Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: Take Me Home

AUTHOR: A.D. Ellis

PUBLISHER: self-published

LENGTH: 232 pages

RELEASE DATE: October 19, 2020

BLURB: 

Can a city boy survive exile to a small town? Will falling for a hot, older country boy make the situation better or worse?

Marc Kingsley is the best in his big-city family business. When a medical issue gets Marc temporarily banished to a tiny country town, he’s certain the experience will be a nightmare.

Jordan Moore is living the dream on his farm. When his best friend’s grandson begrudgingly comes to town, Jordan’s simple life gets turned upside down.

Can Marc and Jordan find a brief, shared happiness even when they’ve accepted they’ll eventually have to walk away? Or will both men end up nursing broken hearts?

Take Me Home is a male/male age-gap, opposites-attract romance with plenty of steam and a scene that will make you appreciate camouflage and work boots.

REVIEW: 

If you are in the mood for a sweet romance that is almost exclusively focused on a couple finding their HEA without a lot of extraneous details or distraction, then look no further because that’s exactly what A.D. Ellis’ Take Me Home delivers.  This is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to read one of A.D. Ellis’ books and wow, have I been missing out.  My TBR is definitely being rearranged to put her entire catalogue at the top. I loved Take Me Home and I adored the purity of her writing; I’m eager to read her other works. 

Take Me Home introduces us to a wonderful age-gap couple of two seemingly opposite men.  Marcus (Marc) Kingsley is a young, workaholic sales professional whose health is suffering from the stress and toll of his job and his long working hours.  He settles for random, meaningless hookups because he has no time or inclination for a relationship. He’s so used to the demanding pace of and immersion in everything work that he barely acknowledges his loneliness, that is until he is relegated to his Gran (Ellie) and Gramps’s B&B in the small Midwestern country town of Kingsley (named after Marc’s family who owns it) to get much needed R&R after getting a bad health report from his doctor at a recent physical.

It’s in this tiny country small town that he unintentionally and unexpectedly falls for his Gran’s best friend and neighbor, Jordan Moore.  Jordan is 40 years old, about a decade older than Marc, and has resigned himself to being alone even though he wants nothing more than to fall in love and spend his life with someone. He owns the poultry farm and vegetable gardens next to Ellie’s B&B and also does general handyman and carpentry work around town.  Jordan is an old soul, and he and Marc’s grandmother Ellie are fast friends, not just due to proximity but because they have similar interests and love of the country life in Kingsley.  Jordan can’t imagine living anywhere else, but he also recognizes that the chance of him finding Mr. Right in this tiny town is slim to none. So he’s content, but not fulfilled, and perhaps has even forgotten what he’s missing … that is until Marc walks into his life.

Through a twist of fate, Marc and Jordan first meet at a bar outside town and have a one-night stand which leaves an indelible impression on both of them. Thinking they’d never see each other again, they think wistfully about their encounter but know that nothing more will come of it.  Low and behold, the next day Marc and Jordan come face to face in the B&B when Ellie introduces her best friend Jordan to her grandson, Marc.  Jordan and Marc’s romance develops and the relationship unfolds from there, now that they are in close proximity but with an end date of three months when Marc is to return to the city and his job and life there.  The tension between wanting each other and knowing it’s going to end in broken hearts if they give in is the epitome of the Lord Tennyson poetic dilemma: is it “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?

There’s nothing particularly unique about the premise of this story, but what is unique is the pure presentation of the romance between Marc and Jordan. There were many directions this story could have gone, like digging into the acrimonious relationship between Marc and his father, or Jordan’s choice to come out to the town and the repercussions of that decision, but the author chose instead to keep a tight lens on just the relationship between Marc and Jordan.  In one sense, that myopic view made the resolution as presented in the epilogue feel somewhat incomplete because we didn’t really appreciate or understand the angst and emotional turmoil that accompanied either scenario.  However, not veering off on tangents allowed us to experience deeply the complex emotions of Marc and Jordan.  We were treated to a lovely story without misdirection or manufactured angst. Marc and Jordan are written as two adults acting like adults and *gasp* communicating with each other in a very transparent way.  On a number of occasions, I actually found myself surprised because I didn’t expect the open dialogue; so often it’s the miscommunication that drives the misunderstandings and thus, the conflict and angst. Here, that didn’t happen. This is a city boy/country boy romance and this story focuses on whether they want to make that work and what they are willing to compromise or sacrifice for love, while still being their authentic selves.

Overall, Take Me Home is a refreshing, lovely, sexy, heartwarming story that I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon