Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: His Compass
SERIES: His
AUTHOR: Con Riley
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 306 Pages
RELEASE DATE: January 14, 2021
BLURB:
Tom has one rule: don’t sleep with the crew. A second chance with a younger, gorgeous deckhand tempts him to break it.
After a busy season as a charter-hire skipper, Tom yearns for some downtime. His lonely heart also aches for adventure with someone special, but paying his bills has to come first. A surprise sailing contract and huge bonus offer his first glimpse of freedom for years. There’s only one catch: he must crew with Nick, a deckhand who jumped ship once already.
Nick’s as young and untested as the new yacht they’re contracted to sail, and he’s just as gorgeous. Forced to spend a month as Nick’s captain, Tom discovers depths he hadn’t noticed. He’s captivated, and happier sailing with Nick than he’s been in forever. However, their voyage is finite, and both men keep soul-deep secrets.
As the contract draws to an end, they must get honest about what’s in their hearts if they want to share a life at sea, and love, forever.
Featuring an age gap that’s only a number, forced proximity that makes hiding attraction impossible, and a yacht that’s nothing but trouble, His Compass is the second novel in the His Contemporary MM Romance series from Con Riley.
♥ This shared-world series starts with His Horizon, but each book follows a different couple, and can be enjoyed as a standalone novel complete with a fulfilling happily ever after. ♥
REVIEW:
Note: This is book 2 in this series and can be read as a standalone although it does contain major spoilers for book 1.
Tom is a skipper on yachts that serve wealthy clients for private cruises. On Tom’s lasts journey he’s had a completely clueless borderline worthless crew member – Nick. When he’s ask to test a new yacht, he’s quite disturbed to find out that his crew is none other than the mysterious disappearing Nick! He’s not happy about it, but it seems there’s not alternative. It seems he’s going to have to teach Nick to sail whether he wants to or not.
Nick wants more than sailing lessons though. And that’s against Tom’s one rule. But they make an exception before they start the trial and Tom sees another side of Nick. He wants to help him learn and give him the confidence he’s sorely lacking. He sees through his bravado and recognizing Nick’s anxiety and fear in doing things new. But he’s determined to make a success out of the trial. But they get a bit off plan and he has some things to address at home in Plymouth. Things he’s not shared with anyone else. And it turns around their relationship.
I’ve become a big fan of this author over the years. The Seattle Stories series was the first one I read and now I’m really quite enamored of this newest series. The two MCs, Tom and Nick, come from such different backgrounds. This seems to be a theme in this series as well as previous series. In this case though, Tom is not really aware of Nick’s background because he stops Nick from sharing it with him. He wants Nick to concentrate on the future, not the past. His desire is to keep Nick focused on what he can learn to do and not what he might have failed at previously. Nick’s anxiety ratchets up whenever he’s trying to do something new, but Tom’s encouragement and faith keep him going. Tom has a heavy load to bear as well and we’re well into the story before we discover just exactly what that is and why he’s driven to keep his job and livelihood. When he finally shares this with Nick, things shift between them. They being to understand each other at a deeper and more fundamental level. That doesn’t mean that there is all “smooth sailing” ahead 😉 Both men make assumptions at some point that threaten to sever any sort of personal relationship. Tom jumps to conclusions and so does Nick – more than once. But when they both stop and think and honestly communicate, it seems that they really do make a good team 🙂
I loved getting to see Jude and Rob again in this newest story. There aren’t a lot of secondary characters because the majority of the action takes place while Nick and Tom are on the sailing trial with the new yacht. However, we do get a great glimpse into Tom’s personal life during the latter third of the book and a smaller view into Nick’s as well. Luckily for both of these men, they have some smart folks who are supporting them and calling them out on their mistakes/assumptions. The description of the sailing was a bit lost on me as I’ve never been on anything other than a ship or speedboat, so I really have no idea about sails or navigation but I’m sure others probably got more out of that than I did. I can certainly appreciate that it’s a pretty intricate skillset 🙂 In this story, it really sets the stage for these guys providing support for each other and Tom sharing his knowledge with Nick and letting him prove to himself that he’s not a screwup and cam be trusted – something no one else has ever given him. And of course their chemistry is off the charts. It’s clear that they have something between them, if they can just get out of their own way 😉 From the beginning of the story, I was hoping and cheering that they’d just come clean with one another about their pasts, their fears, their desires, etc. But the author got it right. They needed to grow into their trust before they could be fully authentic and there for each other. The slow burn and trust aspects of the story kept me reading and made it that much more poignant when they finally realized what they had in each other. Highly recommended!
RATING: 
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