Reviewed by Donna

TITLE: Life, Some Assembly Required

SERIES: Sequel to The Rebuilding Year

AUTHOR: Kaje Harper

PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing

LENGTH: 327 Pages

BLURB:

Finding love in the ashes was easy. Building a life together? Don’t make Fate laugh.

After spending the first part of his life chasing pretty girls, love has finally come to Ryan in the form of John, a tall, lanky, red-headed landscape architect with wide shoulders and a five-o’clock shadow.

For the first time in his life, love feels easy. Hell, he even ran into a burning building for John and his son, and he’d do it again if he had to. But telling his father and brothers “I’m gay. I’ve met a man”? That’s a bumpy ride he’s not looking forward to.

For John, loving Ryan is as natural as breathing. Now if only the rest of his life would fall into place. Dealing with his teen son is complicated enough, but with his ex-wife causing trouble and his daughter wanting to move in, John’s house—and his relationship with Ryan—threaten to split at the seams.

Would one month without a new surprise knocking him upside the heart be asking too much? If the sound of Fate’s laughter is any indication, the answer must be yes…

REVIEW:

The Rebuilding Year is one of my all time favourite books. It fuelled my addiction for gay-for-you storylines and cemented my opinion that Kaje Harper is one of the best m/m writers that I’ve read. So finding out that there was a sequel to that book was both ridiculously exciting and kind of scary. As much as I was desperate to discover what happened next, sequels have the potential to ruin the first book and the idea of that happening to The Rebuilding Year was terrifying. I’ve only read the book about ten times. I’ve still got many re-reads left in me. Luckily, this book gave me exactly what I needed to contentedly leave Ryan and John living their happily ever after.

The story picks up in exactly the same place that The Rebuilding Year ended, with Ryan on the phone to his father telling him that he has a boyfriend. It’s also the day after the fire at the university, so on top of Ryan coming out to his family all three males in the house – Ryan, John and Mark, are dealing with the trauma that resulted from that incident. If that wasn’t enough Torey is going through an upsetting, confusing time in her life and living with her mother and step-father isn’t helping matters. Oh, and since I mentioned Cynthia, I should probably add that her life isn’t so shiny bright right now either and she’s hardly happy that she’s had to haul her homophobic, broke, pregnant ass to her ex-husband and his gay lover for help.

I’m guessing anybody that hasn’t read the first book yet probably read that last paragraph and didn’t really take any of it in. You really do need to have read the first book before starting to read this one. You need to know who these people are, their pasts and how they relate to each other. Because this story is absolutely focused on the characters. There are no murders, no werewolves and no suspenseful twists that you never saw coming. This is Kaje Harper doing what she does best, and that’s making you fall in love with her very real, very flawed characters. I loved how Ryan became a parent to John’s kids, and I loved that John and Ryan would get annoyed and say hurtful things to each other. But there were never any ridiculous, dramatic breakups because the two men would apologize and talk and reaffirm how much they love each other. No matter what outside problems they faced John and Ryan simply grew closer and stronger and oh my god, I could just gush all over those guys all day.

Mark and Torey had a greater presence in this book, as did Cynthia, and we’re introduced to the rest of Ryan’s family. Again, Ryan’s family is neither wholly good nor bad, but a realistic mix of both and I appreciated that the “bad” was fuelled more by selfishness and ignorance rather than plot-boosting evil. Even Cynthia morphed into a slightly more sympathetic character and I must add that I actually liked her while she was in labor swearing her head off.

The sex scenes in this book were just as hot as in the first book, and actually, for a Kaje Harper book there was quite a lot of it. But that isn’t a complaint! The sex is never gratuitous, and despite how hot it gets, there’s always that underlying sense of love.

As much as I loved this book I figure that there’s no point recommending it. Either you’re a mad Rebuilding Year fan already, in which case you pre-ordered this book as soon as it popped up with a buy link, or you’ve not read that first book yet, in which case I urge you to go out and buy it. Once you read that, you too will fall madly in love with John and Ryan and won’t be able to resist the lure of Life, Some Assembly Required.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Samhain Publishing

Amazon