Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:    The Windup

SERIES:     The Rainbow League #1

AUTHOR:     Kate McMurray

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH:     226 Pages

BLURB:

Ian ran screaming from New York City upon graduating from high school. A job offer too good to turn down has brought him back, but he plans to leave as soon as the job is up. In the meantime he lets an old friend talk him into joining the Rainbow League, New York’s LGBT amateur baseball league. Baseball turns out to be a great outlet for his anxiety, and not only because sexy teammate Ty has caught his eye.

Ty is like a duck on a pond—calm and laid-back on the surface, a churning mess underneath. In Ian, he’s found someone with whom he feels comfortable enough to share some of what’s going on beneath the surface. The only catch is that Ian is dead set on leaving the city as soon as he can. Ty works up a plan to convince Ian that New York is, in fact, the greatest city in the world. But when Ian receives an offer for a job overseas, Ty needs a new plan: convince Ian that home is where Ty is.

REVIEW:

Ian left Brooklyn when he got out of school and has never looked back. He had a supremely bad childhood, full of beatings and abuse from kids in the neighborhood because he is gay. He remembers exactly what spot on the sidewalk he lay bleeding on after one particularly bad beating which put him in the hospital. His mother still lives in the same house he grew up in, and although the neighborhood has gentrified around her, her house inside still looks like the 1980’s!

Ian has become a very well know Hotel Rescuer. Unlike the popular television show, he doesn’t just spend three days doing it though. Many times it takes 2 or more years per hotel. He has been all over the US and Europe rescuing very well know hotels and bringing them back from the brink of ruin. He has come back to New York to help overhaul the New Amsterdam Hotel, even though he HATES New York.

When his friend Josh suggests he sign up for a spot in The Rainbow League, a LGBT baseball league, he is at first hesitant. But with visions of meeting lots of people, and maybe one or two hot guys, he gives in.

When he arrives a big red-headed Texan named Ty instantly charms him. Ty is a transplanted Texan who moved to New York when he was eighteen to attend Art School. His favorite things to paint are those lurid covers we all love so much on our romance books! Ty is pretty insecure about his work, and just tells people he is in marketing.  He is also pretty insecure about himself, thinking he isn’t great to look at and that he will never be the man his Dad was.

Ian has some issues as well. He suffers from panic attacks, and trust issues. Can the two slightly broken men make something together? As the season goes on, they fall more and more under each other’s spell, but neither is willing to tell the other.  I really wanted to jump in and give them both a slap up-side the head. When Mason slapped Ty, I was like FINALLY!  But the New Amsterdam is reaching completion…what will happen when Ian gets a job offer in Rome?

The book was well written, full of details, and made me homesick for when I was stationed in NYC in the early 1980’s. Of course Brooklyn Navy Yard and that whole end of Brooklyn (except for Brooklyn Heights) was a pretty scary place at the time, so I could totally understand Ian’s childhood stories. Prospect Park wasn’t a place you went after dark, and the Ramble in Central Park was still alive and well and getting lots of after dark action…not that I would know personally or anything. 😉  I loved how the author included the Met, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Promenade in Brooklyn. Three of my most favorite parts of NYC. If you haven’t been to all three you’re missing something.

I enjoyed “The Windup”. It was a nice start to a new series and I recommend it.  Based on all the background stories going on in this book, I’m assuming there will be several books in the series.  There is a teaser at the end of this book, so I know book two has something to do with Mason, but I avoid those teasers because I don’t know when the actual book will be out and I don’t want to get interested in something that isn’t out yet!  🙂

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

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