Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Hard Act to Follow

SERIES:  Shooting Stars #3

AUTHOR:  K. Vale

PUBLISHER:  Liquid Silver Books

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Kyrie is an actor with a physical aversion to telling lies, a one-eyed cat, and horrible taste in men. His ex-brother-in-law and best friend, Greg, harbors a secret crush he can’t shake. After denying his feelings for Kyrie for too long, Greg finally gives in to desire one drunken night. Come the morning, the facts get twisted. Kyrie pretends he doesn’t remember a thing—a lie that eats him alive—and Greg can’t stop thinking about how he screwed up the best thing in his life.

Before they can clear the air, Kyrie follows his dreams to New York City, but could he also be running away?

A mistake from Kyrie’s past detonates their silence, and Greg is forced to confront the man he loves. Is their new truth strong enough to support a relationship, or are they doomed to crumble under old fears? Their friendship could evolve into something a million times stronger, but maybe Kyrie’s act is just too hard for Greg to follow.

REVIEW:  

Though we meet Kyrie and Greg in the second book of this series, I’m pretty sure this can be read as a standalone.  Now saying that, I think you should go read Double Takes not only because it is a good book, but it also sets up the dynamic between Kyrie and Greg really well for this story.

These two guys have a rather interesting history together. See Greg was once married to Kyrie’s sister, Jazz, but even after that marriage dissolved the two guys are still really good friends. In fact Kyrie seems to have made it his life’s mission to bring Jazz and Greg back together so that he doesn’t have to risk losing his best friend when Greg inevitable falls for some other woman.  Except there is this itty-bitty problem with Kyrie’s grand plan: Greg is in love with Kyrie, not Jazz (or any other woman, man, or martian).  Sadly Greg is about as good at showing this as Kyrie is at lying. Which is not at all.

So while Kyrie is running around trying to shove square brick thru a round hole, Greg is trying pretend he doesn’t want to shove his brick in an entirely different hole. (And we’ll leave that metaphor right there, shall we).  Then Kyrie kisses Greg, Greg fucks Kyrie, and then Kyrie lies his ass off about it when morning comes a callin’.  Which helps exactly no one.  Greg doesn’t want to lose the only family he has ever really cared about, and Kyrie doesn’t want to lose Greg, but inactions sometimes have a way of killing us more than actions ever could.  So now they have to deal with a faulty friendship, more lies than you could shake a stick at, and a lot of stupid decisions that might just come back to haunt them both.

I’ve only read the last two books in this series, but I have enjoyed both of them quite a bit. This one probably even more than I did Double Takes.  In fact when I was reading the second book in this series I really hoped that Greg and Kyrie got their own book, because they had such wonderful chemistry building up between them.  And, well, I do love GFY, and Greg is such a good example of it.  Though, luckily, we skip past all the ‘holy-shit-I’m-gay’ angst in this book.  Not that that is always a bad thing, but I liked how Greg knew himself here, even if it was a newer version of himself that he never realized was hanging around till he felt himself falling for his best friend.  Granted, he does his share of angsting over the whole ex-brother-in-law thing.

Though not nearly as much angsting as Kyrie does.  Dear lord in heaven, that boy can create nuclear winter out of a papercut.  Life would have been so much easier if he, at any point really, had just talked it out with Greg.  But for a boy who can tell no lies (at least off stage), Kyrie does seem to try to pull some big ones in this book.  And honestly, ‘we totally got drunk off our asses and blacked out what was possibly the best sex in our entire lives and I can still feel you in my ass but that totally didn’t happen so just forget about it’ is a pretty big lie to swallow.  Especially when there is still going to be prophylactic evidence hanging around the house.  But while I would have loved to smack Kyrie at several points in this book, I still really enjoyed his stupid blundering.

And the sex…omg. The thong and red leather books nearly put me in a very happy coma, but the chemistry these two have even when they are totally not doing it, just made the story fly by.  I loved it so much.

This was a great story, and I loved the MCs, loved the Li family, and loved Kyrie’s friend Liv.  This was just so very well put together, and while there were moments of tension and downright stupidly-induced angst, I found that I liked that too.  I had trouble putting this book down, even when I realized that I was starting to see the sunrise from the wrong end. And now I am even more convinced that I need to pick up the first book in this series.  I hope Vale sees fit to give us more in series, because they just keep getting better.

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BUY LINKS:

Liquid Silver

Amazon

ARe