I received When I’m Lost through the Don’t Buy My Love program for an honest and unbiased review. It is the third book in the Mile High Romance series. It’s told in first person through the eyes of Michael, a twenty-year-old who’s come to town to apologize for a grievous wrong he committed, and Seb, who is a bartender.
3.5



Let me first say before I start my review, that the cover with the white banding and teal writing, is lovely. Very nice.

This book can be read as a stand-alone, but I think that a reader will get more out of it if the first two books are read. The reason I say that is because the story starts at an intense moment as Michael, or Mike as he likes to be called, is getting up the nerve to speak to Jamie from Book 2, and apologize for what he did. The intensity of the moment feels like we walk into the middle of the scene if this book is read as a stand-alone. So read the other two books first is my suggestion, even though you can understand this story without reading the other two first.

When we meet Michael he is homeless having traveled around making apologies to the men he wronged. The last person he has to apologize to is Jamie, because Jamie would be the hardest. Luckily Jamie is more forgiving than Mike ever expected. Jamie and his boyfriend Reed, help Mike get a job training dogs with their friend Shane. Mike ends up making friends with Jamie and Reed’s friends, and with Seb, Jamie’s roommate.

Seb is a bartender and I have to reveal one thing about him because his profession doesn’t work for me. Seb doesn’t drink anymore because he becomes an aggressive drunk. That’s one of the reasons he broke up with his boyfriend, Kyle, because he didn’t want to beat Kyle up again. What is unbelievable to me is that Seb is a bartender. It’s my understanding that alcoholics shouldn’t be around the temptation of alcohol. I find it surprising the author had him working at a bar. I suppose one could say that technically Seb isn’t an alcoholic because the author didn’t portray him as one, only as someone who drank too much at times and then got aggressive. To me that still sounds like a bartender job is the wrong job for him. It’s too much temptation. The other thing about Seb that didn’t work for me is the explanation Seb gave that he made himself be attracted only to men as strong and as big as him because of what happened with Kyle, who was a twink. You’ll have to read the story to understand. But how does one make themselves like a certain type of person? If you’re attracted to another type, then I don’t see how a person can stop being attracted to that type and “make” themselves like another type. So that line of reasoning didn’t work for me either.

Both Mike and Seb sounded different during the dialogue scenes, although Mike sounded a lot older than a twenty-year-old. Also towards the end of the book, he started to sound more like a female. I didn’t notice that as much in the beginning. I think the monologue scenes need work because the internal thoughts of both MCs sounded an awful lot alike. Also Mike was often described as acting ‘shy’ which was counter to what Mike said about himself as being rebellious and manipulative. I didn’t buy the ‘shy’ description and found it made Mike’s character more unbelievable. I think if he was portrayed as restrained and cautious because he was afraid of making mistakes or harming anyone again I would have found the character consistency for Mike more realistic.

About the last quarter of the book appeared to have more ‘spag’ errors than the first three-quarters. I don’t know if it was because the book was rushed for a publishing time limit, but it needs to be looked over.

It sounds like I didn’t find much I liked about this story, which isn’t true. I’ve only read one other book by this author, but I remember that I like her plots. They don’t seem to follow the same formula as most of the MM books out there which I like. I also like that the big scene that is supposed to happen at the end of every story, per the supposed ‘writing rules,’ wasn’t that large a scene in this book. I don’t need a big scene to make a story enjoyable, because really, life isn’t like that all the time.

There were a couple of subplots that I felt were left dangling and either need to be fixed in a future edition or addressed in a follow up book. Those subplots had to do with the young man, Jeff Nielson, who had what appeared to be a crush on Seb at the bar. We never found out what happened to him after Seb and Mike get together. The other issue was the incident with Kyle in the restaurant. That ended on a disturbing cliffhanger. It bothered me that the author didn't tell what happened to Kyle. I felt cheated and not quite angry, but close because the author didn't resolve that 'story'. I want to know what happens. I would’ve even liked it if for just one little scene, Seb stopped Kyle at some point and said to him. “I know we don’t speak any more, but if you ever need help, a place to stay, anything, I’ll help. No questions. I’m at the same number.” It would’ve been nice to have seen some token of care from Seb for Kyle in the story, but we didn’t get it.

Anyway despite things I thought could’ve been written better or more consistently, I enjoyed the story and will likely read the next book in this series if there is a next book, especially if we find out what happens to Kyle and Jeff. I plan on going back and reading books one and two to get a better sense of the series as a whole. When I’m Lost is a fast, easy read and I give it 3 Stars






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I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This is book 3 in the Mile High Romance series, and I did not read the others before it. (I do have the first one, but I didn't have time to read the others before having to get this read.) While I hear that these characters (and some of the others in this book) are all from the first 2, I didn't feel lost without the information. I do think that reading book 2 specifically (Jamie's story) would have shed a bit more information on Michael and why he needed to come crawling back with apologies, I got the basic story worked out without reading it.

In this book, Michael travels to Denver to apologize to Jamie for troubles he caused 4-5 years prior. Michael had a huge change of heart (or should I say was able to get away from his parents), and felt horrible about all that happened in the past. He is homeless and just trying to make amends. Jamie is very forgiving and sees that Michael needs help. He quickly offers him a place to stay and gets him in touch with a job. I think that in some ways it was shocking that Jamie was so quick to forgive, but I'm guessing his solid relationship with Reed helped with that. I might understand this part better with book 2, but again, I got the feeling without reading it.

Sebastian is Jamie's roommate. He is 10 years older than Michael and tries hard not to be attracted to him because of his past and his age, but they end up becoming friends and eventually give into their attraction. Once they finally got together, their relationship seemed very easy and progressed rather seemlessly. It was nice that they didn't jump right into it all. One thing I would have liked is to know a little more about Seb and Mike's history. What happened with his parents causing him to leave? He talked about feeling bad and wanting to apologize, but it felt like there was something bigger behind it. With Seb, he talked about abuse and anger issues, but it was glossed over a little. I would've like to know how the guys worked through that (if they had to).

I'm looking forward to reading Kyle's story. I felt so bad for him in this book. ( )