Bryan Colby doesn’t like Valentine’s Day. Despite being told by his close friends that he’s silly to fester over something that happened five years ago, he just can’t get excited as yet another Valentine’s Day approaches.
Bryan, a rising star at the local real estate office, prefers to work instead, but is assaulted while showing a vacant property. In the ambulance, he meets Officer Ben Collins and Bryan wastes no time in letting Ben know he finds him attractive and would like to get better acquainted with him, in every possible way.
At first wary of Bryan’s flirty, come-hither attitude, Ben eventually warms to Bryan’s charm, and agrees to meet him for a coffee. But circumstances outside their control change that date to a much more sensual meeting.
After all, it is Valentine’s Day week, and romance is most definitely in the air…
Reader advisory: This book contains references to parental abandonment. There are scenes involving mugging/assault, and armed robbery with hostage-taking. This book also includes a practical joke of a sexual nature.
I love holiday stories, I really don’t care which holiday or in what context, for whatever reason they are my weakness and I’ll always pick one up to read when I’m in a rut. I was excited to see that there was a bundle of Valentine’s stories coming out and I snatched all of them, and I’m so glad I did. Valentine’s stories seem to lean toward having men who have been burned in the past and who isn’t a sucker for hard-won-love?
Valentine’s Day Blues is just that and it wasn’t just one half of the future couple who was anti-Valentine’s and anti-romance in general, both Bryan and Ben were NOT looking for love when they met. Their meeting was quite unfortunate really, Bryan is the victim of a crime and Ben is the responding officer. There was definite chemistry and Bryan was the one driving the bus with moving the flirtation forward. While he may have come off as a little much here and there, it was obvious Ben was into him too, so it was more sweet than anything else.
There was much to like about this Valenine’s Day novella, the characters are charming in their own ways, the beginning of their relarionship is unique and they had the kind of connection that is very “meant to be” and “right person, right time”, you know those kind, everything just clicks. So, I rooted for them from the beginning and I liked how Bryan was so supportive for Ben considering his career in law enforcement, etc.
I did struggle with a few bits though. I got a bit of emotional whiplash when the two of them got physical. Ben ran hot and cold and it was pretty off putting. I mean, I get it, he’s a cop, he’s not out at work and he’s getting involved with the victim of a crime. But, my dude, in the span of a few pages they went from making out, to cold shoulder, to arguing to rimming. I need more pages in between those things to digest what the hell just happened. The other problem I had was with the practical joke that was played on Bryan by his sister and friends. It was terrible, it was shitty and it wasn’t funny. I don’t blame Bryan for being bitter and pissed off. I would be and I would be forever. Bryan is obviously a better man than I.
Basically, if some of the extremes were dialled back from 11 to say, a 5 or 6, it would have all worked better for me, especially for a novella length story. There isn’t enough page time to absorb all the emotional swings and resolve them in a satisfactory way, but that is just me and how I process contemporary stories. I can’t help but want my drama and realism to balance with story length, too much drama is just too distracting from the overall story. That doesn’t mean that other readers won’t love the pace and the passion, because Valentine’s Day Blues definitely has that.
The resolution and the epilogue were great, especially that epilogue. I totally bought into an HEA for these guys and their future looks to be much more chill than their beginning. They both deserve it and I was really happy with how their Valentine’s Day evolved for them.
**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**
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