Reviewed by Kimberley
TITLE: Suddenly Yours
SERIES: Dreamspun Desires # 20
AUTHOR: Jacob Flores
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 244 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 15, 2016
BLURB:
What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas.
Cody Hayes is having one epic morning-after. The hangover following a Vegas bachelor party is nothing new to him, and neither is the naked man in his bed.
His apparent marriage is a different story.
Carefully plotting every detail of his life carried Julian Canales to a Senate seat as an openly gay man. A drunken night of Truth or Dare isn’t like him… and neither is marrying a man he just met. He’d get an annulment, but the media has gotten wind of his hasty nuptials. If Julian’s political career is going to survive, he has to stay married to a man who’s his opposite in every way.
Now he must convince Cody that all they need to do is survive a conservative political rival, a heartbroken ex, their painful pasts… and an attraction neither man can fight.
REVIEW:
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas…
Yes. That’s become the motto for the ages concerning the wild and sinful city in the middle of the desert known as Las Vegas. Everyone knows that when you go there, anything can and usually does goes.
This is a story that’s been told numerous times before and it never gets tired. You’re in Vegas and you’re drinking and after a series of unknown events, you end up married to a stranger, or naked with a tattoo on your forehead, or wake up in bed next to a Bassett hound wearing a bikini and a blonde wig and a man handcuffed to a blow up doll.
Disclaimer: That’s never happened to me but it did happen to a…friend of a friend.
Yeah, we’ll go with that story…🙄
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas after all.
Anyway, it’s a story that been told countless times before and it just never gets old. At least to me it doesn’t. Those stories are hilarious regardless of who it happens to. This one is no different. Here you have two very different men, separated in way of personality, socioeconomic status and career paths occupying the same space at the same time. A series of unfortunate—or in this case, fortunate events lead to these two men ending up married. To each other.
Julian and Cody couldn’t have been more different from each other: Julian is wealthy whereas Cody is struggling financially. Julian is responsible with a somewhat respectable (well as respectable as a politician can be) reputation and career where Cody has a dead end job as a waiter. Julian is uptight and controlled, Cody is immature, irresponsible and impulsive. Julian surrounds himself with powerful allies while Cody surrounds himself with obnoxious fidiots (f*king+idiots), which segues nicely into my character review.
I hated every character in this story, both MCs and peripheral. I thought Cody was annoying but not as annoying as his friends. God, those guys got on my LAST good nerve. They were the epitome of immaturity. These were men in their 30s who just couldn’t seem to let go of their days as college frat boys. They were obnoxious, loud and a bit crude, typical behavior one would expect from 18 to 22-year-old college frat boys not 30 some odd-year-old men. They are some redeeming qualities to these guys though: they weren’t homophobes and had love for Cody. That was their only saving grace, I suppose. But they were still obnoxious, immature annoying dopes trying to relive their days as college frat boys not wanting to face the fact that they’re way too long in the tooth for it. That just annoyed the stuffing out of me. Cody was only marginally better in the sense that he seemed to be a bit more grounded in reality than the rest of his crew were.
Julian was uptight, slightly arrogant and a bit of a jerk. His was what one would refer to as a tight sphincter. He was so tight that he would suck every piece of furniture he sat down on.
This story was funny, the dialogue brilliant and the storyline although done many times before was quite well done in this book. As always, I really enjoyed Flores’s writing. His characters weren’t perfect and that’s what makes this stoey so dang good. I absolutely hated these guys, hated them. So much so that I wanted to stab all of them Michael Myers, Halloween style. And I did. In my mind. I imagined my alter ego, McStabby, running through the pages and just stabbing the characters starting with his annoying friends.
But Cody and Julien together just… worked. These men fit perfectly together despite their many differences. They were proof that everything happens for a reason and love happens when you least expect it.
It says something about an author who can create characters and write a story so dang good that could evoke strong visceral reactions from his readers. Or at least me. This story made me laugh out loud and it held my interest. This author, this story is a definite must read.
RATING: 
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