Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Lover’s Leap
AUTHOR: JL Merrow
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 202 ages
RELEASE DATE: February 29th, 2016
BLURB:
If they looked, would they ever leap?
Good-looking, confident, and doted on by his widowed mum, Michael is used to thinking only of himself. Getting shoved off an Isle of Wight pier by an exasperated ex ought to come as a wake-up call—but then he meets Rufus and he’s right back to letting the little head take charge. Rufus is cute, keen, and gets under Michael’s skin in a disturbing way.
Would-be chef Rufus can’t believe his luck when a dripping wet dream of a man walks out of the sea on his birthday, especially when Michael ends up staying at the family B&B. Life is perfect—at least until Michael has to go home to the mainland.
Rufus can’t leave the island for reasons he’s entirely neglected to mention. And though Michael identifies as bi, breaking his mum’s heart by coming out and having an actual relationship with a guy has never been his plan. With both men determined to keep their secrets, a leap of faith could land them in deep water.
REVIEW:
This is a hard one for me to review…. I try really hard not to let my dislike of a character affect my enjoyment of a book, but I just could not do it this time. Literally the only person I liked in this book was Rufus. All of the other characters are assholes, and treat Rufus badly. Maybe his friend Liz, wasn’t quite an asshole, but she wasn’t great. I read Muscling Through by this same author a few month ago and I loved it. I was thinking this one would be the same, but it was not.
Rufus is actually quite sweet, he’s a 20-year-old living in his father’s B & B in a small town on the Isle of Wight. He really shouldn’t be there, he’s a talented chef, or I should say he has the potential to be a talented chef if he could get off that island and get some training. But he’s a good boy and stays home after his mother died, and helps out at the B & B. His dad has remarried to a bit of fluff, and the two of them let Rufus take care of them and do pretty much everything.
Michael is just a fucking asshole. He’s a spoiled mama’s boy, the only son with three older sisters, and his dad died before he was born. He lives at home at 26 and lets his mother take care of him, not even doing his own laundry. He justifies this by pointing out that he gives her money each month. He is bisexual, but hasn’t told his mom. Basically he will fuck anyone regardless of their sex. What he’s pretty clear about, is he is NOT gay. He goes on holiday to the Isle of Wight with a girl named Trix, that he’s been dating for a couple of weeks, she proposes (why??), he dumps her, she shoves him off the pier and in to the water. Where he arises from the surf like the god he thinks he is and walks out to find Rufus. Who takes him home and let’s him fuck him.
Michael stays a couple of days, takes advantage of Rufus, sees his dad and stepmom doing the same thing, but continues to treat him the same way. He is a shit the whole time, the two have a misunderstanding and off he goes. Rufus, the idiot, follows him. I’ll stop there, that’s more plot that I like to give away, but there just isn’t much to this story. It’s basically everyone being mean to Rufus, Rufus letting them do it, and it’s over. There is actually a happy ending, which was kind of cute. But it was waaaaaay too late for me.
So. The good things about this story: It was very British, had words and phrases that made my American mind want to explode, and I loved that. I like books set in England, and I like discovering new words or phrases. The characters are quirky, I didn’t like most of them, but they are certainly quirky, and I do like that quality. I liked the small town setting, and how everyone is in everyone’s business. The writing was good, again, I didn’t like the characters or much of the plot, but the flow, the details, things like that, were fine.
But really, I just didn’t like this book. I HATED Michael, didn’t like his homophobic mother, didn’t like Rufus’s dad or stepmom, and I barely tolerated Liz Rufus’s best friend. I wanted Rufus to tell them all to fuck off, get on the ferry and go get some training and a life.
RATING: 
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