Reviewed by Lily
TITLE: Loving an Absentminded Astrophysicist
SERIES: Astrophysicist #1-2
AUTHOR: TN Tarrant
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 226 Pages
BLURB:
At twenty-three, Dr. Liam McGregor is a well-respected astrophysicist, astrobiologist, and geologist. With no family, few friends, and no romantic prospects, he’s used to being alone. Focusing on his various scientific projects and taking care of his decidedly unusual cat help keep the loneliness at bay.
Jareth Manning is starting life over—new town, new job—after the loss of his husband. The last thing he expects is for the most absentminded, and beautiful, man he’s ever seen to take up residence in his heart. Nor did he expect to find himself a willingly humble slave to Her Imperial Highness, Empress the Cat. But Jareth has learned that love doesn’t come around often and to hold on to it when it does. Jareth is willing to be patient if Liam is willing to take a risk after being burned before. They just have to survive Liam’s past returning.
Eight years after Liam and Jareth marry, they want a child. Things don’t go well when they try to adopt, with terrible accusations thrown at Jareth. After recovering, they proceed with a private adoption, bringing home a beautiful little girl, Carinae. Then things get ugly, endangering not only Liam’s life, but Carinae’s.
REVIEW:
I really enjoyed the start of this story because it was different and involved a socially awkward wounded hero. Liam was the ultimate wounded hero character. Jareth felt like a modern day knight in shining armor; patient, courteous, passionate, handsome and a total alpha. But after a while I started to feel a bit bored of reading dialogue that involved so much about planets and the universe. Someone needs to be into those kinds of topics to enjoy this part of the story, and a lot of it went over my head. Saying that, I do respect the writer’s diligent and patient explanation of those subjects, because T.N Tarrant did consider the possibility of having readers like me––the ones who know very little about what is going on in the universe. I discovered that I like watching the documentaries about it, but do not enjoy reading about it.
The romance between Liam and Jareth was sweet; a little old fashioned oozing with a lot of patience and a genuine sense of love. However, the plot of the story was complicated and very unbelievable for me. There were so many murderous people, including family members, which made my eyes glaze over. The dialogue between the “baddies” and poor Liam and Jareth was almost clichéd, as they were often hostile towards Liam and Jareth because of their sexuality. It seemed everyone wanted poor Liam dead or beaten black and blue. There were too many crazy people and sociopaths in the story to be plausible. I have to admit, I so often felt like the story was ending at different chapters, but then when I turned the page, I found there was another chapter. This both confused and frustrated me. The story, after a while, turned into a condensed version of Liam and Jareth’s fictional biography rather than their love story. The basis of this story was nice, sweet even, but it didn’t stay that way. If you like a lot of angst and murdering side characters, have an interest in the universe and don’t mind talking about that a lot, then this is definitely a story for you. For me it was okay, but not great.
RATING: 
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