Comfort Read

by Dylan Morrison

A feel-good M/M cozy romance with fake dating, one slightly demonic orange cat and a slow burn worth swooning over!

Sage Ballard needs to rescue his reputation. Kit Forrest just wants to keep his beloved local bookshop from shutting down. All they have to do is convince the world they're madly in love. Pumpkin spice, old paperbacks, and a romance that's about to get very real...

What readers are saying about Dylan Morrison's cozy

"This. Was. Adorable. I swooned for both of these two HARD! This is grumpy x sunshine delivered!" Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Heartwarming and funny… the banter is truly next level… a wonderful and cozy read." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Laugh-out-loud funny and heartache-inducing… incredibly satisfying… Morrison's writing is

truly distinctive for the genre — intelligent and assured… a book that will stay with me for a long time." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"One of my books of the year… Funny, charming, compelling" Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"This book was a joy… genuine emotional arcs… this really cemented Morrison on my list of must-read authors." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"This book was such a joy to read!… Heartwarming and funny… the banter is truly next level… a wonderful and cozy read." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Love love love!… Sweet, funny, heartwarming… The characters were so lovable and well developed." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"A slow burn without spice, full of witty characters… the transition in their relationship feels organic." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"So engaging and funny that I really couldn't put this one down." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Hilarious and adorable… My partner ended up reading over my shoulder because I kept bursting out laughing." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Adorable and extremely well-written. I laughed out loud frequently." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"Super sweet and cute!… I highly recommend this book." Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genres: Romance, Queer, LGBT, M M Romance, Adult, Contemporary, Fiction

272 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 8, 2026

Reviews

[Alya]

✨️ ARC REVIEW ✨️
Comfort Read by Dylan Morrison
Now Available

I really wanted to love this more but unfortunately I wasn't invested, the prologue and synopsis sounded promising but it just didn't work for me, however I would like to give this author another try in the future.

Read if you enjoy
▪︎ Fake dating
▪︎ Celebrity x bookshop owner
▪︎ Closed door romance

Many thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the ARC

My Bookstagram

[James]

One of my first 5's in a while. I gave it a high rating because Morrison really pulls at your heartstrings and makes you root for the couple. They have a lovely meet-cute that's half believable, half impossible. But this is fiction and readers are meant to throw caution to the wind and wish for bromance, romance, and love, And it happens. I want to move to upstate NY and find my own Romeo in a bookstore. Third book I've read from the author and each time, I enjoy it a little more.

[≪ ◦•◦ cait ◦•◦ ≫]

💛📚Was instantly charmed by Kit & Sawyer's Bookstore - I'm assuming this was Sage's first impression as well. 🎬💛
3.5✨

I read Comfort Read in one night and really enjoyed most of it.
I am a fan of this kind of writing style when done well and this definitely was imo.

The side characters (and cat) were charming, I really enjoyed Allison.

Miscommunication - or not communicating at all - is not a favorite trope of mine and unfortunately, that is the central issue (of the whole book really) of the 3rd act.
It could have easily been avoided happening and for that reason, I dropped this down a star.
It ruined the magic a little bit that had been building between them throughout the whole book.
I will give Kit props for going to Wayne to try and help, with no expectation from Sage.

I will probably read again.

I recommend this book for those that like closed-door, cozy reads.

Thank you to NetGalley for this free ARC. Rating and review are voluntary - opinions given are always my own.

[Kseniia ✨️]

This is a genuinely cozy book with a wonderful, warm atmosphere, highly likeable characters, and an absolute star of a ginger cat named Throgmorten. The setting and the vibe had so much potential to be a comforting escape, and there were definitely moments of genuine charm.

However, I probably wasn’t in the right mood for it, as the writing style didn’t quite work for me. The story is told in the 3rd person limited perspective from Kit’s point of view, featuring a heavy amount of inner thoughts. While the main characters are both total cinnamon rolls who are sweet and endearing, I struggled to truly connect with them. There seemed to be a notable lack of emotional depth that kept me at a distance.

Even though the sweet dynamic was there on paper, I didn't feel a strong romantic chemistry between them, and consequently, I wasn't invested enough in their relationship. Furthermore, the characters—especially Kit—often felt significantly younger than their actual age, which made it harder to engage with their struggles.

Overall, it’s a pleasant and comforting read if you are looking for pure low-stakes coziness, but for me, it lacked the emotional resonance and chemistry needed to make it a standout.

[Crystal]

Thank you to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for the ARC; all opinions are my own.

Actor x Bookstore owner
3rd person, single POV
Closed door spice
Sloooooow burn

There was a chapter that seemed out of place (it was backstory for the other MMC) and the way it was written took me out of the story a bit, I think if we had gotten Sage's POV it would have solved that issue. However, I really liked this. It was a quick read that immediately held and kept my attention. I found it to be a sweet story and well written. I even shed some tears with the third act conflict lol. I would definitely read again from this author.

[phoenix *ੈ✩‧₊˚]

Well, hate to say that this was disappointing. The prologue had me hooked, and I very much enjoyed the first couple of chapters. The writing was very good for a romance. But I had mainly two struggles with the book:

Firstly, I love fake-dating if it's well done. Reading the summary I thought this setup was something I would very much enjoy, but the execution fell flat. It didn't make much sense to me and was unbelievable as they've only met once. This didn't throw me off. I still wanted to see where it was going, but as the story progressed I found it harder and harder to believe.

Secondly, I didn't believe in their romance at all. I didn't feel any chemistry between them, which is very important to me. Their relationship developed, but I didn't feel any romance. There was no romantic connection between them. Their first kiss was beautifully written, yet it did nothing to me. I wasn't invested in them.

I also struggled with Sage as a character. I didn't hate him, but I also wasn't fond of him. I think his POV would've helped to understand him better. The third act conflict made me angry—which is usually my reaction—because Sage was overexaggerating. I totally understand how hard the situation was for him, but it wasn't fair to give Kit the fault. The resolution fell flat for me.

Overall, I can see why people would enjoy this book, but it wasn't for me. The romance didn't click for me, I felt no chemistry, and I struggled with the MC. I expected a sweet and cozy rom-com, but it was neither cozy nor a rom-com.

- Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing the ARC!

[Olga Rudnitska]

Thank you to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tropes:
- Fake dating
- Closed door
- Small town romance
- Celebrity x bookshop owner
- Slow burn

It was a heartwarming, unhurried MM romance and I didn't know I needed one. Even without spicy scenes, the story was filled with vulnerable conversations and heartfelt trauma healing.
Kit Forrest, after a huge breakup, feels like a failure to his family and townspeople. To save his beloved book store, he is ready to do anything. And than comes Sage Ballard - an A-list celebrity with a deal for fake dating to save both of thier lives.

If you are eager for a slow development of romantic emotions - this is your stop. It was a surprise for both of them how they opened to each other and how perfectly they understood each other.

Mini-spoilers for what to expect - a cat, a kiss in front of the cameras, a grand gesture and a rescue farm with ducks

[Martina]

Publishing date: Oct 8 2026 💕

❁ Thank you to Netgalley and Dylan Morrison for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion — ARC provided by Storm Publishing ❁

Ok, I'm being very lucky with my latest reads and arcs. This was literally so nice and cozy.
The perfect autumn read 🍂
I'm also such a simp for any book that features a bookstore because they're like magical places for me ✨

This romance maybe wasn't the most original out there, but it certainly had all the good ingredients:
- grumpy x sunshine
- one bed
- geek x movie star
- small town romance
- a mysterious cat that hates hats...

The 🌶️ was sadly all faded to black, but one can't begrudge the author's preferences 🤷🏼‍♀️
I do prefer when my books (romances) come with spice, but honestly that doesn't have to be the rule.

The characters were nice and their exchanges were so fun to follow. I especially loved Sage 💖

This book promised to be a "Comfort Read" and it was literally that.

Ⓟⓡⓔ—Ⓡⓔⓥⓘⓔⓦ
Readying my teacup and blanket for this one 🍵

[Tania]

(3.5 stars, rounded up because of the cat) Did not expect this to be so cute and charming ! And it is exactly what the title says, very much a comfort read.
It has a couple of my favorite tropes - fake dating and celebrity romance - and two main characters that I enjoyed. Kit especially was so relatable, and he had me in stitches several times with how funny he was.
I also liked the small town vibes and the bookstore setting. Plus there's an orange cat named after a Dianna Wynne Jones' character, so obviously I loved him.
I wish we had gotten Sage's POV though, and bit more insight into his thoughts. As it is we could only guess at what he was feeling, so the third act breakup (which I knew was coming but still found disappointing when it happened) felt a bit unjustified.
Overall a very sweet and slow burn romance, and a perfect book to cozy up with if you're in need of something comforting to read.

[Daniel Myatt]

Thank you to Storm and Netgalley for the pre advanced copy.

Right! I'm not going to lie.

This book had everything for me, bookshops, cats, small town vibes, a caper (as in adventure, not the berry).

And it was perfect! It made me laugh. It made me tear up it kept me gripped, and I read it in 2 sittings, I just had to know what happened.

Were there surprise? Nope! Could you figure out the plot? Yeap! Did I care? Absolutely not!

A cracking read, and I've already recommended it to several friends.

[louise]

It wasn’t because Sage’s presence saved him, or improved him, or made him less pathetic in the eyes of the people around him. It was because being around Sage made Kit feel more like himself.

When the books you’re fond of are all miserable, you don’t exactly have high expectations for cute, lighthearted romances. I’m glad Comfort Read proved me wrong, reminding me that a story doesn’t need to grapple with the weightiest things in life to mean something.

Besides the humor winning me over almost immediately, I loved how well the novel captured the fear of being difficult to love — the fear that once someone sees every insecurity and vulnerability you’ve tried so hard to hide, they’ll have every reason to leave. What a comfort it is, then, to be seen in your entirety and loved despite it. I initially worried that Kit’s relationship with Sage would become one where he depended on him for his own wellbeing, but I’m glad the story understood the difference between needing someone and losing yourself in them. They both needed each other, but it was through that connection that they found their way back to themselves.

For such a simple and cozy read, I was surprised by how nuanced its characters were, each with their own histories and relationships that somehow fit together without feeling incidental. Even those with only minor roles or brief appearances left their own mark on Kit and Sage’s lives, never feeling as though they existed merely to move the story along. While I did find some parts distracting — the typos and the abruptness of the sibling backstory in particular — Comfort Read had given me too many things to love for either to truly bother me. I do wish some of the confrontations had been given more room to carry the emotional weight they deserved, but otherwise, I really enjoyed every second of this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Bethany Hall]

Thank you Storm Publishing for the digital copy to review! I loved this one y'all. Kit and Sage had me in my feels but also I was belly laughing so hard. Who among us hasn't been Kit, lost and trying to figure their shit out?

The whole story starts with Kit being dumped by his boyfriend after proposing... and buying the bookshop they work at together. Let's just say, things get much better from there (after getting a little worse, ya know). Sage needs some help with his reputation and asks Kit to date him for a good public image. Feelings would NEVER happen here, right??

WRONG. Kit is a goner from the minute he meets Sage. Captivated by those blue eyes and everything else. Kit's inner monologue is literally everything to me. He's so funny and charming and alarmingly self aware. I also found his rambling so endearing and his brain not catching up to his mouth in time ... multiple times.. was hilarious.

I really felt for Sage here. He had a lot going on, and he was kind of a mess. But once you find out what happened to him, you get it. I also think that he fell pretty quickly for Kit and who didn't love his relationship with Kit's cat???? While I get him being so upset about a certain thing getting leaked, I felt so badly for Kit in that moment who truly felt blindsided. :( BUT Sage fully made up for it with his immaculate grand gesture.

Speaking OF!! Kit's sweetness and vulnerability really came through at the dinner with Wayne that the fake dating was leading up to. His assessment of Sage was so lovely, and truly brought tears to my eyes. Such a genuinely beautiful moment, and the following scenes were really strong too!

Anyway, I had a great time with this one. The conflicts felt real, the family dynamics were interesting and fun, and I loved how being queer for Kit was so normalized in his life. His mom, best friend, and other people surrounding him. So beautiful! Also, really loved the animal rescue scene (Why was Mitch so funny with so little page time??) and the final three chapters were so cute!

OH and this one is closed door too if you are looking for spice ratings! (Mild grinding, innuendo, etc)

[Maxie]

ARC Review
*mild spoilers ahead*

This is a tough one to rate.

There were a lot of things I really enjoyed, but there were also parts that left me baffled and a little frustrated.

At its core, this is a sweet, classic opposites-attract story.

Kit is a small-town guy, kind of nerdy and awkward, who makes an arrangement with Sage, a movie star carrying plenty of emotional baggage of his own.

It has all the ingredients of a lovely rom-com, and in some ways it delivers. The writing is good, the characters are likable, and while the plot isn’t especially original, it’s still fun. It’s also fairly low on angst, which makes it easy to settle into if you want something light and comforting.

But as entertaining as it was, a few things kind of bothered me.

The single point of view was the biggest issue. Not knowing Sage’s feelings or thoughts beyond Kit’s interpretation was super frustrating, especially because so much of the romance depends on believing that the connection goes both ways.
That distance made it hard for me to fully believe the bond between them, and the chemistry sometimes felt slightly off.


I usually enjoy a slow burn, but here the pacing stretched the tension so far that it occasionally felt stalled.

Kit is a charming character: cute and relatable. Sage was much harder to grasp, though. Because I got so little of his inner world, I never connected with him in the same way.

Even so, I’d still recommend it if you’re looking for a cute, easygoing read with a cozy rom-com vibe.

[Cori Samuel]

Cosy fake dating romance featuring a bookshop, a peculiar ginger cat, and immaculate autumnal vibes.

Featuring "the saddest man in Cedar Falls", Kit, whose POV we follow as he meets Sage, child actor turned adult tabloid disaster, who needs an ordinary boyfriend because reasons. I did enjoy the slow burn here, and the contributions of the side characters to the relationship and personal development of Kit in particular, Sage remains rather more unknown.

I do desperately wish (and would have given the fifth star) for there to have been more of a twist on the 'relationship built on lies' trope, because I think it's harder to come back from epic miscommunication in a relationship than most writers describe, and that was true here too. I'd really been hoping for less of that and more "us against the world".

All in all, though, Kit's easy to root for, Sage is a bit too good to be true in places, but that's no bad trait in a Love Interest, and I did enjoy the way things were resolved.

Would I reread this, maybe not; but it lives up to its title for the first time through at least, so all good.


Rating: 15/20
This review is based upon a complimentary advance review copy provided by the publisher at NetGalley.

[gracie]

This is my fourth Dylan Morrison book and the third one I'm reading as an arc and by now I know mostly what to expect going into one of his books. However, I've been finding the way humour is done in this book to be quite poor in terms of funniness. It didn't affect much of my reading experience but it is still an issue for me regardless.

Another one is the conflict resolution. Similar to 'Fall into You', the resolution in this felt like it was just there to bring them back together. There was no friction, Sage didn't even apologize for yelling at Kit, Kit didn't do anything but apologize (which is fair, he was wrong too but not even saying what he felt to Sage was such a copout), I did not like it, I did not enjoy it. We were on such a good track too! It's also an issue between Kit and Maggie too,I'm sorry to say that the pacifist approach to writing conflicts does not make for good or enjoyable writing!

I'm afraid to say that this is my least favorite one of Morrison's books. I hope the next one will be better, thank you Storm Publishing for the arc.

[carla]

Thank you NetGalley and Storm Publishing for giving me the chance to read this ARC!

Comfort Read is such a cute and cozy book, ideal to read if you are looking for some lovely time. Honestly I loved everything about this book, I just wish the writer could develop better their love story and give us more romantic scenes but I really did love everything, even the way the author wrote the spicy scene without going into too many details but at the same time making you feel the tension between the characters before and after that scene. I'll miss these guys, this was so nice and fun!

[♡ J U L I A ♡]

"comfort read" was indeed a really comforting read. it was really cute, cozy and just perfect for the beginning fall season. i liked the talk of the struggles with fame on sage's side and kit's personal problems. i wish the story was longer and there were moments i wished for more "show-don't tell". the atmosphere in the smalltown's bookstore and all the fake-dating a celebrity stuff was great. i love the cat!

thank you netgalley and the publisher for providing me this e-ARC in exchange for an honest opinion!

[Mandi]

This was a cute, sweet & cozy fall read! Both main characters meshed well and it was a fun read. They had depth, chemistry and it was overall a nice read!

Thank you to NetGalley, Storm Publishing and Dylan Morrison for allowing me to access the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos]

The Bookshop Can Wait, Apparently Love Has Paperwork
“Comfort Read” offers fake boyfriends, bad publicity, structural repairs, family interference, and a surprisingly serious question about whether care ever comes without terms and conditions.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 28th, 2026

Dylan Morrison opens “Comfort Read” with a proposal that has already hardened into a plan. Kit Forrest has chosen the ring, the bookstore, the audience, the future. He has even spent his savings buying Sawyer’s Books, the old firehouse where he and Emerson fell in love, as a surprise for the life he assumes they are about to keep living. Emerson’s refusal therefore breaks more than an engagement. It breaks Kit’s confidence in his own reading of another person. “It was a romantic story, up until about five minutes ago,” Kit thinks, and the joke earns its bitterness: a story about someone can feel complete right until that person declines the part written for him.

Eighteen months later, Kit has survived the breakup but not escaped its public afterlife. Cedar Falls knows him as the man whose boyfriend rejected him spectacularly, and Sawyer’s, now genuinely his rather than a gift meant for Emerson, is deteriorating faster than he can finance repairs. The city may shut it if essential work is not completed by the end of November. Then Sage Ballard walks in: internationally famous, financially secure, and so badly overexposed that his public image has become professionally inconvenient. Sage needs his wealthy uncle Wayne to finance an adaptation he wants to direct. Kit needs money. Sage needs evidence of normalcy. Fake dating supplies both with a ridiculous temporary fix.

More interesting than the bargain is its moral grammar. Sage wants Kit to make him look “low-key and stable,” a manufactured private life placed in Wayne’s line of sight. Kit agrees because Sage can save the store. Each begins by using the other as proof of something: solvency, stability, desirability, recovery. Morrison keeps returning to that habit of turning people into evidence. Kit did it when he bought a bookstore for the future Emerson was presumed to want. Wayne does it when he looks at Sage and sees the possible recurrence of John, his dead brother. Maggie does it more tenderly when worry hardens into assumptions about Kit’s fragility. Even Sage does it when he later decides that disappearing from Kit’s life would be an act of protection. Love here goes wrong less through cruelty than through confidence.

Even Cedar Falls’s warmth has an edge. Sawyer’s is full of children, regulars, eccentric rituals, gossip, Throgmorten the ginger cat, and the low-level social surveillance by which a small town proves it cares. Kit loves that web until he becomes its favorite story. Everybody knows him, so everybody feels licensed to understand what his breakup, his finances, his bookstore and his moods mean. Sage’s fame enlarges this pressure into something harsher and more dangerous, but Morrison notices the family resemblance: familiarity can acquire the manners of entitlement. Being cared about is pleasant. Being continually interpreted is exhausting. The distinction gives the book more bite than its autumnal surfaces first advertise.

The prose carries that pressure in Kit’s syntax. His close-third, present-tense consciousness is roomy, associative and almost incapable of letting a feeling arrive unaccompanied. A thought gets qualified; the qualification triggers a joke; the joke opens a grotesque hypothetical; then Kit edits the whole thing while still thinking it. Even embarrassment acquires footnotes. The result is often very funny, but the comedy is also defensive technique. Kit narrates himself fast enough to keep embarrassment from settling into silence. Morrison is especially good at letting a sentence accelerate as Kit tries to outrun whatever it has accidentally revealed. Sage supplies the counter-rhythm. He goes quiet, answers shortly, withholds, retreats. Their romance therefore develops partly as a contest between two bad methods of self-protection: Kit floods the space with language while Sage empties it. That makes the occasional short declarative line feel almost physical. Morrison understands this habit well enough that the sentences themselves start to resemble self-curation. The danger is equally clear: at times the novel shares Kit’s reluctance to stop talking once the emotional point has landed.

Readers can feel the method tighten when Sage visits Sawyer’s and customers begin staring. Kit shoos them toward their books with jokes, then suddenly feels himself “abruptly onstage”; even his familiar words seem borrowed, false, “an act.” Nothing dramatic has happened. No photographer has shoved a lens into his face. The mere presence of an audience alters his relation to his own speech. Kit briefly discovers what it is to hear himself from outside, and the experience changes the way he looks at Sage.

It is on the red carpet that Morrison pushes this idea furthest. Photographers shout instructions. Sage quietly tells Kit how to angle his body. Then the crowd asks for a kiss. Sage looks down; Kit reads the look as a question and nods. Choreography becomes permission, then contact. Once they kiss, the narration narrows violently: the noise falls away, the carpet disappears, the limousines recede. For a few sentences the public performance seems to manufacture a private room around them. Then sound rushes back in. Kit opens his eyes. Morrison cuts from his luxuriant, breathless perception to a blunt line: “Sage looks absolutely, utterly terrified.” The kiss matters because the performance works too well. It produces a truth neither man can safely keep pretending is pretend.

Public attention changes meaning once Kit himself becomes useful to strangers. Earlier he read gossip about Sage; now people approach him for details, treating proximity as a license. His irritated defense, “He’s a person, you know,” is almost comically elementary. Kit has to move from wanting access to Sage toward defending Sage’s right to withhold it. Morrison does not let him make the discovery from a position of innocence. Kit has already tried to reconcile the tabloid disaster with the man eating breakfast across from him, as though one version must cancel the other. The romance improves when he stops looking for a master explanation.

A formal interruption makes the reader commit a related mistake. Chapter 5 drops Kit’s usual focalization and gives us a run of tabloid items: a talk-show walkout, a party, a broken camera, cancelled contracts, finally a story speculating that Sage may be repeating the instability associated with his father, John, who died by suicide. The rhetoric is worth noticing. Kit hedges, corrects himself, worries at possibilities. The articles take fragments, arrange them briskly, then let insinuation do the rest. Their questions are not really questions; they are little machines for converting absence of information into suspicion. A quoted neighbor, a clipped video, an unnamed source, a therapist’s speculation: each piece carries the look of evidence while the sequence supplies the verdict. Withholding Sage’s point of view makes this more than parody. We, like Kit, assemble him from behavior and other people’s accounts, never quite sure better evidence makes us better interpreters. We meet a Sage who looks coherent because the page has already decided what kind of story he belongs to. Later revelations do not make every reported fact false. They make the arrangement of those facts look presumptuous. That distinction is essential to Morrison’s best criticism of gossip: distortion often requires no invention at all.

Privacy gives the plot its clearest contemporary pressure. Before Kit signs anything, Frankie warns that appearing beside Sage will alter his digital footprint and spill outward into his real relationships. Kit announces that he is ready for public scrutiny because he imagines himself as the person being scrutinized. Later, the fake relationship is exposed through covert footage of Maggie speaking privately to her best friend. Communication scholar Alice E. Marwick’s term “networked privacy” is useful here: her work argues that privacy cannot be protected through individual choices alone because information moves through connected social systems. Kit can volunteer for visibility. Maggie cannot be volunteered after the fact.

After the leak, neither man gets the clean moral position he wants. Sage is right that Kit broke the rule by telling Maggie. Kit is right that Maggie’s private conversation was stolen. Sage did warn him that fame would spread beyond the couple, yet warning someone that danger exists is not the same as giving him an exact map of where it will land. “What did you think ‘you don’t get any privacy in this life’ meant?” Sage asks. The rupture is painful because it grows from the original arrangement rather than from a detachable third-act misunderstanding. Two people negotiated a risk whose consequences were always going to recruit people who never sat at the table.

Domestic life reveals another audience. When Maggie finally corners Kit, she catches on the word he uses to discipline himself: “should.” What he should feel. What he should disclose. What he should be able to handle. Kit breaks and admits the rule beneath his performance: “I have to act like everything’s fine” because he believes showing his family the mess will make them leave too. Maggie does not reassure him by inventing a happier account of his circumstances. She tells him they love him rather than “the person you think you should be.” Kit does not need paparazzi to become alienated from himself. An imagined audience is enough.

If that scene relocates the book’s publicity problem inside a family, Chapter 21 gives it an inheritance. “The Ballad of John and Wayne” begins with the unnerving statement that six-year-old Wayne “acquired” his baby brother. “Acquired” is funny for half a second and ugly immediately afterward. It organizes Wayne’s love around having: John is someone to secure, finance, rescue and, finally, fail to keep. Their filmmaking partnership gives this emotional habit a bank account. Money allows Wayne to support John’s art, but it also lets support slide toward management. The chapter keeps returning to the terrible seduction of retrospect, that belief that if Wayne had pushed harder, funded differently, distrusted someone sooner, he might have prevented the catastrophe. After addiction, estrangement and John’s death, Wayne carries not only grief into his judgment of Sage but the fantasy that better control might redeem failed control.

Morrison’s decision to step out of Kit’s comic present and narrate decades of Ballard family tragedy is the novel’s largest formal gamble. It gives Wayne moral weight and makes Sage’s terror of intimacy feel inherited rather than merely glamorous. The shift is conspicuous because the book has spent so long teaching us the limits of Kit’s access: suddenly the camera can range backward across decades, through rooms Kit never entered and motives he could never witness. It also exposes the book’s main structural weakness. Until this point Sage has been assembled from silences, reactions, former relationships, acts of generosity, other people’s testimony. Chapter 21 gathers most of the missing causal material into one sustained retrospective. We gain history and lose some uncertainty. The chapter is affecting, but it arrives with the faint sound of a dossier being opened.

It matters that Kit’s response to that history is refusal of a pattern. “He’s not John,” he tells Wayne, then argues that Wayne might try being a source of stability rather than requiring Sage to go manufacture one. Kit is still intervening in another family; Morrison is not pretending otherwise. What changes is the direction of the intervention. He is asking Wayne to stop treating resemblance as destiny. The scene turns the book’s romantic problem outward: knowing somebody’s history may deepen care, but history is a dangerous substitute for asking who that person has become.

That distinction cannot be made absolute, and the novel is better for failing to solve it. Wayne has watched money, artistic ambition, addiction and family responsibility end catastrophically before. Sage correctly predicts that his fame will expose Kit’s family. Maggie is not imagining Kit’s isolation or financial trouble. Sometimes an outsider sees danger more clearly than the person inside it. So the book’s ethical question is not whether love should ever intervene. It is how quickly concern begins speaking in the grammar of certainty, especially when money, trauma or unequal knowledge give one person leverage over another.

Repair is the novel’s most useful material image because Sawyer’s has never possessed an untouched original state worth recovering. It was a firehouse, then a bookstore, then a beloved building whose charm partly depends on modifications that are no longer enough to keep it safe. Kit has been a teacher, boyfriend, abandoned fiancé, bookseller, town cautionary tale, fake celebrity partner. Neither needs restoration to some purer earlier version. Both need change that leaves them recognizable. Throgmorten, the stray who arrives after the proposal, supplies the comic version: attachment chooses its own routes. The metaphor has an inconvenient economic edge, however. Sage’s wealth can solve a problem that affection, local loyalty and a stalled crowdfunding attempt cannot. Morrison mostly treats that as romantic largesse, although the book is otherwise alert to the leverage money can create between people. The fairy tale has a balance sheet, even when the novel prefers not to audit it.

Only after Kit begins imagining a future without Sage can Sage’s return mean something other than rescue. An old Christmas video shows Kit and Emerson smiling over gifts neither actually wanted. There is no dramatic revelation, only two people performing gratitude for gifts selected by partners who did not quite know them. Years later, Kit can finally see the mismatch from outside. He eventually tells himself that he does not need another person in order to be Kit. The sentence is blunter than the scene needs; Morrison often mistrusts implication just when implication has done the work. But the surrounding sequence is stronger. Kit settles back into family life, considers teaching again, accepts that Sawyer’s may be lost, and keeps moving. The romance is allowed to become desire rather than evidence that he has finally turned into somebody worth choosing.

Precisely because that recovery has started, Chapter 24 earns its reversal. Sage returns prepared to repair Sawyer’s whether Kit takes him back or not. He then admits that after the breakup he planned to disappear because he had decided distance was the safest thing he could give Kit. Wayne’s visit forces him to recognize the familiar error. What Sage owes Kit, he says, is “the chance to tell me what you wanted.” Only then comes the real-boyfriend question. The grammar has changed from prediction to interrogation. Sage does not arrive with a better plan for Kit’s life. He leaves a space in the sentence where Kit’s answer has to go.

Once Kit says yes, Sage starts discussing blueprints and construction schedules. Kit stops him: “The bookshop can wait.” The line remembers the Prologue. There, Kit bundled love, property, money and futurity into a single surprise before discovering whether Emerson wanted the package. Here, the bundle comes apart. First the person, then the plan. The store has not become trivial; Kit has simply stopped asking it to certify his romantic future. It is one of Morrison’s neatest reversals because the sentence is so much smaller than the mistake it corrects.

Unusually for a story so wary of exposure, the Epilogue returns Kit and Sage to public forms. Future profiles tell us about Sawyer’s reopening, Frankie and Allison, Sage’s directing career, Kit’s educational work and the couple’s marriage. That choice prevents privacy from meaning disappearance. It also slyly repurposes a form the novel previously used against Sage. Earlier, journalism turns scraps of behavior into a person; here, the profile can observe without claiming exhaustive possession. The medium has not become innocent, only less sovereign. Sage remains visible, successful and still photographable, but strangers’ versions of him no longer appear to govern his own. Yet the same pages reveal Morrison’s appetite for insurance. Nearly every emotional account is settled and countersigned, from careers to relationships to the bookstore itself. The comfort promised by the title arrives with paperwork.

Like Kit, the novel sometimes talks past the point at which silence would serve it better. Chapter 21 supplies history in a block; Kit’s later self-realizations name meanings his scenes have already established; the Epilogue verifies the future with remarkable thoroughness. None of this makes the book slack or confused. It makes the governing weakness unusually easy to describe: the structure trusts recurrence more than the prose trusts inference. Morrison has built enough echoes for the reader to notice what changes. He occasionally seems unwilling to risk our missing them.

On balance, I land at 84/100, which translates to 4/5 Goodreads stars. The score belongs to a romance with an excellent emotional mechanism, a memorable comic consciousness, and a better use of familiar conventions than its premise initially promises. Fake dating becomes a problem of public authorship; a threatened bookstore becomes a test of what repair preserves; the final romantic gesture becomes a question rather than a plan. The deductions come from the same source as much of the pleasure: Morrison’s wish to make emotional consequence fully legible sometimes leaves too little for inference to finish.

So the image that stays with me is the repaired bookstore: an old firehouse still recognizable because its dangerous parts have been addressed rather than disguised. Morrison occasionally renovates too thoroughly, sanding down ambiguity along with damage. But “Comfort Read” understands the harder thing about repair. It cannot return Kit, Sage, Wayne or Sawyer’s to an untouched state, and it does not need to. Intimacy, in this novel, is finally less the privilege of finishing another person’s story than the nerve to stand inside one still being revised, listen for the shift in the walls, and ask where its other inhabitant wants the door.

[Silvia]

RTC

[The Honest Book Reviewer]

3.5 stars

This made for an entertaining light and cosy romance. The story moves quickly, the romance develops at a believable pace, and the type of dry wit running through the book is something I enjoy.

Protagonist Kit owns a bookstore in an old firehouse that badly needs repairs. Sage is a former television and movie star whose public image could use some rehabilitation. A fake relationship offers something they both need, and naturally the line between fake and real gradually becomes less clear.

What I appreciated most was that the romance wasn't rushed and doesn’t feel cheesy. Kit and Sage take time getting to know and like each other while insisting that what they're doing is still pretend. Their attraction is obvious, but the book gives their relationship enough time to develop so the transition into something real feels earned rather than inevitable simply because the premise says so.

The supporting cast is so well written. Alison (Kit's best friend) and Frankie (Sage's manager) both feel like actual people. But the standout is Kit's mother, Cheryl. She's completely over the top and is responsible for some of the funniest scenes in the book. Her interactions with actress Seline were a highlight.

Cheryl deserves her own book!

The eventual conflict is predictable, as is the ending, but neither bothered me. This is the sort of book where you know roughly where you're going. The enjoyment comes from spending time with the characters on the journey. The story flows well and is fast-paced without feeling rushed.

It felt this book did exactly what it promised. It was warm, funny, and engaging. It had likeable characters and enough dry humour to keep me laughing and engaged for the long haul.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Steamy Chapters]

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC 🫶🏻

Fake dating is one of my favorite tropes, so I was excited for Kit and Sage’s story! I loved the cozy atmosphere from the beginning, and Kit was so easy to like. He was so relatable, and I loved his personality!

I love a slow burn, so I kept waiting for the romance to develop a little more as the story went on. They had some cute moments, but I didn’t quite feel their connection deepen. I think a little more depth in their relationship would have made me enjoy the romance so much more.

Overall, I enjoyed the cozy vibes, even if the romance left me wanting more.

[Mylz Belanger]

3.5 ⭐️

Comfort Read is a cozy fake-dating MM romance between a small-town bookstore owner and a very famous Hollywood actor.

This book delivered on everything it promised. It was cozy, we got plenty of tension, and I felt like we got to know both MCs well enough to really connect with them. They were both surprisingly relatable in their own ways, which is saying something when one of them is an uber-famous movie star.

The third-act breakup did annoy me, and I didn’t find the reconciliation quite satisfying enough, but other than that, I had such a great time reading this book. It was warm, charming, and exactly the kind of low-stress romance I was in the mood for.

Overall, this was such a fun and comforting read, and definitely one I’d recommend when you’re looking for a cozy romance to curl up with.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

[Amelia Rachelle]

I LOVE books with a famous person and a non famous person, mixed with the fake dating, this book was so good!! Grumpy x Sunshine, one bed, age gap, YES, YES, and YES! This is my first book by Dylan Morrison that I’ve read, and it won’t be the last. Book site owner,Kit, lives in a SMALL town where everyone knows everyone starts to date a famous movie star in order to help save his book store and help Sage’s reputation and help him get funding for the movie screen play he wrote. The slow burn was slowly BURNING and I rooted so hard for Kit and Sage! I loved Sages security, his manager, and Kits bestie! I also loved how the characters got their happily ever afters! ❤️

[Jordan Stash]

Thank you to Storm Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced copy of “Comfort Read” by Dylan Morrison.

“Comfort Read” follows Kit as he navigates the ending of his long term relationship and gets intertwined with a famous actor. In the downfall of Kit’s relationship, he buys an old bookstore in need of many physical repairs. Kit gets involved with Sage Ballard, who offers to do him a favor in exchange for something from Kit.

Fake dating is a trope I’ve familiarized myself with over and over again, but this was a bit more interesting. I enjoyed the motivation behind the fake dating scenario and found it to be a bit more creative.

Overall, the story was good, but did leave me feeling a little “meh.” Sage and Kit were likable characters, but just felt a little bland. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the styling of the epilogue and felt like all of the main characters had a nice resolution.

Overall, I did enjoy the story and would recommend it, but I needed just a bit more.

[Mollie]

This was cute as hell.

Thank you to Storm Publishing and Netgalley for sending me this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This is the first book by Dylan Morrison that I have read, and I will definitely be picking up more of his work! Comfort Read has everything you could want from a romance - fantastic banter, electrifying chemistry and a big fat ginger cat.

I loved the relationships Kit had, not only with Sage, Allison and Throg, but with his family. Their dynamic was wonderful, and I cried when Maggie finally helped him face his lingering guilt and grief over his past.

This book had me experiencing all of the emotions, I was cackling at the banter, crying at the softness and depth of the emotions Kit was going through, and feeling joy from the conclusion.

I loved that the epilogue was told through articles, and it rounded off the story perfectly.

A 5 star read for me!

[CrabbyPatty]

I devoured this book in one sitting, finishing it up under the covers with my Kindle. Sure, you'll need to suspend a bit of disbelief, but it's easy to become quickly involved in this story of Kit Forrest, the saddest man in Cedar Falls, NY and Sage Ballard, homegrown Hollywood star, Sawyer's Bookstore (a beloved bookstore, formerly an 1880's firehouse), bookstore resident Throgmorten the cat with his very own "Incident Tracker: Weirdly Suspicious Cat Behavior" dry-erase board and a cavalcade of very interesting secondary characters. This is, indeed, a comfort read.

It started with renting out his historic bookstore for a media event, and before Kit knew it, he had agreed to become Sage Ballard's fake boyfriend in order to help Sage secure funding for a movie that would allow him to move from acting to directing. Sage is very distant and prickly, and as we learn along the way, entirely justified in protecting himself. Kit could have been just an annoyingly cheerful Mary Sue, but his character has heart and the confidence to speak his mind to Sage in ways that really matter.

I loved Kit's POV throughout and would have liked to also gotten Sage's POV, which would have helped to better flesh out his character and give us more insights rather than waiting until almost the end of the novel for vital clues and background. There are just a few sex scenes here, but nothing graphic on-page. Unfortunately, there is a HUGE misunderstanding with no communication (one of my BIG pet peeves) in the later part of the book that really seems out of the place with the overall feel of the book. But Kit's efforts, even after Sage totally shut him out, gives the book a happy ending that it really deserves. 4 stars.

I received an ARC from the Publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[VickydpBooks]

This was such a cozy, feel-good romance with just the right amount of angst, humour, and small-town charm. I’m a complete sucker for a bookstore setting, and Kit’s run-down little shop, complete with an opinionated orange cat, was easily one of my favourite parts of the story.

Kit and Sage make such an entertaining pairing. Kit is sweet, earnest, and a little bit of a lovable nerd, while Sage initially comes across as a completely insufferable celebrity who seems to have forgotten how normal people behave. Their fake-dating arrangement was a lot of fun, especially watching all those little moments where the line between pretending and actually caring about each other started to blur.

I particularly enjoyed the slow-burn aspect of their relationship. The small gestures, unexpected visits to the bookstore, and gradually developing affection made their romance feel believable rather than rushed. And, of course, the fact that the cat seems to have decided Sage is its favourite person was absolutely adorable.

There’s plenty of cozy autumn atmosphere, small-town gossip, a grumpy-meets-sunshine dynamic, and enough secrets and misunderstandings to keep things interesting. It’s the kind of book that feels like curling up in a comfy chair with a hot drink while rain taps against the windows.

If you enjoy fake dating, celebrity romances, cozy settings, slow-burn MM romance, and characters who slowly realise their fake relationship might not be so fake after all, this is definitely worth picking up. A warm, charming read with plenty of heart.

[Yuliia Zadnipriana]

Comfort Read by Dylan Morrison is a sweet romantic story about a fake relationship between two people who seem completely different at first.

While this book didn’t quite become one of those romances that completely won me over, I still found it genuinely enjoyable and easy to read. What I liked most was watching Sage and Keith’s relationship develop. Honestly, this was my first time reading a romance about two men 👀, and I really appreciated how natural and balanced their relationship felt.

There’s no excessive drama or unnecessary over-the-top angst here. Their connection develops gradually and realistically, step by step, and even though the book is very much centered around their relationship, there are still some unexpected and rather unpleasant twists along the way — unpleasant for the characters, at least.

Both men have their own personalities, complicated pasts, and very different ways of living. Sage is a movie star who is constantly followed by paparazzi, while Keith is a lonely, somewhat unlucky guy who has just proposed to his boyfriend, only to be rejected and dumped. Somehow, these two very different personalities come together, and it was genuinely interesting to watch them get to know each other, figure out their feelings, and slowly develop a genuine attraction.

Their chemistry and progression felt natural and believable, which made the whole story easy to settle into.

I’d say this is a great book to take on a trip or read while on vacation — especially when you want something light and comforting to take your mind off a more difficult book or simply escape your everyday thoughts for a while.

[Kevin]

Comfort Read is a cozy MM romance by Dylan Morrison. Kit Forrest has a reputation as the saddest man in town after a very public rejected proposal. When his bookstore might be forced to close, movie star Sage Ballard walks in with a proposal of his own: Kit will pretend to be his boyfriend to repair his reputation and attract investors for his career shift, and Sage will pay to repair the building. What follows is a sunshine x grump fake-dating romance that predictably spins out of control.

This is exactly the cozy comfort read it’s meant to be. It’s sweet, cute, and charming, with enough humor and lightness to make it an easy read. There’s only some angst, minimal yearning, and a third-act breakup that is resolved with minimal pain. It doesn’t break new ground and can be very tropey, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Kit is messy in the best way. He knows he’s going to get swept up in the fake dating but falls right into it anyway. I did like that Sage falls first, though. I do think the book implies more depth than is necessarily shown, but I wasn’t really bothered by that, as it still managed to draw tears from me.

Comfort Read does indeed deliver what its title promises… it’s sweet, cozy, tropey, and very easy to fall into.

*Thank you Storm Publishing for the eARC via NetGalley