Ryan and Baz and Marcus and Aidan figure they have it good. They have their own business, a thriving gay and lesbian publishing company. They have a huge bed. And they have each other. It works for them perfectly well, at least until Nicholas starts...watching.
Nicholas has been working at the press a while when Ryan notices that Nicholas is looking more, and looking with intent. But Nicholas is too shy to mention it, and the others haven't decided what to do about it. They had enough trouble accepting the dynamic of four. So it takes a lot of dancing to admit that might want to bring in someone else.
The guys struggle through hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and lots of hot loving, all the while refining the relationships that make them what they are. Maybe they'll find that their bed, and their hearts, are big enough for five after all.
Will Okati is made of many things: imagination, coffee, stray cat hairs, daydreams, more coffee, kitchen experimentation, a passion for winter weather, a little more coffee, a whole lot of flowering plants and a lifelong love of storytelling.
I wouldn't say that this book is terrible. The guys are likable enough, though at 52% I still know very little about them. The sex is okay, though most of it is fade to black so far, which surprised me since I'm very familiar with some of Willa Okati's other stories which are through the roof blazing and this is about a five-some. But most of all, I'm rapidly losing interest because there's no coherent, forward plot. It honestly seems like someone snuck into the publisher's offices and had fun rearranging all the chapters. This should have been released as a book of short stories, all around this group of guys. The chapters are all separate and on their own are much better than as a whole.
An unexpectedly light and delightful read. At first I was a bit astounded - how in the *world* can a relationship of five men be a relationship at all?? It seemed to me that it would be more like an open handful of swingers than anything else. But the way Willa Okati writes it ... as usual, her take on things just blows my mind. None of the characters are openly described in any great detail; their physical appearance, their likes or dislikes, their predictable [or sometimes *un*predictable] reactions are left to flow throughout the story in a manner that gives us glimpses that, to me, seemed more delightful than frustrating. We come to know them each by how they describe each other - Aiden, the sweet one with the terrible migraines, Nicholas, the shy and quiet book-worm, Marcus, the strong and dominant one who has trouble communicating his feelings, Ryan, the heart of them all that keeps things together, and Baz, the wild one that keeps them all on their toes. Only in reading further do we pick up more personal things, like Marcus' penchant for getting into physical mishaps, Aiden's pagan spirituality, Nicholas' preference for shower sex and blueberry lube, Ryan's blue-tipped hair, and Baz's awkwardness about actually going on a *date* instead of just having a sexfest.
There *are* a few scenes of sex but honestly not as many as I had expected. More, it was about the men themselves, in pairs, all together, or alone, and their friends. Basically just moments captured from their lives - sweet moments, frustrating moments, hard and wonderful and everything in between. Very happy I picked this one up and read it, despite my original misgivings. <3
Ok, this is an interesting read, on some parts it even made me laugh out loud, (like in the shopping trip or the interview) But to my perfectionist virgo self, the relationships wasn't seamless, it was easy to see that the boys felt more strongly about certain person(s) in the menage a cinc, but at the same time it was believable, I had a little trouble with Ryan, Nicholas and Aidan, specially with Aidan and Nicholas, I don't know if it was me, but their voices seemed too much alike and hence it was a little hard feeling identified with them, Talking about Marcus and Bazz more than love, the relationship between them seems like convenience.
The writing style was good and was funny, but I would have loved to to more bone deep about the characters and how they related to one another.
While I liked the characters this books felt like the chapters had been flung up in the air and popped back together with a few slipping under the couch
I enjoyed the story which is told more as a series of vignettes than a continuous narrative. It felt like a sequel or continuation of another story. The first few pages had that 'summing up the story so far' feeling. I know there is a sequel but I will have to check for a prequel.