Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: First Time Brad & Sebastian
SERIES: First Time Series
AUTHOR: E.M. Rose
PUBLISHER: Spunk Books
LENGTH: 56 Pages
BLURB:
Brad Parker is twenty-six, handsome and successful. He has a great job and a beautiful girlfriend, Melissa Fairfield. They’ve been dating nearly four months and now Melissa wants to take Brad home to meet her parents.
Sebastian Fairfield is captivated the moment he sees his sister’s gorgeous boyfriend. He wants Brad for himself, but there’s a problem… Brad isn’t gay, and he’s dating his sister.
REVIEW:
Brad has been dating his girlfriend Melissa for about four months and the time has come to meet her family. As soon as they arrive they’re greeted by her mother, her father and her brother Sebastian. Despite Brad’s nerves he’s pretty sure everything is going well. Unlike Melissa, who is not the nicest person, her family is very friendly, although Sebastian comes across as a little weird. A bit too friendly and with a complete disregard for personal boundaries. Somehow, Brad finds himself alone in the pool with Sebastian and Seb doesn’t waste any time in first stealing Brad’s shorts and then stealing a kiss. Although Brad pushes Sebastian away the way his body reacted to the other man’s kiss is all he can think about and leaves poor, certain-he’s-straight Brad with a lot of confusing questions that he’s unsure if he really wants answered.
I think the best thing the author did was focus the story on Brad coming to terms with his attraction to Sebastian. Brad isn’t homophobic, he doesn’t care if somebody is gay or straight, except when that that gay somebody is him. Now I can’t claim to know how it would feel to suddenly realize you might be gay, or even bi-sexual, but the range of emotions and the confusion Brad deals with totally rang true to me.
He’d started consciously paying more attention to his co-workers, especially the guys, trying to determine if he was suddenly seeing them in a way he never had before. But they just looked like regular guys to him and they didn’t interest him any more than they ever had. It was a small relief. He obviously wasn’t completely gay. Was it possible to be selectively gay? Maybe he was bi-sexual?
The story is told entirely from Brad’s point of view and while that can sometimes seem like the wrong choice it worked well for this book, due largely to the way the focus was on Brad’s confusion, as I mentioned previously. That isn’t to say this shouldn’t be classified as a romance and there is a sex scene between the two men right at the end of the book but there’s no insta-love or a HEA forced into so few pages. Don’t worry, we do get a HFN but it’s more realistic than fairytale.
There are a few things that didn’t really work in my opinion. Brad’s character came through clearly and I was happy to learn less about Sebastian, he wasn’t the conflicted one, but I would have liked a bit of explanation about why he so aggressively pursued his sister’s boyfriend. It didn’t leave me with the best impression of what sort of person he was.
Melissa was my biggest problem. From the start she’s portrayed as a cold bitch, to the point that I couldn’t comprehend why Brad would want to date her in the first place. Near the beginning Brad has a thought that he’s dated Melissa for four months but doesn’t really know anything about her. Later, near the end, he hopes that he can remain friendly with Melissa because they were good friends. Didn’t really make sense. And then, Melissa’s actions made it all too easy for her and Brad to break up and for Brad and Sebastian to get together. I understand that the “bitchy girlfriend” makes it easier to sympathize with the men in the story but I think Melissa went a touch over the top of acceptable and slid into blatant stereotype.
Also, the ending felt a bit unfinished. I would have liked to see how Sebastian’s family reacted to meeting Brad as Sebastian’s boyfriend so soon after meeting him as Melissa’s boyfriend.
I’ll mention, as briefly as possible, that there isn’t anything I’d tag as cheating in this story. Brad doesn’t respond to any of Sebastian’s advances until he’s sorted things out with Melissa and there is also no m/f sex going on. Sorry to anybody to considers that spoilers but from what I gather quite a few readers avoid reading books that may include those two things so I thought it was worth stating that clearly.
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting too much from this story. Only fifty six pages long, written by a new to me author and published by a publishing company that I’d never heard of. Turns out, I may have been a little too quick to judge. This book actually pleasantly surprised me and I’m glad I took the time to read it.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: