Micah Johnson is coming back to Melbourne, and the story of him and his friends is coming to an end.
Or will it be a new beginning?
Will Deanes and Micah Johnson have a past, one that ranges from bitter enemies to best friends. There might be an undercurrent of something else, but Micah remains oblivious, and all Will can do is try to move on.
Except now Micah’s returning to Melbourne full-time, and that means they can’t avoid each other or the tensions that arise. Will is still dealing with an injury that ended his football career, while Micah’s continues to thrive. As they face highs, lows, and family tragedies, they’ll have to get to know each other all over again. Will Micah see that Will means much more to him than a friend?
Sean Kennedy lives in the second-most isolated city in the world, thinks there are thylacines still out in the wild, and eagerly awaits the return of Twin Peaks in 2017.
After a long absence, Micah Johnson is recruited by a local football team and comes back to his home town, Melbourne. His best friend Will Deanes is delighted. Yet there are two things that bother him. Micah has a boyfriend, see, with whom he’s engaged in a weird long-distance “open relationship”, where one party gets to enjoy the open part (Tyler), while the other (Micah) has to make the relationship work. And the second thing is: Will doesn’t love Micah merely the way a best mate is supposed to love his buddy. No, he’s always been pining for him, and that feeling hasn’t weakened over the years. That’s why the first moments they spend together are somewhat awkward. All the more so as everybody around Will—his uncle Henry, Henry’s boyfriend Scotty, his boss Declan and the latter’s boyfriend Simon, even best friend hockey player Emma, just effing everybody—seems to be hinting at the heavy unreleased romantic tension hovering between him and Micah. Will doesn’t need that right now. He’s just recovering from a serious injury that put an end to his dreams of becoming a renowned football player and is trying to find his place at GetOut, the NGO founded by Declan, where he’s working now. In a nutshell, the novel shows us how Will and Micah find out what they really want, leading slowly but steadily to the (hoped-for) HEA. It’s above all an engaging book about the courage of owning one’s emotions, one’s fears, one’s past.
I have to admit that when I started to read it, I groaned inwardly and asked myself why I had ever agreed to tackle a novel about sports and sportsmen. Good ole me and sports (in any sense whatever, doing it, watching it, reading about it)… yikes, no huge love affair, see? I went through the first chapters somewhat grudgingly, until I realized that after only one evening, I had already devoured half the novel (took me only another evening to finish the deed). Gosh, I realized I liked the book! Its not being about sports after all helped a bit, no doubt, but I was really drawn in by all the questioning and inner turmoil Will’s going through (the book is told from his POV). I was pleasantly surprised that the romance wasn’t the main focus, and in those parts where it became more central, there was none of the sugary-flowery, fake-emotional high waves one could fear. No, the language remained to-the-point, calm, sometimes almost analytical, but simple and never boring or too distanced. The pace was slow, but what I’d call “a good slow”, because I was able to follow Will’s coming to terms with his feelings without having to cope with unwarranted strange jerks and twists and turns. Everything seemed to flow naturally, authentically.
I liked the setting. Melbourne and all of Down Under are fascinatingly exotic for this European dude. Don’t get me wrong, the US is just as exotic to me, but for once to live a story set in one of Australia’s largest and most iconic cities was a welcome change. I discovered that Australian football was a thing—over here in Europe the only football people know and care for is what you’d call “soccer” (well, others care for it; personally, I don’t give a toss). I even learned some new Aussie words: “pash”, for instance, which means “kiss and caress amorously” and is derived from the word “passion”—isn’t that just adorable?
But the best thing I can say about this book (the best thing anyone can ever say about any book): it made me stop and ponder. Whilst I was following Will’s tribulations, I was asking myself a lot of questions about my own past. Will and Micah are in their early twenties, see, and that’s been a very “busy” age for yours truly as well. Truckloads of new things, discoveries, experiences back then. For example, Will has a teenage past as an anti-gay bully, and I asked myself, “Have I ever bullied someone myself?”, which lead to some deeper thoughts and analyses. Will’s aching to have a fulfilling relationship with someone, and God did I ache for the same thing from age 20-30 at least. He’s in love with his best friend (who hasn’t gone through that at one point?) and doesn’t know how to (re)act. If he dares speak up, will that destroy the special friendship they already enjoy? So many themes, all intelligently dealt with, with no faux drama, lots of dry humour, realistic-sounding dialogues. I spend two pleasant evenings reading, thinking, and reminiscing.
I received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review. This review has been originally posted at Gay Book Reviews - check it out!
From that review:I started following and falling in love with the Get Out kids when I first met them in Sean Kennedy's connected Tigers and Devils series. It was there that Dec (and Simon) saw the need for LGBT youth in sports to have a place and organization to guide and support them. Micah, Emma, and Will were the original three kids looking for guidance (well, not Micah, he always had so much growing to do), but Emma and Will, along with others needing strength and support from Dec and Simon as role models as a out LGBT couple and successful in their life choices.
4.5 stars It's 5 years since Dec started up GetOut a d about 4 years since the bus accident that ended Will's dreams of sports stardom - he now works for GetOut, and is still in love with Micah Johnson.. whose finally come g home.
This felt like coming full circle with these characters. The reformed bully having grown and accepted the shit he did, the superstar who's finally learning to control his ego and his mouth.. and of course the sarcastically wonderful Emma. They've from and changed over the 4 books in the series and they all have at least a HFN
I am sure when we finally get the story of Dec and Simon's wedding we will get another glimpse of them a few years from now
(Half star off for some very spottable typos and wrong names)
Where There’s a Will Deanes By Sean Kennedy Harmony Ink Press, 2019 Four stars
In what feels like something of a finale to his GetOut series, Sean Kennedy focuses on Will Deanes, the third leg of the ongoing Micah/Emma/Will story, itself an offspring of the Tigers and Devils series that starred gay Aussie football star Declan Tyler and his beloved Simon Murray. Will, whose coming out was complicated by his fear, and consequent online bullying of Micah Johnson, has become a close friend of both Micah and Emma Goldsworthy, whose budding sports careers have taken them to distant places in Australia. The “parents” of this scenario, Declan and Simon, have become actual parents of twin babies, thus thrusting the younger trio into the forefront. What is so pleasing about this entire double series is that Sean Kennedy keeps all of the characters in the picture, reminding us of their interconnected histories.
Now that the trauma of his career-ending accident has simply become part of his life, Will, at twenty-two, nurses his healing body and relishes his job at GetOut, Declan’s organization that helps LGBT teens. His life is good, but has been thrown into some emotional disarray by the big news that Micah is leaving his Perth football team and has been tagged to come back to Melbourne. Finally, to his chagrin, Will must deal with his own feelings about Micah, long filed under the category of “best friend.”
As most of Kennedy’s books are, this is a simple one, without a great deal of business in the plot. It is a fumbling love story in which, as usual, young men refuse to communicate, or indeed are in denial about what they feel. Coping with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is one thing; coping with relationships is something else. This story has about as much action as a Jane Austen novel, and for devotees of Miss Austen’s love stories, that’s plenty. There is some clear-eyed study of promiscuity, something Kennedy does that flouts the unwritten rules of m/m fiction – and it’s essential to the emotional dynamic of the story. Watching Will and Micah, cheered on (something angrily) by Emma, Declan, Simon, as well as by Will’s gay uncle Henry and his partner Scotty, is entertainment enough.
Not surprisingly, the critical ingredient in this book is love – the fact of love, the absence of love, the idea of love in all its forms. It has always been fascinating for me that a book series initially focused on the playing of a rough-and-tumble manly sport like Aussie football would be so deeply concerned with love, but there you are, and that’s why I’ve read all of Kennedy’s novels.
Each chapter begins with a proverb from somewhere in the world, setting the tone for what happens next. My favorite is a long quotation from American advice columnist Ann Landers – one I remember reading in the newspaper sometime in my own younger years. I was so pleased and startled that Australians even knew who Ann Landers was, that it stuck in my head. “Love is a friendship that has caught fire” it begins. Indeed. Sean Kennedy gives us insight into human hearts, and that’s a subject of which I will never tire.
This book makes me cry every time, and I just want more of Will and Micah. I want to know what their life looks like now they're FINALLY together! I also want to know what's going on with Simon and Dec now they can legally get married (don't even get me started on how ridiculous laws like that are).
What I love most about this series is seeing Will and Micah grow from scared, angry teens to confident young men who know what they want in life. I loved Micah as soon as he was introduced in the Tigers and Devils story as a troubled brat, and I loved Will as soon as he was introduced to the cast of characters too. I love a troubled character with great growth and redemption and here we get two of them who love each other so much.
My only complaint is that I want more of these guys and I'm always keeping an eye out for a new book, but I don't know that it will ever happen which makes me so sad!! This series, and Tigers and Devils are SOOOO underrated. Some of the most realistic and flawed characters I have ever read and they deal with real issues, not manufactured drama. Can't recommend both series enough and they will always be books that I go back to.
For all the regulars of Sean Kennedy and his Tigers and Devils series as well as the Get Out series there’s not too much I can add that we don’t already know and love about the series.
When I discovered this novel was going to be published, I was excited as I always thought that Will Deanes as as character as very intriguing and was interested in his story.
And this novel surpasses everything I ever expected- SK does characterisation like no ever and really delve into the psyche of them; you feel like they’re just like you with their flaws and doubts.
The timeline of this novel places it after the last novel (duh!!!) chronologically, so you see how Will is after [spoiler redacted]. Going back to my previous point, the characterisation is on point and your heart goes out to Will.
While the ending fits into the usual trope that you would expect it to do, as a fan it never bothers me as it’s about the journey you’re taken on as a reader and not necessarily the destination.
A highly recommended novel for any fan of well written fiction!
Micah and Will are part of the first group of kids in Declan’s get out charity foundation for queer kids, “Get Out”. This is book 4 of the get out series. I just did not get as much enjoyment out of the series. I love Will, but I’m sorry. Like he was a little bit of a boring character. And I never did feel like Micah got any reformation. Ironically, because of the name of one of the previous books. This book just didn’t feel like it went anywhere, there was no romance or tenderness, and Micah and Will don’t get together until literally the book is 95% over. And I was deeply disappointed that we didn’t get more satisfying vignettes of Declan And Simon. I mean, did I miss it? We don’t ever even get the names of the twins. And I have to say in hindsight that the timeline From beginning to end seemed very inconsistent at times jumping all over the place.
Well, beautiful writing Mr. Sean Kennedy as usual. But not the same pathos and empathy. Will is a beautiful character, Michah too, but I didn't feel the chemical attraction between the two of them to empathize with their relationship. Not as per other couples described in the same situation from other writers. Here's there's a long time friendship that might be an unrequited love from one of the two, but not this struggle to get together they both feel. And there's more: all friends surrounding Will that continues during the years saying "he'll come along, he's in love with you but he doesn't know..." What kind of friends are those? To keep the delusion going and not letting the poor man move on. Well, I really liked this book just a little. Not totally and wholeheartedly like I loved the Tigers and Devils series. That one was perfection. This absolutely not.
I know the title is about Will, but this book could've been title something along the lines of Where There's a Micah Johnson With His Head Up His Arse. But then again, that's pretty much what I was expecting from the blurb and from my previous experiences with Micah. Still, good story, nice closure for the GetOut first class trio.
I read "Tigers and Devils" some years ago and I loved it. In this book, now, I just could not find a real story. It is, unfortunately, dull and characters miss the point as their attitude is exaggerated and their dramas are kind of forced ones.
Okay. I didn't like how they blamed Micah for everything and made him out to be a bad guy. Like, honestly! Everyone processes things differently and you have to respect that.
Where There's A Will Deanes is the 4th book in the Get Out series by Sean Kennedy.
Will was an up-and-coming footballer when his school bus was in an accident which ended his career before it even started, and left him full of jealousy and chronic pain.
Micah Johnson is coming home; he is transferred back to Melbourne to join a new team. Left behind is his long-distance boyfriend who wants an open relationship.
I admit I really disliked Will in the previous books as he was pretty cruel to Micah and if you read those, you may feel the same. Then again, you feel really bad for him as he was only jealous that Micah could live the life he truly wanted, and yet somehow they became best friends. Best friends who fall for each other. Micah was himself - loud, selfish and adorable. I really like Micah’s overall character; he’s out and proud and he has gone through quite a bit and has overcome everything.
They are such a cute couple. I am hoping book 5 will be focused on Will and Micah again although I noticed a set-up for a potential next book. As I’ve said in all Sean’s books, the only thing that keeps it from 5 stars are those fade-to-black scenes. I truly love how Simon, Declan and the gang appear in all these books.
*** Copy provided to Bayou Book Junkie by Dreamspinner Press for my reading pleasure, a review wasn't a requirement. ***
It is no easy feat to redeem a villain but Sean Kennedy's deft hand is just what Will Deanes needed. In the span of four books, we've come to know and grow with Micah Johnson. But it's Will's character arc that is most surprising and, in some ways, more satisfying to witness in the same span. Micah may be slightly clueless, and Will may be slightly misguided but together they come to realize that what they share and who they are to each other is more than either anticipated... but everything they needed.
This book took a turn I didn't expect, but it was fine. It's a pretty slow burn, and they both spend most of the book sleeping with other people, and I kind of wished Will would have gone for the really nice guy he had been sleeping with instead of the guy with whom he's had a pretty dysfunctional relationship since they met.