Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  Best Laid Plans

SERIES:  Garnet Run

AUTHOR:  Roan Parrish

PUBLISHER:  Carina Adores

LENGTH:  266 pages

RELEASE DATE:  February 23, 2021

BLURB:

A man who’s been moving his whole life finally finds a reason to stay put.

Charlie Matheson has spent his life taking care of things. When his parents died two days before his eighteenth birthday, he took care of his younger brother, even though that meant putting his own dreams on hold. He took care of his father’s hardware store, building it into something known several towns over. He took care of the cat he found in the woods…so now he has a cat.

When a stranger with epic tattoos and a glare to match starts coming into Matheson’s Hardware, buying things seemingly at random and lugging them off in a car so beat-up Charlie feels bad for it, his instinct is to help. When the man comes in for the fifth time in a week, Charlie can’t resist intervening.

Rye Janssen has spent his life breaking things. Promises. His parents’ hearts. Leases. He isn’t used to people wanting to put things back together—not the crumbling house he just inherited, not his future and certainly not him. But the longer he stays in Garnet Run, the more he can see himself belonging there. And the more time he spends with Charlie, the more he can see himself falling asleep in Charlie’s arms…and waking up in them.

Is this what it feels like to have a home—and someone to share it with?

REVIEW:

Note:  This is the second book in this series and as such, has spoilers for the first book.  That being said, it can be read as a standalone.  For maximum enjoyment, however, I highly recommend reading these books in order.

Rye Janssen is looking for a fresh start.  Hi life in Seattle has been crumbling around him and with his final eviction, he learns that he’s inherited a house in Wyoming from a grandfather he’d never heard of or from.  But he figures, this is his chance.  What he doesn’t figure on is that the house is in such horrible condition, that it’s barely a step above sleeping outside – and in fact might be just as dangerous.  But he is determined to make this work.  Mostly because he doesn’t have any alternatives.

When Rye shows up at Mathison Hardware, Charlie takes note.  First he’s new in town, and that’s unusual in itself.  But also, it seems like the guy is buying random stuff and doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing – as determined by the fact that he’s looking at YouTube videos while he’s shopping.  After he shows up to buy lumber and insists that he can make three trips in his beater of a car on it’s last leg, Charlie insists on taking the lumber out to the project site in his truck.  It’s then that Charlie realizes that Rye has inherited a house that is closest to his brother Jack’s place and that it is a disaster.  He hasn’t been inside, but he’s sure there is much more work to be done than Rye realizes.

After Ry discovers that the lumber he bought isn’t going to work and heads back to Mathison Hardware, Charlie decides that he is going to insist on helping with the work. He’s worried for Rye’s safety and he like to get things done.  What he finds in Rye’s house is far worse than he expects.  There are many more issue than even he anticipated.  He proposes that he help Rye and get his friends to help as well.  Rye cannot understand why Charlie wants to help him.  In his experience, that is not what people do.  That certainly wasn’t his experience in Seattle or even within his own very dysfunctional family.  He’s been on his own since he was 16, so this is not normal within his frame of reference.  But he’s quickly realizing that he will not be able to do this on his own.

After Charlie helps him identify the major problems. there are a few hiccups.  The biggest one being money, time and a job.  But once again, it’s Charlie to the rescue.  He gives Rye a job at the hardware store, he get his friends to help and he has some ideas on the money side as well.  Rye is still having trouble accepting this though.  He’s also curious, because he’s attracted to Charlie and he feels like Charlie is interested in him, but he can’t get a read on him.  And then he thinks he’s made a big mistake – maybe Charlie isn’t interested in him that way at all.  But still waters run deep and there are a lot of hidden depths to Charlie.  There are things that he hasn’t allowed himself to indulge in thinking about for many years.  He’s got a lot of baggage around being thrust into the role of adult, guardian, home owner, and business owner during his senior year in high school.  He figured out a way to be able to handle it, but it’s definitely left long last gaps in his transformation to functional adult.  He’s not done much thinking about his own desires and happiness.

Rye makes it his mission to help Charlie move forward.   Charlie shares things with him that he’s never shared with any other person and it’s transformational for him.  Rye is the most honest person he’s ever met and while he’s astounded and a little irritated at first, he comes to appreciate and embrace that characteristic because it helps him to do the same.  There are a number of unexpected discovering that provide some real aha moments when it comes to Charlie’s personality.  Some of them are shocking and lead to new levels of understanding and changes to a number of relationships in this book.  In the end, though, Rye and Charlie work hard to move forward in both of their lives.   Together.

I absolutely loved this story.  There are so many delightfully funny moments.  I literally laughed out loud.  Then there were absolute moments of grief and pathos around both Rye and Charlie’s pasts and what they’ve dealt with.  Bottom line is that this is a fantastic romance between two men who really see each other.   They appreciate each other’s qualities and are surprised to find out how compatible they are.  It’s a joy to watch them figure out what their relationship can be.  As much as Rye thinks Charlie is bossy and has a hero complex at the beginning, he really admires how Charlie took on the big responsibilities – when he was really a kid himself.  But he also recognizes that Charlie has never deviated from this path, even when a lot of those things are no longer his  responsibility.  A lot of eyes are opened in this book – not just Charlie and Rye, but Jack and Simon, the protagonists from the first book in this series, and a lot of other folks in small town of Garnet Run.   There are a number of surprises  that are absolutely perfectly revealed during the course of this story.  My heart was breaking multiple times for both Charlie and Rye.  And also I was cheering them on the entire way.  I just wanted them to find their soft place to land in each other.  Really well done with such a lovely and heartwarming resolution.  Brilliantly done.  Highly recommended and I cannot wait to see if there will be more from Garnet Run.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Carina Adores

Amazon