read. Recently I got In Sunshine or In Shadow which is an audio bundle of Josh Lanyon shorts and it opens with this story. I was floored. J.M. Badger is a 'new to me' narrator but he shines in this AB, achieving the exact tone for this bittersweet gem.

Wyatt Finley is in love with Graham and in a moment of passion, during a camping trip, he has committed the grave mistake of saying it out loud. The problem is that Graham is still grieving the loss of his partner Jase and isn't ready for something new.

"You can't start a stopwatch on grief. Or love for that matter."


or as Warren Zevon said:

"They say love conquers all
You can't start it like a car
You can't stop it with a gun"


Life sucks.

The amount information and real emotion that Josh manages to pack into 20 some odd pages without resorting to triteness is awe inspiring, even poor deceased Jase, is vividly brought to life. The story is brimming with beautiful passages and I probably could've highlighted the whole thing but here are two:

"Nah, no dramatics. Hearts got broken every day. Nobody died from that. But it did kind of fade the sunlight and drain the color from the days.
And the nights ... the nights would feel too long to live through."

***

"My own eyes stung. I couldn't bear for him to hurt so much. I wanted to put my arms around him, protect him. I didn't think he'd welcome it, so I didn't move.

Why did we all crave love so badly when half the time it left us annihilated?"


I know this all seems sad but, though the story deals with loss and letting go, it is also about new beginnings and hope and about "... fields of goldenrod that in the early morning looked like a distant golden lake.", all told from Wyatt's P.O.V. Wyatt who's self deprecating, funny, and wry. Wyatt who has unexpectedly fallen in love with Graham:

"It's not like I had gone looking for this, wanted this, had opted for the pay-per-view gay soap opera with angst in hi def. All I'd wanted was an ordinary relationship with a nice guy. A guy I could share my life with. The good times. The bad times. Maybe even share my mortgage with. A guy who would get along with my friends -- a guy who had his own friends. Maybe even a guy I could take home for the holidays. I don't know. Whatever I had been thinking, the pleasant fantasy was so far removed from the vibrant and painful reality of Graham."


Okay. I'll stop. Just go read this story and thank me later.
Profile Image for Vio.
677 reviews
May 29, 2012
4.5 stars
It nearly broke my heart what a beautiful breathtakingly but gut-wrenching romance! Highly recommended a must read its a wonderful story.
Profile Image for Barb Gilmour.
155 reviews13 followers
May 29, 2012
The ability of Josh Lanyon to tell a story is second to none. This is a really short story ; yet he manages to achieve in so few words what other writers often fail to do in a full blown novel -- he totally captures the reader. How is it possible to connect with characters so much, in such a quick read? I actually teared up -- that is how well he has captured the turmoil that somebody goes through having lost their soulmate, struggling to move on, feeling guilty that he is in fact able too. Just beautiful Josh. So very , very good to read a new story of yours. Welcome back :-D
Profile Image for LenaRibka.
1,463 reviews433 followers
October 22, 2014
4, 5 emotional stars!♥

This short novel is a little treasure full of beautiful lines. You won't find a lot of story here, but a lot of FEELINGS. One of the best of Josh Lanyon for me.

Profile Image for Sofia.
1,349 reviews295 followers
June 7, 2014


Perfect flow
So easy to read
So simple a happening
Nothing over the top
Just me eager to read
Restored my faith in words done right

This was so good, so flowing that I almost cried with relief, that I was still capable of feeling.
Profile Image for Tina.
1,782 reviews1 follower
March 17, 2013

„Perfect Day“ is my first Josh Lanyon read. It was bittersweet, beautiful, breathtaking, heart warming, emotional... I could go on forever till I'll run out of adjectives.

Especially one quote touched me deeply:

I stared up at the darkening skies. The stars would appear soon, first a faint and milky glow, then a hard, adamantine glitter, burning steadily through the night. It would be a good night. Maybe the first of many...



Thank you for this wonderful, little gem.
Profile Image for Calathea.
273 reviews
June 6, 2019
And there he went, reached into my chest, took my heart and squeezed. Only a little. Only enough to make me feel the pain of unrequited love, the heartache and the hurt when you see a relationship ending that hadn't quite begun and that you can't help longing for even though the other one won't probably be able to love you back. Ever.

An all around perfect little story. Highly recommended!

Profile Image for Sara .
1,537 reviews154 followers
March 19, 2015
This is why I LOVE the holy hell out of Lanyon's work. Such heart-wenching angst and intense emotion in less than 30 damn pages.

Graham and Wyatt we're gorgeous and bees are a bitter blessing.

Graham broke my heart.
Wyatt gutted me and then, there was a smile through tears.

Perfect.
Profile Image for Irina.
409 reviews68 followers
May 19, 2016
A very emotional short story about the unrequited love. Beautifully written and thought out. The characters come alive from the first page. Lanyon doesn't mess around. I like that. Usually, I need more time to develop feelings for my MCs, but found myself involved and caring from the beginning. Plus, it hit too close home. I'm sure, at some point in our lives, many of us had fallen for someone who wouldn't return the feelings. And it hurts like hell to be unloved, rejected, it makes you feel unworthy and insecure.

How did people get over this?
They obviously did. Every day someone fell in love with the wrong person and had to pack up all their fragile, misguided hopes and unwanted affection, and move on to the next picnic table.


I wish people didn't need to have a close call to be able to see that sometimes the person they're looking for

is right next to them.



***4.8 stars***
Profile Image for Mark.
357 reviews163 followers
February 16, 2013
A sweet short about dealing with the grief of a loved lost and letting go to be able to let love in once again. This story is told from Wyatt's POV and his fight to open Graham's heart with a HEA.
Profile Image for Nick Pageant.
Author 6 books934 followers
September 12, 2016
Great short read. This is a perfect example of how good a short story can really be if it's in the right hands. Loved it.
Profile Image for Gabi.
704 reviews112 followers
July 24, 2020
I bet Wyatt would disagree this was a perfect day. XD
The story itself wasn't anything special, but how it was written... ah! Packed with deep emotions, so good.

I read this in THE Josh Lanyon sampler, which I downloaded months and months ago from ProfilicWorks.. erm or maybe Bookfunnel.
Profile Image for AngelFire.
765 reviews51 followers
September 9, 2023
Given the length, this was great! I usually have a firm 50-page minimum limit as far as choosing books to read but this was highly recommended by u/Snjez and tons of people enjoyed it despite the length. I decided to give it a try and I'm really glad I did because it worked very well.

The author made the clever choice to have Wyatt and Graham enter the story already knowing each other. We do get some flashbacks and references to how they met but starting later in their relationship allowed the author to convey all of that info through telling instead of showing and it also allowed the author to focus on the interesting part of the relationship. The entire story basically takes place over the course of one day.

The story was pretty predictable from start to finish but I enjoyed the characters, the scenery descriptions and how well the author made this very short story work. I can't give this 5 stars because there's not enough here to make it feel like a 5 star read for me but it was perfect for a 28 page romance.
Profile Image for Tully Vincent.
Author 3 books83 followers
September 26, 2015
Short, sweet and perfect little story that had me in tears. It went from breaking my heart to making it soar! Josh Lanyon writes beautifully.
Profile Image for Jennifer☠Pher☠.
2,970 reviews273 followers
November 3, 2014
Me, I am a huge Lanyon fan girl. HUGE.

I don’t know about this one. My heart is aching at the moment.

I don’t know if I feel happy with how this played out. I think I feel on edge.

Aside from that, Lanyon can write a shorty like no other. I mean, this totally packed a punch. I mentioned my heart aching right?

Just not my favorite love story but as always beautifully written.
Profile Image for Nerea.
731 reviews33 followers
June 3, 2016
Awww intense and painful!
Beautiful thoughts of a man who fall in love with a person who is still in the past and refuse to love back :___(


But finally learns how to love again !

Profile Image for Katharina.
630 reviews24 followers
April 13, 2013
4.5

This was absolutely lovely. A very touching short story, perfect length, very evocative. Josh Lanyon just has this special way with words that I adore. There is nothing stilted in his stories, nothing artificial. It's all heart-felt and reflected, with a natural, casual flow that I appreciate very much.

There was a little something missing for a full out 5 star rating and I'd probably have rounded down to 4 stars.
BUT then I read the Christmas Coda of these guys and that zinged it right up to 5 stars again. I just love these extra tidbits of my favourite protagonists and if I want more of them, I have to reward Josh Lanyon for this one, don't I? Wasn't that how positive reinforcement works? ;-D

Highly recommended!!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews

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