Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Stokes & Ford
SERIES: Storming Love 2: Blizzard #6
AUTHOR: Jackie Nacht
PUBLISHER: MLR Press
LENGTH: 18 000 Words
BLURB:
Ford and Stokes are about to weather two storms; the blizzard coming their way and their growing feelings for one another.
Stokes has been rooming with Ford ever since the first day of college. Although his feelings had started out as friendly, over time, they have grown deeper. He’s fallen for Ford, hard, but how the hell is Stokes going to tell Ford? When college winter break approaches, Stokes decides to take Ford up to his parent’s rental to have a fun weekend with Ford and finally let his best friend know what he feels. However, with a blizzard coming in, they will have to weather the storm outside and in their hearts.
REVIEW:
“C’mon, man, don’t you want a little vacation?”
He did but…”Isn’t there some storm coming in?”
Well those could have made some famous last words. Yes, there was most definitely a storm coming in, just like a tsunami is the tide coming in. And you may be groaning and assuming – Too Stupid To Live, but to be fair, out of every single news station the pair checked there was only one weather man predicting a “white apocalypse”. Everyone was promising “a couple of inches” so it’s completely reasonable that the two men would head off for a weekend of skiing and snowboarding.
Stokes and Ford have been best friends from the moment they were assigned a room together on their first day of college. Now, three years later, they’re completely inseparable and live together in an apartment off campus. Stokes has never been aware of any personal boundaries between them and thinks nothing of crawling into bed with Ford to cuddle. Not that Ford minds. But in three years there’s never been anything other than the closest friendship between them, until now. Lately both men have become more aware of the other and the cuddles and touches have started to feel different. The problem is, neither man wants to risk ruining their friendship by even mentioning it, let alone doing anything about it. But then they find themselves trapped by the blizzard, with a whole lot of time to work things out.
I actually really liked this book. It was short and cute, and that was ok. The author didn’t try to fit a much larger story into too few pages, which is the biggest downfall of books this length.
This is the first book I’ve read by Jackie Nacht and there were several things that stood out to me as signs of an accomplished author. Firstly, everything that may have annoyed me was instead explained to my satisfaction. I’ve already mentioned the reason they felt it was safe to drive off into a storm, but there was also the fact that it took them three years to realize they were attracted to each other. Two bisexual college boys, practically living in each other’s pockets, take years to feel the attraction between them? Yep, all explained and explained well, in my opinion.
I absolutely loved their first awkward attempt at sex. Ford has only ever had sex with girls and Stokes has only ever had sex with his high school boyfriend, which was about four years ago. The fact that it was so awkward because they meant so much to each other just made it seem more special. And hey, they got there in the end!
Through out the story you are aware that something bad happened in Stokes’s past. Something he ran away to college to try to forget. And I think this was the part that I appreciated most about this story. I don’t really want to say what it was, but if you’re anything like me you just make assumptions based on clichés. He was gay bashed in high school, his boyfriend committed suicide because his evil religious parents wouldn’t accept that he was gay… Those kind of assumptions. Usually if it involves gay high school kids there’s homophobia involved but the author instead just did her own thing. It was just a refreshing change.
I haven’t read the other books in this series yet but I really enjoyed this one and it can definitely be read as a standalone.
RATING: 
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