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The Advantage #2
Home Advantage
Elliot Mercer has built his life on control.
Distance, discretion, and precision have kept him safe—on screen and off. As one of the most recognizable actors in the world, he understands visibility as something to be managed, never trusted.
Mathieu de Montreval knows visibility differently. A French rugby star long accustomed to public scrutiny, he has learned that honesty costs less than hiding. He has survived being seen. What he has never learned is how to keep something real once it starts to matter.
Their connection begins quietly, in moments that aren’t meant to change anything. It doesn’t stay that way.
Ireland should be neutral a wedding, a season unfolding, familiar rituals and borrowed time. Instead, it becomes a pressure point. Public attention sharpens. Narratives form without permission. What belongs to them privately begins to slip into view, examined and interpreted by a world that assumes access.
As proximity turns into intimacy, both men are forced to confront the lives they’ve built—and what those lives will allow. Loving each other means negotiating fame, expectation, and the fear of being claimed by a story neither of them fully controls. Some choices offer shelter. Others demand courage.
Home Advantage is a slow-burn, emotionally intimate romance about visibility, masculinity, and the cost of choosing love in public. Set against the elite world of international rugby and global celebrity, it explores mental health, identity, and the quiet, radical act of standing your ground when the safest option is retreat.
Distance, discretion, and precision have kept him safe—on screen and off. As one of the most recognizable actors in the world, he understands visibility as something to be managed, never trusted.
Mathieu de Montreval knows visibility differently. A French rugby star long accustomed to public scrutiny, he has learned that honesty costs less than hiding. He has survived being seen. What he has never learned is how to keep something real once it starts to matter.
Their connection begins quietly, in moments that aren’t meant to change anything. It doesn’t stay that way.
Ireland should be neutral a wedding, a season unfolding, familiar rituals and borrowed time. Instead, it becomes a pressure point. Public attention sharpens. Narratives form without permission. What belongs to them privately begins to slip into view, examined and interpreted by a world that assumes access.
As proximity turns into intimacy, both men are forced to confront the lives they’ve built—and what those lives will allow. Loving each other means negotiating fame, expectation, and the fear of being claimed by a story neither of them fully controls. Some choices offer shelter. Others demand courage.
Home Advantage is a slow-burn, emotionally intimate romance about visibility, masculinity, and the cost of choosing love in public. Set against the elite world of international rugby and global celebrity, it explores mental health, identity, and the quiet, radical act of standing your ground when the safest option is retreat.
320 pages, Paperback
Published December 21, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 22, 2026
Who doesn't become immediately obsessed with sparked interest and then welcomed forced proximity... and then let what happens... happens...
V. K. has a way of drawing you in that captivates from the moment you read the first page. You feel the cold warmth of a space and emotion to drive you deeper into a storyline you didn't know you could feel more immersed in.
This is a must-read. Now on to book 3... thank you very much.
Cheers
V. K. has a way of drawing you in that captivates from the moment you read the first page. You feel the cold warmth of a space and emotion to drive you deeper into a storyline you didn't know you could feel more immersed in.
This is a must-read. Now on to book 3... thank you very much.
Cheers
March 31, 2026
This author knows how to write queer stories: the pressure, the pain, the grief, the joy, the love, all of it. 🔥 another incredible read.
February 7, 2026
It didn’t shatter me in one dramatic moment.
It wore me down quietly, patiently, until I realized I was hurting for these characters from places I didn’t know could hurt 🖤 with that being said I loved this book so very much and I would read it again over and over🖤
This book is about love that has to exist under a microscope. About wanting someone so badly you’re willing to risk the one thing you’ve spent your entire life protecting… control.
It’s about the difference between being seen and being known. While knowing how terrifying it is when the person who knows you best could also cost you everything.
Elliot is all restraint. Every emotion he has feels filtered, measured, rationed. You can feel how carefully he’s constructed his life, brick by brick, to survive fame without letting it touch him too deeply. Then Mathieu walks in like a wrecking ball made of warmth and honesty and unguarded truth. He doesn’t hide well. He doesn’t pretend he isn’t lonely. He doesn’t pretend love is something you can keep at arm’s length.
Together, they are painfully mismatched in the most realistic way.
There is no fantasy here about love magically fixing things. This book understands that love can complicate, expose, threaten. That sometimes choosing someone doesn’t feel brave it feels reckless, and sometimes we need reckless. That sometimes the safest place isn’t home, and sometimes “home” is another person who terrifies you because they matter too much. Amen to that 🙌🏻
The intimacy in Home Advantage isn’t about heat it’s about vulnerability. It’s in the pauses. The unsaid fears. The way both men circle the same truth from opposite directions, being If I choose you, I may lose myself. If I don’t, I already have. (Talk about heartbreaking, but I’ve definitely been there.🥺)
And the public pressure? The scrutiny? (The absolute WORST) The way the world feels entitled to their story?… (sounds very familiar in today’s world) It’s suffocating. You feel it pressing down on every interaction, every choice, every almost-confession. This book understands how exhausting it is to live when your mistakes don’t get to be private. (Really makes me appreciate that. I’m not somebody famous)
By the end, I wasn’t sobbing. I was quiet. my heart was heavy and still is. Full in that bruised, tender way that only comes from stories that feel too real. (which you know is a really good book, and an amazing author when they make a reader feel this way.. at least for myself!🥰) The kind that don’t give you catharsis so much as recognition.
Home Advantage isn’t about grand gestures.
It’s about standing your ground when love makes you want to run!!
And that? That hurt beautifully. 💔📖
It wore me down quietly, patiently, until I realized I was hurting for these characters from places I didn’t know could hurt 🖤 with that being said I loved this book so very much and I would read it again over and over🖤
This book is about love that has to exist under a microscope. About wanting someone so badly you’re willing to risk the one thing you’ve spent your entire life protecting… control.
It’s about the difference between being seen and being known. While knowing how terrifying it is when the person who knows you best could also cost you everything.
Elliot is all restraint. Every emotion he has feels filtered, measured, rationed. You can feel how carefully he’s constructed his life, brick by brick, to survive fame without letting it touch him too deeply. Then Mathieu walks in like a wrecking ball made of warmth and honesty and unguarded truth. He doesn’t hide well. He doesn’t pretend he isn’t lonely. He doesn’t pretend love is something you can keep at arm’s length.
Together, they are painfully mismatched in the most realistic way.
There is no fantasy here about love magically fixing things. This book understands that love can complicate, expose, threaten. That sometimes choosing someone doesn’t feel brave it feels reckless, and sometimes we need reckless. That sometimes the safest place isn’t home, and sometimes “home” is another person who terrifies you because they matter too much. Amen to that 🙌🏻
The intimacy in Home Advantage isn’t about heat it’s about vulnerability. It’s in the pauses. The unsaid fears. The way both men circle the same truth from opposite directions, being If I choose you, I may lose myself. If I don’t, I already have. (Talk about heartbreaking, but I’ve definitely been there.🥺)
And the public pressure? The scrutiny? (The absolute WORST) The way the world feels entitled to their story?… (sounds very familiar in today’s world) It’s suffocating. You feel it pressing down on every interaction, every choice, every almost-confession. This book understands how exhausting it is to live when your mistakes don’t get to be private. (Really makes me appreciate that. I’m not somebody famous)
By the end, I wasn’t sobbing. I was quiet. my heart was heavy and still is. Full in that bruised, tender way that only comes from stories that feel too real. (which you know is a really good book, and an amazing author when they make a reader feel this way.. at least for myself!🥰) The kind that don’t give you catharsis so much as recognition.
Home Advantage isn’t about grand gestures.
It’s about standing your ground when love makes you want to run!!
And that? That hurt beautifully. 💔📖
June 1, 2026
2.5 stars
This felt like bits of tabloid stories about a couple put together to make it seem like one cohesive story. 80-90% of it the story was being told to us instead of sort of experiencing it through the characters’ eyes as it happened.
A lot of it was very repetitive. I’m sure there was a purpose for the repetition but I’m lost as to what.
The only thing that saved this is the ending. It was cute enough that it didn’t feel like I wasted my time reading the story.
This felt like bits of tabloid stories about a couple put together to make it seem like one cohesive story. 80-90% of it the story was being told to us instead of sort of experiencing it through the characters’ eyes as it happened.
A lot of it was very repetitive. I’m sure there was a purpose for the repetition but I’m lost as to what.
The only thing that saved this is the ending. It was cute enough that it didn’t feel like I wasted my time reading the story.
April 19, 2026
The follow up to Try Line Hearts have returning characters providing cameos as we meet two new leading men. Taking place in a stunning castle setting with forces proximity, our men must identify what their truth truly is.
Though not taking place on a rugby field, one of our leading men is a French player, attending the event of the season. He meets an American actor who happens to be attending the same event. What unfolds from there seems smooth and uncomplicated though it is anything but-.
The emotions in this story are so well considered that I felt like I could feel their pulses pounding. This story gives us a bit more heat than the previous story in the series, but like the previous story, it never slides into tasteless. Home Advantage had me crying by the end, though I may have shed a tear or two well before that.
Be aware, this story does encounter alcohol abuse and depression, so if that is triggering to you, you have been informed.
Though not taking place on a rugby field, one of our leading men is a French player, attending the event of the season. He meets an American actor who happens to be attending the same event. What unfolds from there seems smooth and uncomplicated though it is anything but-.
The emotions in this story are so well considered that I felt like I could feel their pulses pounding. This story gives us a bit more heat than the previous story in the series, but like the previous story, it never slides into tasteless. Home Advantage had me crying by the end, though I may have shed a tear or two well before that.
Be aware, this story does encounter alcohol abuse and depression, so if that is triggering to you, you have been informed.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews