I received an ARC, and this is my honest review.
This book was a rough ride for me. It wasn’t this author’s saddest book, in my opinion. Nothing can beat her book “Patience”. But, it WAS sad. It’s the classic story of gay best friend falls in love with straight best friend who is totally oblivious and unknowingly breaks their bestie’s heart over and over again. The thing that made this book hard for me was because these knuckleheads wouldn’t talk to each other!!! I know it’s not fair for me to say that because I got both povs and I knew what was going on when they didn’t but still!!! I literally face palmed myself at one part. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about it, and we’ll come back to this.
Here’s the juice.
Kai and Silas are besties. Like bestie besties. The toxic codependent kind (my favorite!!) They’ve been besties since they were 13 years old. The kicker here is that Kai has also been in love with Silas since he was 15 years old. This book takes place when they’re 35 years old, so that’s 20 years of unrequited romantic love and pining. Poor Kai. I honestly felt so bad for him because Silas would unknowingly torture him. Bring girls home in front of him, take his clothes off in front of him, talk about sex in front of him, touch him, etc. He didn’t do all this on purpose. He would never hurt Kai like that. He just didn’t know. But, it hurt him nevertheless. Anyway, moving on. Kai and Silas are also in a rock band together called Caffeine Daydreams. This makes things harder for Kai because with them having the same career, they are always around each other. So, Kai is tortured on the daily. Kai has just about reached his breaking point. He can’t go on like this. It’s time for him to move on and get over these feelings. But, something happens that opens Silas’s eyes to what he and Kai could be. It’s too late, though, because Kai is done. But Silas refuses to give up on the possibility.
There wasn’t a lot of heat in this book, in my opinion. That’s because of all the p i n i n g. There was so much. We didn’t get down to the dirty business until the 63% mark of the book. But, rest assured, after that mark, the rest of the book was pound town. So much heat and spice, and thank god because I was parched. I still wanted more, though.
Let’s go back to what I said in the beginning about how the knuckleheads wouldn’t talk. That was the worst for me. But honestly, they had their reasons. Kai didn’t want to ruin their friendship. He was afraid that saying something would make Silas back off on the touching and stuff, and while it was the equivalent of hell to him, it was also heaven. He wanted Silas in any way he could have him. Silas wouldn’t say anything for specific reasons that I’m not going to tell you about :P. It’s spoilery, and I want you to have a good reaction when you read it because I was like *gasp*. So yeah they wouldn’t talk and I hated it, but I also can’t hate it, you know? Does that make sense? Anyway if you are the lover of extreme pining, this will have you frothing at the mouth.
I loved the characters in this. I loved going back to the band members of Caffeine Daydreams, and I LOVED Kai’s family. They were so dang sweet. And the way they took Silas in made me melt. Silas had a really rough childhood before he met Kai, and who knows what would’ve happened to him if him and Kai didn’t meet. They literally saved him. Poor Silas.
Speaking of the band members, I CANNOT WAIT for the next book. I want the little drummer boy’s story so bad. I will definitely be returning back to this series for him. We also got introduced to some new characters who could have a potential story. Yay!
If you loving pining, besties to lovers, bi-awakening, and rockstar romances, give this one a chance!!