Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Finding His Fantasy
SERIES: 1Night Stand
AUTHOR: Deanna Wadsworth
PUBLISHER: Decadent Publishing Company
LENGTH: 128 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 9, 2016
BLURB:
Forty-eight year old art gallery owner Paul Strait loves the nightlife—wild parties, stiff cocktails, and even stiffer men! But his decadent lifestyle has grown lonely and now he’s looking for love. Some days it seems that what he wants must be a fantasy. Hoping that the perfect guy is out there he enlists the help of Madame Eve.
After all, a fantasy service like 1Night Stand should be able to deliver his fantasy man, right?
Josef Debrossé runs an exotic gay bar in the Caribbean known only to locals and select tourists. The many patrons coming in and out of his bar ensure Josef never has a shortage of lovers but he’s grown tired of being just a vacation fling.
Josef wants to be another man’s lover and partner, not a mere souvenir from the islands.
Lost in a dance of lust and allure, both men are thrilled with Madame Eve’s choice for them and feel an intense connection the moment they meet. Flirting over drinks quickly leads to the bedroom. But after their fiery lust has been quenched, the night goes from fantasy to reality without warning. Secrets and frightening pasts threaten to shatter the magical illusion of their perfect date.
Will this budding romance survive in the face of reality?
REVIEW:
This was again a new-to-me author. And, as it turns out, this book is part of a series, a series that I had not read. Although it probably would have made more sense if I had read the previous book that introduced Paul, I think that it was okay without the previous book, that was, if I understand correctly, a M/F romance. I had wanted to read this book because the book blurb intrigued me. It is not often that I run across books with a character that has some life under their belt. Paul is 48 and an extremely successful art gallery owner. In fact, he now owns three highly regarded galleries around the United States. He is also a bit set in his way of thinking, as you would expect with a person quickly approaching 50. But Paul’s best friend and confidant is now married and he is lonely and in search of what she has, a loving relationship with the man of her dreams. So Paul hires the company that gave her the HEA she got, 1Night Stand, which leads him to the beautiful and sexy Josef. This was not just a quick romp-in-the-hay that I expected. Secrets are revealed that were quite disturbing and heartbreaking. What I loved most was Josef and his warm, caring persona. Paul could be a bit put-offish but Josef saw through all that and that was the wonderful part.
I don’t know if it was the flow of the book or the writing style, but there was something that didn’t quite “catch” and drag me into these character’s lives. There were some wonderful parts and a really funny scene where Paul tries to explain to Josef about heterosexual women writing gay romance:
“Deal, but I still have to go back for my book. Nothing better than lying on a beach with a dirty romance novel. And I just got to the sexy part.” Pausing at the doorway, Josef frowned. “You read romance novels? With women?” Paul blew a raspberry. “Hell, no! I’m talking smutty gay romance novels.” “Vraiment? I’ve never read anything like that before. I usually select spy novels.” Grinning, he said, “Well, once you read gay romances, you won’t ever read anything else. Picture your spy novel with dudes fucking and sucking.” He chuckled. “Where has that been all my life, non?” “In the mind of some middle-aged straight woman.” Josef looked as confused as Paul had been when he first learned straight women wrote books like that. His friend Roy ran a bookstore and had introduced a very skeptical Paul to his first gay romance written by a straight woman—and like the “fan girls” he’d soon discovered existed, too, he hadn’t read anything else since. “Yeah, sounds nuts,” Paul said. “But straight women love to read and write about guys fucking. Most of my favorite authors are women. They must watch a lot of porn because they know a lot more about men in the sack than you would expect.
My husband even laughed at this when I read it to him because he still doesn’t get my fascination with Gay Romance. Deanna Wadsworth put it so fun and perfectly. I’m not saying that I didn’t like this book, in fact I did. It just didn’t wow me like I expected.
RATING: 
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