REVIEWED by Donna
TITLE: Wood, Screws & Nails
AUTHOR: Piper Vaughn & Kade Boehme
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 176 Pages
BLURB:
Aaron Costa’s summer was all planned. Despite having to remodel the family lake house, it would be a vacation of sorts, and he had every intention of enjoying it—until the friend who was supposed to help him got injured and left him in a lurch. He decides to take the opportunity to bond with his son and hires Julian and his roommate, Malachi, to assist.
As a broke college student, Malachi could use the money, and spending the summer with Aaron for eye candy sounds like a dream. “Look but don’t touch” becomes his motto. But when Julian starts flaking on his responsibilities and Malachi and Aaron are forced to spend long hours alone together, their mutual attraction is impossible to resist.
Aaron can’t fight the temptation sexy Malachi presents. But more than their age difference stands in their way, not the least of which is Aaron’s semi-closeted status and the fact that he’s never openly discussed his sexuality with his son. He has no idea how Julian will react when he learns his father is not only gay, he’s also dating his best friend.
REVIEW:
A sixteen year age gap and one MC is the father of the other MCs best friend?! Awww, did Piper Vaughn and Kade Boehme write a book just for me? Because I may have squeed a little over the blurb. Just a small, dignified squee of course, an adult squee.
This story begins with 37 year old Aaron receiving the bad news that his friend can no longer spend the holidays helping him fix up his parents holiday home so it can be put up for sale. Aaron decides it’s a perfect opportunity to spend some time with his son, Julian, and offers him a job working on the house for the summer. Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, Julian doesn’t arrive alone.
Malachi is Julian’s best friend and roommate at college. Nowhere near as well off as Julian, he jumps at the chance of a well paying job despite the fact he’s always been attracted to his best friend’s father.
To be honest, a couple of things about this story disappointed me, the first being that both main characters are already madly, though secretly, attracted to each other before the story even begins. Obviously neither of them believes anything will happen between them, given their respective relationships to Julian. And there’s also the small problem that, while not exactly closeted, Aaron has never let his family know that he’s gay.
It should have been an absolutely awkward, however did they manage it, complicated hookup but the story kept jumping forward a couple of days or a week at a time until both men are already aware that the other is attracted. I felt like that was part of the story I really wanted to read. Everybody knows how exciting it is to discover somebody you’re attracted to feels the same way and that’s in real life. These men finding out that the rather inappropriate someone they’ve been crazily lusting over for years returns the feeling, well, I felt a bit let down that I didn’t to get to experience that moment of realization with them.
But aside from that complaint, I loved this book, and the chemistry between these two men…holy crap! Be prepared for some smexy sexy times. And! I’m so excited to share that I finally get to slap a “cock docking” tag on one of my reviews, which I’ve been hanging out to do ever since I saw it on our list of suggested tags and I had to Google just what it was. It’s possible that when I read that scene and discovered just what was going on I was even more excited than the characters that were participating. Ok, no, that’s an exaggeration because trust me, that scene is ridiculously hot and those men are plenty excited. If you don’t know what cock docking is well, I guess you’ll just have to read this book to discover it. Or, you could Google it like I did, but why do that when this book provides so delicious an example.
Of course, the trouble with all this explosive passion is you just know that eventually Julian is going to catch them. And you also know that it won’t be pretty when he does because Julian is a damn whiny sook who annoyed the hell out of me all through the story. But that was ok. It helps to highlight just how mature Malachi is considering he’s only 21 and although I love a nice big age gap sometimes a relationship between two people so many years apart can appear impossible to maintain long term.
The ending…well, truthfully there is absolutely nothing wrong with it except it isn’t HEA enough for my demanding preferences. It’s a solid HFN and I think these guys could still find themselves with enough relationship issues that a sequel wouldn’t be out of the question. Or at least I’d like one.
So anybody who loves a rather low angst, sexy read should enjoy this book and anybody, like me, who loves stories with a big age difference may possibly swoon.
RATING: 
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