Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: Dirty Forty

SERIES: Friendship and Desire Book  1

AUTHOR: Mia Monroe

PUBLISHER: self-published

RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2021

LENGTH: 250 pages

BLURB: 

If I’m as straight as I always thought, why does kissing my best friend feel so right?

Zach has been my ride or die since we were nine. Business partners, roommates, best friends…we do everything together. But the last thing either of us expected was to be staring forty in the face just as single as we both were when we made a silly, drunken marriage pact twenty years ago. The problem? Zach is gay…and, well, I’m not.

Under pressure from family, that pact comes rushing back, and I lock us into a fake engagement. But is it possible some part of me wants it to be real?

Convincing Zach I’m legit is another story. With each passing day, I wonder if my feelings of affection for my best friend can morph into the love I desperately want in my life. Something in Zach’s eyes tells me we can have it all if we just try.

It may have taken me a lifetime to see Zach with new eyes, but with every touch and discovery, it’s been worth the wait. On the edge of Dirty Forty, it’s time to go for it.

All I have to do is convince Zach it’s real.

Dirty Forty is a best friends to lovers, marriage pact, demi/bisexual awakening featuring thirty years of pining, a fake engagement, curious kisses, and two guys finally embracing what’s always been in front of them.

REVIEW: 

In the interest of full disclosure, I am partial to Mia Monroe’s writing.  There’s an ever-present, underlying tenor of optimism in her stories that makes them not only unique, but uplifting.  When I read a Mia Monroe book, I see the world the way I want it to be, the way I hope it will be.  

Ms. Monroe infuses her stories with an equilibrium that presents all types of people with all types of backgrounds and proclivities as equals.  She carefully treats her characters with the same level of respect and dignity. There’s a difference between saying that everyone is equal and writing it in a way that presumes it as a fact, not needing exhibition or explanation.

Her standalone romance, Dirty Forty, is yet another example of this refreshing, reassuring writing.  In fact, Dirty Forty is my favorite story of hers to date, and that’s saying something because I adored her whole Tattoos & Temptation series, and her new Written in the Stars series is fabulous as well. (If you haven’t already, grab those books.  You can also check out my thoughts on Stars Collide here and Gravity here.)  And can we just pause for a minute and pay homage to the cover of Dirty Forty … It would make me read the book all on its own.  Or maybe just stare at the cover model for a while.  And then read it.  Yummy. 

Anyway, I digress … That’s Dominic on the cover and it’s a perfect representation of the character Ms. Monroe has vividly brought to life.  He’s open, happy and engaging.  He’s part of a large Italian family with all of the typical attendant dynamics.  Dom desperately wants to be wholly and completely in love, married with kids … the white-picket fence ideal.  His family expects that from him as well, and the familial pressure and constant feeling that he’s a disappointment are getting to him.

At a family dinner, Dom impulsively blurts out a marriage pact that he and his life long best friend Zach entered into on Zach’s twenty-first birthday, nineteen years earlier.  If they are both still unmarried when they turn 40, they’ll marry each other.  Well, Dom doesn’t actually tell his family it was a marriage pact.  He just announces that he and Zach talked about getting married.  In doing so, he inadvertently locks them into a fake engagement.  Once the words left his mouth, the marriage planning train left the station.  

Dom’s frustration and sadness at turning 40, still unmarried, is painful for the reader to see because Dom is such a loving, giving, generally happy person.  Dom blames himself for being alone.  He tries to pinpoint where he went wrong.  All I can say is, ouch.  I just wanted to wrap my arms around him, hold him tight and tell him it would all be ok.  The emotional complexity and “realness” of Dom are remarkable, and you can’t help but fall for him hook, line and sinker.

We aren’t the only ones who feel that way.  Zach has been hopelessly in love with Dom since they were kids.  However, knowing Dom has always identified as straight, Zach figured he could never have what he wants.  Over the years, he’s (unsuccessfully) tried to move on.  Dom, for his part, is so clueless that he can’t see the most obvious thing of all – that Zach is head-over-heels in love with him.

Dom and Zach have been best friends for close to three decades.  They are that pair that everyone thinks is together or knows should be together.  Dom and Zach, though?  Oblivious.  These guys have a relationship that is so close, they are like one person.  They finish each other’s sentences, anticipate each other’s needs.  They live together, co-own their landscaping company, share the same set of friends. Dom and Zach are seamlessly and deeply integrated into each other’s families.  No one can compete with that type of relationship.  #goals

However, these two fools don’t realize they have everything they want right in front of them.  They’ve been unconsciously sabotaging their own love lives for twenty years because they’ve been holding out for each other, even though they didn’t realize it.  Dom even acknowledges some inexplicable feelings about Zach have been humming beneath the surface forever.  But he doesn’t recognize them for what they are, perhaps impeded by his fixed view of his sexuality.

The premise here is fairly straightforward, but it’s got a great hook and Ms. Monroe always makes even the ordinary fresh and new.  The twist in this story is not Dom’s demi/bisexual awakening.  Instead, it’s Zach who is the obstacle to be overcome.  His fear of jeopardizing the single most important relationship in his life, his friendship with Dom, to “try” a romantic relationship, absolutely paralyzes him.  “It’s too good to be true” rings loudly in his mind.  It drives him to question Dom’s own self-awareness.  He doubts that Dom knows himself, knows what he really wants.  And that is a wholly different type of frustration for Dom to grapple with.  It lends conflict to the story, but not the conflict you’d expect.  Ms. Monroe deftly turns the best friends to lovers, bi-sexual awakening trope on its head.  It was unexpected and made the story utterly addictive.

Where the T&T series leaned more towards exploration of diverse, kink-friendly relationships, Dirty Forty comes at love and relationships from the opposite vantage point – but with the same thoughtful, non-judgmental treatment.  Here, we see a guy who is fully invested in achieving a lasting “traditional” relationship.  He unapologetically admits and pursues what many in this day and age would consider an old-fashioned construct.  However, Ms. Monroe presents Dom’s views and desires as acceptable and worthy, just as every one of her T&T relationships were.  She then shows how Dom achieves his #goals with Zach, achieving the traditional with the non-traditional. #loveislove

A lot can be unpacked from this deceptively simple romance, but at its foundation, Dirty Forty is an excellent, well-crafted, superbly written story of two men who fell for each other long ago and are now slowly and belatedly realizing it.  This story checks all the boxes:  A loveable couple that “fit.  Swoony, deeply felt love.  Hot as hell sex scenes.  Taut sexual tension.  Terrific, secondary cast.  Humor, happiness and a rock solid HEA.  Dirty Forty has universal appeal and in my view, the only way you can go wrong with this one is not reading it. 

RATING: 

BUY LINK: 

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