Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Run
AUTHOR: Annie Kaye
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 260 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 26, 2016
BLURB:
Amid the tumult of the Iowa Democratic primary, young but brilliant speechwriter Tom McAlindon meets Nathan Harris, the deputy campaign manager for an opposing candidate. Their acquaintance is strictly professional until an impetuous kiss on a cold winter night leads them into a secret romance. As their feelings deepen, both men struggle with the complications of keeping the relationship separate from their jobs and the inner workings of the campaigns.
But in the nation’s most high-stakes political game, no secret is truly safe. When an observer realizes their connection, Tom and Nate discover that striving for the best of both worlds has a much higher cost than they bargained for… and that love can’t survive while Nate is hiding the truth from Tom.
REVIEW:
I grabbed this book because I thought it would take me back in time to my political ties and working on local, state and national campaigns. And it did. I now remember the long, tedious hours, the high hopes and the lowest of lows when a candidate that I worked with did not win. It was heart wrenching when enduring the loss. It was also very tiring. Long hours of “stomping” for the candidates that I supported. This book does convey those points very well, maybe even a bit too well. I believe, for the average reader, that there was too much political background and it tended to bog down and overwhelm the romance side of the story. We got to know all the key players in both campaigns. It was a good story on the inside workings of a national presidential campaign but I think there were two distinct stories here. There was the tale of the hard work of being in on the top floor of a presidential campaign. There was also the tender and trying story of two lonely men that happened to meet at the wrong place at the wrong time. And that story had disaster written all over it. Not disaster in the writing of this book but the doomed relationship of these two men at that time. I think, for me personally, that is what I missed and wanted more from the story, the connection of Nate and Tom. Even though I understood all that was happening on the political side, at points it was just a bit too much and overpowered the romance novel. I needed more of the last 85% of the book. It had finally reached the point I needed it to way earlier in the story and then…bam…it’s done. Now I want the romance side of the story that really came to heat in the last two chapters of the story, especially the last one! It was like the old made-for-television movies where the story goes on and then it has to wrap up so you are feeling cheated! I deserved more of their ending and HEA! I had become invested in these men.
As for my recommendation, I have to warn you, this is a very political primer type story. There isn’t a lot of sex scenes, and what there was, was mostly off page. I did grow to like both Nate and Tom. I respected Nate’s need to protect Tom but it was hard to read. I have a really hard time believing that, in real life, they would have ever taken the chances they did, during a real campaign. I could see them looking for each other after it was over, but not the political suicide that was risked. I was rooting, in the end, for a HEA, as I always do, but again, felt cheated in how it played out. This is not a bad book, and it was nice to see that the author did do some research on political campaigns, it just didn’t have enough of the romance side of the story to balance it out. There was a lot of angst but it needed more of a complete ending to make it work better.
RATING: 
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