Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Blue
AUTHOR: L.B. La Vigne
PUBLISHER: Deep Desires Press
LENGTH: 214 Pages
RELEASE DATE: January 23, 2018
BLURB:
When his lost cat is returned by college student Ben Stacks, east coast businessman Harrison Reid can’t deny the obvious sparks between them. It only makes sense to meet again, and soon, to strike up a relationship.
But Reid has skeletons in his past, ones that haunt him as he tries to start fresh with Ben. Reid is determined not to let that old life get in the way of this new romance, especially with how strongly Ben is falling for him.
How long can he hide the truth though, especially when old acquaintances come to call and expose him to the man he’s come to love? Standing up to them is about far more than closing old doors. For Reid, it only exposes how much he’s terrified of a happy ever after. But he must act quickly, because Ben will not accept a man who can’t be truly free to live the life of his dreams.
REVIEW:
From what I understand this is L.B. La Vigne’s second published book. The potential for a great story was here, so I hope the author isn’t put off by what I feel will be a rather critical review.
Firstly, we begin the story with a glimpse into the lives of three mysterious young men who are obviously up to no good. This part right here, this could have been the basis for a brilliant tale. I loved the idea behind Blue, Pink and Red – and no, they aren’t BDSM safe words. Although we don’t find out until later in the story exactly what these men were conspiring to do, I really wish the author had focused the book on this plot arc. Instead, this all just led to nothing more than a few scenes which could have been left out of the story completely and made no difference to the plot.
Despite what the blurb says about old acquaintances turning up and causing problems, as far as I could see the main problem was that the two main characters just did not fit together. I love a good age gap story, but Ben was simply too whiny and immature for me to like. Reid wasn’t perfect by any means, but Ben was just a typical young college student who despite saying he didn’t want a bossy older boyfriend, seemed to want nothing more than for Reid to support him and look after him. I found the ending (Reid and Ben getting back together after “the breakup”) distasteful. And that could totally be one of those things that’s a personal preference.
While technically there wasn’t anything wrong with the author’s writing, I found some scenes needed to be longer and more detailed while others could have been left out completely. There was a whole chapter on Ben’s friends’ Vegas vacation that amounted to absolutely nothing. I kept expecting something bad or pivotal to happen to validate having spent so much time on these secondary characters but nothing eventuates from it. I feel like a beta reader should have picked up on this stuff – because that definitely isn’t the only example of scenes adding nothing to the story.
While I didn’t dislike this story, I think it needed some further polish before publishing. I think the final product could have easily turned out much better than it actually did.
RATING: 
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