Reviewed by Cinnamon

TITLE: Golden

AUTHOR: Sean Michael

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 187 pages

RELEASE DATE:  May 24, 2017 (second edition)

BLURB:

After winning Olympic gold four years ago, Justin retired from swimming, and he’s been floundering ever since. The Fourth of July finds him contemplating doing something stupid, so Justin calls up his former coach, Chris Jarvis. To his surprise, Coach answers.

When Justin retired, Chris cut all ties with the swimmer he’d fallen in love with. He never wanted Justin to love him just because it was easy. But he’s been waiting for Justin to reach out, and he’ll gladly take Justin back into his life.

When he finds out Justin is drowning in a pool of self-doubt and the belief that his happy years are behind him, Chris realizes he made a mistake letting go so suddenly, and that Justin needs structure and a firm, dominant hand to keep him on the right track. It’s time to remedy that error—as long as he can convince Justin that it’s really love.

REVIEW:

Golden is a sensual and sometimes emotional story of the reunion of a four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer and his long-time coach after four years apart. It tells us how these two find new grounds for their relationship and how they eventually go back to their old ways besides being new found lovers.

After his retirement, Justin leaves his swimming life behind to find new challenges and find his life after being a professional athlete. Chris lets him go hoping to give him a possibility to find himself. Neither of them expected how Justin is going to end up.

This book should be one of my all-time favorites as it concentrates on the characters and their relationship, which I love. But I just wasn’t feeling it with this story.

The most problematic thing that was missing for me was the foundation of their love. I know we start in the middle where they already have feelings for each other. But the love is just there. There is no build up for that, no flashbacks to how it started and I missed that part, missed the beginning of these feelings. How they were born, how it developed for both of them. It might be just me and I hope you will enjoy the story the way it is.

The whole plot is mostly sex chased down with some more sex. I love sex scenes don’t get me wrong but there is a healthy balance I like to keep. Here I felt that we didn’t get enough story to balance out the amount of sexy-time. The writing is solid and if you enjoy reading lots and lots of sex scenes this is a great book for you.

Unfortunately there was so much pent up regret and hurt they had to work through that it spoiled their emotions to me. I felt there was no real resolution, no real closure to what had happened to them.

I didn’t always liked the way Chris was trying to control all Justin’s emotions and thoughts. Also to start and live the D/s lifestyle 24/7 a few more real conversations would have been nice and useful in my opinion. I’m not sure Justin was on board with everything and Chris was just too much at times for me. I get his reasoning but some things should have been spelled out in more details.

I was so pissed at him for not listening to Justin at times. You can’t just erase four years of pent up insecurities and self-doubt with a few rules… I could have smacked him in the head a couple of times to, instead of telling his boy what to do, just listen to him a bit more. It was very frustrating.

These two guys share some explosive chemistry and if you enjoy nipple play this will be a true gem for you, but beside a few real hot scenes I didn’t get the feels I was expecting.

The ending is promising a great future and I wish these guys all the best.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon