Aidan Ross, artist extraordinaire meets Rick Mahoney when the man comes for an interview, except he is at the wrong one. Aidan wants him to be the inspiration for his next paintings so badly that he makes a tempting offer. But soon he realizes that he has a decision to make. Aidan can’t be certain whether it's only the artist in him who is allured by Rick’s charming looks or if there is more than that.
When an unexpected job proposal is made, Rick has his own concerns, the main one being the fact he is in a wheelchair. Why would a renowned artist like Adonis want to paint him? But he is in dire need of a job and he finds it hard to say no to a handsome man like Aidan Ross.
Art by Adonis is a journey of two men, imperfect in their own way yet so perfect for each other.
I loved the blurb and the premise for this story, but unfortunately the execution didn’t really work for me.
Aiden Ross irritated me from the beginning and never really redeemed himself even though I kept wanting him to and I did grow to believe he loved Rick in his way. He’s an artist extraordinaire apparently and he definitely knows it. His arrogance and presumptions about what the world owes him was a little much.
It would have worked better if he had progressed more as the story did. I think my issue was there wasn’t enough buildup, Aiden flirted hardcore and had pretty intense thoughts about Rick right away. It was a foregone conclusion that Rick would be interested as well, but Rick hadn’t been fleshed out at all to that point and so I didn’t get invested in them like I wanted to. The conversations were rather stilted and abrupt. They both said very personal things and had these deep insights into one another after only having conversations that were a few paragraphs long. They went from strangers to over-sharers way too fast. I need the conversation, the getting to know you piece of a new relationship is integral to buying into the potential HEA for me.
Aiden has some serious douchey friends and while that was incredibly annoying and they were terribly offensive, I do believe Aiden was better than that, I just wanted him to be better . . . more. There were so many ableist comments, moments and ideas that only would have “worked” in the story if they were born of ignorance and then the characters grew into decent humans, it was an opportunity missed.
Rick’s character has a ton of potential and could be amazing with some editing. Much like the story overall. The structure is there, but I needed more focus on the relationship potential. There was family drama that threw some WTAF in there that had no place in their story overall, it took away from the overall MC development. These guys deserved a character driven story and all the focus, they had so much potential. Rick had a lot of heart and I would have loved to read more about he and Aiden’s developing as a couple and individually.
I was hoping for a story of two men who have a meet-cute and then learn how to live and love together regardless of their situations. Like I said, the bones for that were there but the potential got lost in the chaos of external drama and arrogance. A perfect HEA would have gone a long way for these two, but the ending was so abrupt I thought maybe I missed something, but nope it was over and I was bummed. Even though the story didn’t work for me, I still wanted Aiden and Rick to get their HEA. They really made each other happy, and I was all good with that. But just when I thought I was going to read a little vignette of sappy happy it ended and I felt like I was left hanging.
**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**
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