Reviewed by Elizabetta

TITLE: Home the Hard Way

AUTHOR: ZA Maxfield

PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing

LENGTH: 350 pages

BLURB:

Dare Buckley has come home—or at least, he’s come back to Palladian, the small town he left as a teenager. After a major lapse in judgment forced him to resign from the Seattle PD, Palladian is the only place that’ll hire him. There’s one benefit to hitting rock bottom, though: the chance to investigate the mystery of his father’s suicide.

 

Dare also gets to reacquaint himself with Finn Fowler, whose childhood hero worship ended in uncomfortable silence when Dare moved away. But Finn isn’t the same little kid Dare once protected. He’s grown into an attractive, enigmatic stranger who neither wants nor needs what Dare has to offer.

 

In fact, Dare soon realizes that Finn’s keeping secrets—his own and the town’s. And he doesn’t seem to care that Dare needs answers. The atmosphere in Palladian, like its namesake river, appears placid, but dark currents churn underneath. When danger closes in, Dare must pit his ingenuity against his heart, and find his way home the hard way.

 

REVIEW:

 

Oh, I could read way more of these two guys. In this rainy, murky small town.

 

This is so delicious in how it sucks you in, revolving around a slow-burn, latent attraction between its two main characters that evolves from childhood hero-worship to very adult games. As a murder mystery unfolds around them. Maxfield has done this before… taken two troubled men and brought them together through conflict and dysfunction, shown them working through the hard shell of hurt and pain (The Long Way Home comes to immediate mind).

 

You know there is a world of hurt in Finn. He was that waifish, delicate boy who was always being bullied in school. Didn’t know who his father was and his mother was the town slut. He was such a target for abuse. Except Finn had a loving aunt who came to his rescue. And, in Dare Buckley, his own, personal superman. Dare was the popular jock, buffed and super confident, and going places. He was always there for Finn, championing and protecting him. Dare had the perfect makings for a cop.

 

But Home the Hard Way really does beg the question: ‘Can you go home again?’ Things never remain as we left them. Everything changes.

 

Fast forward, and this super cop returns home in disgrace for royally fucking up on the job in the big city. Back home to small town crime and recrimination. Except… this small town has its share of secrets, lies and murder, with the dead bodies all leading back to Finn. Finn, who’s grown into an enigmatic hottie, one minute lovingly caring for his dying aunt, the next in tight pants, leather jacket and eyeliner, trolling for a hook-up. And always in Dare’s line of sight. They can’t take their eyes off each other.

 

So delicious, this youthful hero-worship turned into adult slow-burn ache.

 

“You are my beginning and my end. You are my journey and my destination.”

 

Except… it’s what lies beneath Finn’s protective shell that wakes Dare up. All manner of kinky power dynamics start to light up the page. Throw in that small-town murder mystery with Finn as the target, and things really heat up.

 

This unwinds in such a smooth, easy way. Wonderful writing, but that’s no surprise from Maxfield. I’m a long-time fan. Here, it’s the twists and turns and the hidden peccadillos (pecking away) that really make this special. It’s not clean fun. The two leads are damaged and live in that gray area that is the meat of great romance novels. I had to learn to love Dare, to figure him out; he has such a hard time figuring himself out. But I love Finn, the underdog, victimized in childhood, he refuses to be a victim. He lights up a scene whenever he comes on, it’s easy to see his allure for Dare. I like how they learn to accept each other for who they are.

 

While this is a well-developed story— and I did get sucked into the small town dysfunction, all the secrets that come percolating up, and the second chance at love— I did have trouble with a few elements that became more obvious towards the end of the story. I would have liked some discussion about Finn’s entry into the BDSM life. He’s still very young, yet shows a depth of experience he couldn’t have learned quickly or at home, and we don’t get enough of his inner landscape to figure it out. It also felt like the story ended at the beginning, or the second beginning. I want way more of Finn and Dare, need to see how they might make it all work out in their stuffy hometown. I need to see if Finn can actually be all that Dare wants him to be. (SPOILER) And then, there is a central character, Bill Fraser, who is left rather hanging at the end, too. How will he fit into the HFN? (end spoiler) Even though these issues bring the score down a bit, I’d still recommend this as a very entertaining read.

 

 

RATING: 

 

BUY LINKS: 

Riptide Publishing

Amazon