Australian cricketer Nat Seddon is Intelligent, confident & one of the world’s best bowlers. He’s openly gay, but keeps his private life to himself. On the last day of his team’s “Ashes” tour of England, he meets Scott Alverley, England’s promising new batsman. Nat tries not to be attracted to Scott, but he can’t help finding the privileged young man handsome and endearing. Nat is tempted by a little end of tour fun and rather going home to bask on a beach, he spends a wet week in the north of England with Scott. Try as he might to resist, he can’t help falling hopelessly in love.
Thus starts this rather sweet romance novel about the love between two professional sports men from different countries but with the same taste in just about everything else. The book is firmly from the Mills and Boon school of romantic stories but that’s no heavy criticism, lots of folk like some sweet romance to escape into. The story follows the development of the relationship between these two competitive men with taste, a little slightly steamy sensual sex and plenty of emotionally relevant narrative. The difficulties of having a long distance relationship are explored with a knowing tender honestly and these pressures are successfully realized within the story. These are educated men, knowing what they want out of life and it’s interesting to see the author choose a pair of traditional hetro protagonist characters for this most tender of gay love stories.
There’s the usual trials and pitfalls, some mean and nasty folk who try and stop these boys reaching their happy ever after goal (should that be innings?) and some serious heart searching and the odd teasy heart stopping moment which is not quite what it seems. It’s warm and cozy and not in the slightest bit threatening and I can imagine a few men who would rather enjoy this optimistic story of modern gay love. The author has certainly done their research regarding the cricketing world and it feels authentic enough although my own experience of the cricketing world is a little more scuffed than this story, however moving on…
The book takes a very soft focused glance at the difficulties of being an out and open sportsman in the modern world; as these two men are successful, rich, fit, famous and white it’s not too much of a bother for them……but then I don’t think that’s the point of this book. If you like a bit of boy meets boy who then falls in love, tenderly explores and commits to that love, deals with the changes that life throws at them, hits a rough and rocky patch, sails through it on the winds of deeply caring love and then finds happiness in the arms of their desired paramour, then this is just the right book for you.
If you’d rather a grittier, miserable version of the above, ending in tears, join me in the bar in ten. I’ve been trying very hard to keep my cynical tone out of this review (a young, super-fit, handsome, successful sportsman who’s a virgin…… cough) as this is not the usual type of book I would choose to read, but to be honest on the wet weekend when I read it, curled up with a hot cup of tea, spluttering with the flu, the rain lashing on the windows and my boyfriend far away it was rather the perfect accompaniment. A bit like watching back to back episodes of ‘Murder she Wrote’ when you’re hung-over, comforting, warm and not too challenging, and best not to look to deep into such homely & snug comforts.
I’m ashamed to say I rather enjoyed it, tee hee.
A good book for the romantic in your life or even someone who fancies a change from the normal rough, hard edged, uncaring macho erotic fiction that masquerades as Gay romance fiction these days.
You can visit the authors website for more information.
Out now £5.99
Paper back but also available in all e-formats.
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