Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Center Of Gravity 
AUTHOR: Neve Wilder
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 346 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 4, 2018
BLURB:
When life comes apart at the seams, love is the only thread that can repair it…
Accountant Rob Macomb has a stable job that he’s good at and… that’s about it. A year of nothing but heartache leaves him seeking refuge from loneliness and grief behind spreadsheets, punishing daily runs, and the occasional anonymous tryst. He wants only to bury the past and focus on his career, but he has one last task to complete: pack up his parent’s quaint beachside house and put it on the market.
Alex Andrews is a budding artist with a penchant for Converse, Cracker Jack, and piercings. Family turmoil sidelines his dreams of finishing art school and building a career in three-dimensional design, and now he’s doing whatever he can to keep everyone afloat.
When Alex shows up as a part of the moving crew hired to help Rob clean out the house, what should be a simple move becomes far more complex. Because it’s not the first time they’ve met, and their last encounter was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
The attraction between them is undeniable and intense, but Rob’s hell-bent on pushing everyone away, and Alex is on the verge of spinning out of control. Can a grumpy accountant and a bootstrapping artist find their center of gravity together, or are they on a collision course to heartbreak?
REVIEW:
After having year in which his father and mother both died, and finding out his boyfriend was not quite as broken up with his wife as previously stated, the last thing that Rob Macomb wants to be doing is packing up his parent’s house for sale. But with his sister living across the country, he is the only one around to do it. Hopefully he can do it quickly, if not painlessly. A few days and surely he can go back to his boring, if predictable, life.
Imagine his surprise when the moving company he hired to help him shows up and one of them is the guy he hooked up with recently. Under a different name. In a club. Where Rob left before returning the blow job he received in the bathroom. Awkward. But what had started with only a hookup turns slowly into something that could one day be more. If only Rob wasn’t still wrestling with his grief, or Alex wasn’t 15 years younger, or if both of them were at a point in their lives where more seems impossible. If only, if only, if only…
While a bit sedate at times, I found that this story really made that work. Watching these two circle each other, drawing closer then pushing back, steadily working out what they needed from the other and themselves, made it so that you are ready to strangle the two of them by the time they have worked their shit out. In a good way.
There are not very high stakes in this story, just an underlying grief and inevitability that lingers in the background, so this slow ramp up of tension between Alex and Rob is needed. But it never crossed over into gimmicky angst, where the book is shouting at you to Feel Sad Right Now!!! This story knows how to work levity into all this seriousness, leaving the reader unafraid of the next scene because it knows how to knock you down and leave you asking for more.
A bit of the back-and-forth can get frustrating at times, though. But the age difference makes sense of their conflicts. They are coming at each other from two vastly different points in their lives. It was inevitable that they wouldn’t see things in the same light all the time. But the years that can separate them, can also bring them together. They are both dealing with some major life changes, and having the other there to show them a different way to handle things, makes a huge difference.
This story was a bit of a downer at times, and as such I can’t say it will be getting a re-read any time soon, but it was still a very good story. Enough hope to balance the sad parts, and enough love to make even those parts worth it. It also did a few things I wasn’t expecting, and I found the story was all the better for it. This might not be the go-to if you want a light read, but if you can brave the possibility of tears, I think you will find yourself well rewarded.
RATING: 
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