Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:      Getting it Right

SERIES:        Restoration #1

AUTHOR:     A.M. Arthur

PUBLISHER:  Carina Press

LENGTH:     245 Pages

BLURB:

Detective Nathan Wolf might just be a junior detective, but he tackles every case with the passion that he lacks in his personal life. A series of failed relationships with women has left him still single at thirty-four—because he’s too scared to admit to his longtime crush on his best friend James.

Dr. James Taggert likes to keep his profession as a psychiatrist separate from his party-animal persona. Known around the gay clubs as Tag, he’s the guy who screws them, leaves them, and never looks back. But James’s drinking is getting heavier, and when bad memories from the past resurface, he’s close to becoming the worst version of himself.

After a drunken blackout ends in a hot and heavy make-out session with his very straight best friend, James has no memory of the steamy affair. But Nathan isn’t sorry for the kisses that James can’t remember. Nathan finally musters the courage to tell James how he really feels, but a life-altering event might force them apart before they can ever be together.

REVIEW:

I would be remiss if I didn’t start this review by saying that it felt a little awkward at first sidestepping and rewinding from the story in the author’s Belonging Series. When we meet Tag again, those of us who have read the Belonging books, know him both as a party animal, but also as the doctor who has been treating Romy for the issues related to his abuse by Carlos. Now, we’ve moved back in time a little, basically to the point where Ezra and Tag had their “misunderstanding” in the bathroom at the Pot of Gold.

This time though, we’re seeing it from the viewpoint of Dr. James Taggert (known as Tag at the bars). To his close friends he is known as James. To his best friend, Nathan, he is known as Jay. Regardless of what name he is known by, James deserved his own story, and I’m glad he got one!

After James has his drunken aggressive fumble incident (as Tag) with Ezra in the bathroom at the Pot of Gold, he feels horrible, because he thinks he is no better than the person who raped his sister years before, leading to her suicide. How could he have fallen so low?

He goes over to his best friend Nathan’s house. Nathan Wolf is a detective with the Wilmington Police Department and has been James’s best friend since the first day of college. James is falling down drunk when he arrives at Nathan’s, and Nathan finds out that James is so drunk because he has found out the man who raped his sister has been released on parole. After a few more drinks, James decides in his drunken mind that it would be a great idea to kiss Nathan, his straight best friend. What gay man hasn’t been there?

When James wakes up the next morning, with a killer hangover, he doesn’t at first remember kissing Nathan, but it does come back over time. What will he do when Nathan confesses that not only did he kiss him, but that Nathan kissed him back? Turns out Nathan might have been hiding a pretty big secret for quite a few years!

James handles the confession from Nathan very poorly and sends poor Nathan off on his own, after lying and saying he has no feelings beyond friendship for Nathan. Nathan, being a detective, has been working on a case where a young gay man was killed in a very brutal way. The young man was a prostitute, and Nathan, rather than deal with the pain of James rejection, decides to go undercover for the night and talk to some of the other male prostitutes to see if he can build his case. Things go disastrously wrong, and Nathan ends up in an alley, stabbed multiple times in the face and chest.

There begins a story of misunderstanding and confusion between the two men. Nathan refuses to let James see him at the hospital, and upon his release he goes to stay with his parents in another town to recover.

Meanwhile James is drinking more and more. He doesn’t see anything wrong though with his few shots at night to help him deal with patient stories like Romy’s. Or a quick shot or two before facing his mother so that he is calm.  And so what if drinking makes him realize what an ass he was to Nathan?  He deserves it, right?

Do the men ever get their shit together? Can they get rid of the baggage and admit their true feelings for each other? What about James drinking? Can he admit it is a problem?  Having been there, done that, I can say that A.M. Arthur portrayed the alcoholic’s decline and gradual realization of his problem very well.  I was so rooting for James once that part of the story began.

I enjoyed this book. I would recommend it for both new and experienced A.M. Arthur readers. You don’t have to read the Belonging Series first, but there are several references to the characters from that trilogy, so it might help!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Carina Press  

Amazon

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