REVIEWED by Jen B.

TITLE: The Devil Inside

AUTHOR: Nicky James

PUBLISHER: Nicky James

LENGTH: 294 Pages

RELEASE DATE: May 26, 2020

BLURB:

Their love was innocent and pure…
Until they were forced to believe differently.
Until they were brutally schooled on the “right” way to love.

Oakland is not gay.
Jameson is not gay.

Being gay is wrong. It is immoral. It is a sickness they must fight. It is the devil inside that needs to be purged.

At least that’s what they’ve been conditioned to believe.

They’ve spent years trudging through the wreckage left behind after eight months in conversion therapy as teenagers.

When their lives collide again fifteen years later, the denial they’ve lived with for years gets harder and harder to fight.

They loved each other once. Can two broken men find a way to love each other again?

**Please heed trigger warnings. Use Look Inside feature before purchasing to view them**

REVIEW:

Wow, this was another winner for me from Nicky James! She is on a roll and pumping out great story after great story. This one is the story of two guys who were best friends, turned lovers when they discovered each other as teenagers. When they were caught, their parents sent them both to conversion “therapy” to cure them of their sinful ways. Oakland walked away from his parents; Jameson did not.

Fast forward about 15 years or so, and Oakland is coming to grips that he was not, in fact, cured. It is getting harder and harder to purge the thoughts, harder and harder to deal with his body not working correctly with his wife, and realizing the pills and alcohol are not as effective at numbing it all. He decides to face the music and agrees to attend group therapy.

Jameson is a little worse off than Oakland in that he is fighting his religious beliefs and thinks he is being punished by God for still having the urges. When those urges are too much to bear, he looks for anonymous hookups, the rougher, the better. He wants it to hurt as self punishment, and though the urge is satisfied, the guilt and shame immediately surface. He deals with that by cutting. He keeps up the façade with his parents, going to church and family dinners, talking about girlfriends that don’t exist. As he and Oak take steps towards healing, they must overcome a lot of negative feelings. Jameson cares for and is attracted to Oak, but he hates himself for feeling that way.

Jameson and Oakland are reunited when they both attend the same group therapy. It doesn’t go very well. The attraction is still there, but they are both extremely screwed up. Oak wants to help Jameson, but he has big problems of his own he is dealing with and realizes quickly that until some of those issues are dealt with, they are basically toxic together. At least too much so to be each other’s rock. Thankfully, Oak has a friend in his wife/ex-wife, and Jameson has an old lady friend who really cares and makes a difference in his life.

This is an extremely heartbreaking story. It really shows the aftermath of conversion camps and how badly this practice can harm kids all the way through their adult lives. It hints at the horrendous methods used to try and fix the kids, but it spares you from the actual details. Suffice to say, you get the picture with how these guys think and are dealing with things. My heart broke for them, and I cheered them on to break free and find peace with themselves. Gerry was a spitfire and it was truly her love and acceptance that saved Jameson. I would have liked to have seen the confrontation with Jameson’s parents play out a bit more than it did, but it was probably for the best that it didn’t.

I love stories that draw me in and keep me turning pages through the night and this one fit that bill. Highly recommend.

RATING:

BUY LINK:

Amazon