I'm really, really glad I read the two books out of order. If I hadn't, I'm not sure I could have brought myself to have ever read the second book. I hated the stress and angst in this one...and would have been on edge the entire time wondering if all this turmoil would ever be resolved before the book ended. I loved Kinsey and Benoni, especially Benoni. Kinsey is 22 years older than Benoni and Benoni is Kinsey's son's best friend. Fate and good common sense say they should never be a good fit, and yet...they are. Nora Phoenix never lets her readers down. We have Kinsey who is an addict from drugs taken from an injury. He's a former ER doctor, only recently out as gay and divorced. He struggles a lot with his extremist religious up bringing, which was way over the top infuriating, judgmental and unforgiving on his parents and his grandfather's part. The poor man was beyond helpless trying to straighten out a life that never needed straightening out to begin with. He was a sad, awkward, self-deprecating, virgin that just needed someone to tell him that his God loved him no matter what the hypocrites pushed down his young throat. From the start I was 100% committed to Kinsey and to their future happiness. Kinsey and Benoni's romance and friendship will touch your heart! ( )

This was fine. The author starts this book by discussing how the issues discussed in this book -- religious abuse, homophobia, addiction -- are somewhat personal to her. I think these are issues that can be really interesting when used in a romance novel. However, in this book the dialogue seemed so stilted that it felt like reading a PSA rather than a story.

One of the things that made this book less enjoyable to me was the monologues that characters would go on exploring some of the difficult issues in the book. They felt very little like conversations and felt a lot like just repetition of discussions the author had seen elsewhere. There are ways that people actually talk about issues like religious homophobia and drug abuse and these characters don't sound like that. Stuff like a character saying "I hate the term homophobia, it's not a fear, it a hatred" made me feel like I had been transported back in time to 2012. It just felt very unnatural all the way through.

The characters were mostly fine. I liked Benoni and Kinsey well enough, Kinsey more than Benoni though. It did seem like their relationship did develop naturally, though this is only the first half of the story. I also liked some of the side characters. Kinsey's relationship with his family is very interesting. We only really hear from his son Johnathan in this book and I would have liked to have heard from his wife and daughter as well but it is an interesting plot thread.

There were also side characters I didn't like, such as Leif. Leif is kind of crucial to the plot because he receives domestic discipline from Benoni even though they're just roommates and that's how Kinsey figures out he might like that. He also shoots porn for OnlyFans, which could be interesting but isn't discussed that much. I found Leif to be very frustrating. His submission to Benoni felt less like something that would help him grow out of bad habit, which is how it's described in the book, and more like learned helplessness. For instance, Leif often doesn't eat and when he does that, Benoni will spank him. Benoni tells him he doesn't have to be bad to get spanked and Leif says he has to be bad or it won't be the same sense of release. If that's true, the spanking is enforcing the bad behavior, not helping Leif grow. If this really was about growth, this plot needed to be reworked.

There were a couple of other stray things that bothered me. Kinsey is having to learn a lot about gay culture because he's just now embracing that side of him and some things that were brought up as a result of that were just weird to me. For instance, when getting coffee with another gay man, Frank, Frank starts discussing the porn Leif shoots and Kinsey thinks this...

"Ah, right. I’m not used to being so open about watching porn, but I guess that, too, is normal among gay men."

and yeah no. I worked at a theatre specifically centered around LGBT+ people are about a yeah and a half and there were plenty of gay men there. They weren't just talking about the porn they were watching all the time because that would be weird, just like it would be weird if any other group did that. It's weird to imply that discussing porn habits are something common among gay men in particular. There's just some stuff like this that makes it feel like the author doesn't 100% know what's up with gay culture. Also during the same conversation, Frank says he is HIV+ but he talks medicine that keeps his viral load undetectable. Kinsey goes ahead and tells him that means he can't transmit the virus, which like, I'm pretty sure Frank would know that, Honestly, that whole section was weird.

As I said I did like some of the characters and the writing isn't bad. It is also clear that the author did research on the opioid crisis and as far as I can tell, she doesn't get anything wrong there. However, this story just did not work for me. Everything felt so unnatural and like the author was using the dialogue solely to get her point across instead of using it to further the relationships between the characters. This book leaves off basically in the middle of the story but honestly, I'm not super compelled to pick up the sequel. Clearly, a lot of people love this book, and that's great! It just didn't quite hit the right notes for me. ( )