Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Cherish & Blessed
SERIES: Faith, Love & Devotion books 4 & 5
AUTHOR: Tere Michaels
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 200 pages
BLURB:
Cherish
After several years of happy coupledom, Matt and Evan can relax in the knowledge that their little family has survived the worst of it. The two older girls are away at college, the twins have yet to fully hit teen angst, Matt is doing well with his part time security consulting, and Evan is about to be promoted to captain—it seems like things are calm and bright.
Until they aren’t.
As the holidays approach, Evan and Matt get a shock no parent is ever prepared for: feisty Miranda, Evan’s eldest, has a new boyfriend, Kent, and they are talking marriage after just three months together. In fact, Miranda wants to bring him to Thanksgiving dinner—along with his parents, Blake and Cornelia.
Blessed
Lives are in transition as everyone gathers at the stunning Hamptons beach home of Daisy and Bennett to celebrate the christening of their new baby. Griffin and Jim—secretly growing tired of their rootless lifestyle—are in a rocky spot in their relationship. And as the godfather, Griffin finds himself yearning for something he’s sure Jim won’t be interested in.
Fatherhood.
Matt and Evan are looking to reconnect during the long weekend, as their respective careers pull them in separate directions. With less time spent together, Evan grows concerned about what will happen when the last two kids leave the nest.
1st Edition of Cherish published as an eBook by Loose Id LLC, November 2012.
REVIEW:
Ahhh… Matt and Evan and Griffin and Jim! I love revisiting these men!
Let’s talk about Matt and Evan for a minute…. We have followed the two of them through all sorts of drama, the death of Evan’s wife, their friendship, developing attraction, realization they are in love, an injury to Evan, and a heavy dose of family drama. Both men identified as straight, neither having felt any attraction to men before, until each other. Evan deals with work stress, family stress, and a resistance to labeling himself as gay, even as he is sleeping with a man. They get together, they break up, they reunite, and they move in together. Matt, a former cop, becomes a househusband, raising Evan’s kids, keeping the laundry going, and the shopping done. Evan, a current cop, works and stresses. They occasionally have some spectacular sex, waiting a long time to “go all the way”, which I really liked seeing. It is a big thing, especially for two men not sure of their sexual orientation, and I liked that it was a special moment when it finally happened in the last book. I LOVED their story in the first book, but I will say when we got back to them in the third book I was getting a little tired of Evan’s attitude….
Then we have Griffin and Jim. So Jim was a one night stand of Matt’s, his one experience with a man other than Evan, way back in the first book. Oddly, Jim and Matt become friends, much to Evan’s disgust. Jim is from Seattle, meets Griffin, a script writer and his best friend Daisy the actress, when they contact Jim and a guy named Ed, whose daughter was murdered. Griffin and Daisy want to do a movie about Ed and his family issues, Jim was the cop that worked on the case and became friends with Ed. With me so far?? Jim and Griffin have drama of their own, and fall in lurve…. They have their own book, the second in the series, then they meet up with Evan and Matt in the third book and we see them all interacting. And we see Evan be a dickhead.
Whew. On to this book! Cherish and Blessed are two novellas, nice little looks at what is happening with these two couples. Cherish is mostly about Evan’s oldest daughter and resident bitch, being a horrible person and bringing home her boyfriend and his parents for a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner. It was actually pretty painful to read, Miranda is a snot, she’s been pissed at her dad for years, even since her mother died. Then to make it worse, her straight dad falls in love with a man, and replaces her mother with him. I see her point, but damn! She’s a piece of work. What I did like about the story was that Evan and Matt are finally settled in. They own a house together, Matt is doing a bit of consulting work for Bennett, Daisy’s rich boyfriend, and three out of four kids are happy and stable. I liked the drama, I have never had THAT much drama at a holiday dinner, but enough that I could understand the stress and frustration Evan and Matt feel. There are some sweet moments, some sexy times between Matt and Evan, and a lot of drama with Miranda that just irritated the hell out of me. It’s a limited plot, but it was well done.
In Blessed, we get just a big group mess. Not a bad thing, but there isn’t much plot, it’s all about the relationship between all of these couples now. Let’s see… Daisy and Bennett have a baby, and everyone gets together to celebrate at their big-ass house. We see each couple deal with some issues, Evan and Matt are the oldest and most established of the group. Jim and Matt have a bit of drama over their nomadic life. Helena (forgot to mention her, she’s Evan’s work partner and has become a family friend) and Shane (Bennett’s best friend) are married and stable. The kids are there in the beginning, but aren’t there later, which is fine with me. I like them, but they can start to overwhelm the adults in these books. So Blessed is good, we see what each couple is doing, it’s really a chance to check in. It’s a short story, so it has little plot, with established couples, a little bit of drama, but mostly just happy times for all of them. I liked it just fine.
Both of these stories are good in the overall series, even though not a lot happens. All of the couple are settled, so there isn’t any internal couple drama. Mostly it’s family stuff with Evan’s kid, oh, and we get a bit of drama with Griffin’s family too, it was nice to see the relationship he has with his dad firsthand. These stories are not stand alone, they are part of a series, if you haven’t read the other books you’ll be lost in a minute. I personally love this whole series, even though at times I don’t like Evan as a character. If you haven’t read the series you should go grab the first one and give it a read. If you have read the others, you’ll like Cherish and Blessed just fine. I like Tere’s writing style, I like the characters (except when Evan is being an ass in the earlier books), I like the story arc of the series (although these two short stories don’t have huge amounts of plot), and I like the check in we get of all the couples in these two stories.
RATING:
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