Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: The Right One
AUTHOR: Felice Stevens
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 266 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2021
BLURB:
“Wrong never felt so right.”
Morgan Cantrell is a survivor. After running away from an abusive husband, he’s finally divorced and starting over, but it’s hard. Of course he doesn’t mean to set off the smoke detectors in the building or short out the electricity in his apartment. Mistakes happen. The last thing he wants is to draw the attention of his growly, moody-ass super. Every time they meet, it’s like oil and water—they just don’t mix.
Leo DeLuca learned at an early age that the people who are supposed to love you only hurt you. He’s happy to keep to himself, but the walking disaster of a new tenant in 5C won’t stop getting in his way and into his business. They can’t even speak to each other without arguing, but Leo has to admit—it’s kind of a turn on. That must be the reason why he can’t stop thinking about the guy in 5C. Or wanting to touch him. But hell, no. That would be a mistake.
One kiss leads to an explosive night both men fight to forget—after all, Leo has nothing in common with the sweet kindergarten teacher while Morgan is looking for a happily ever after he knows Leo can’t give. Yet it’s Morgan who Leo leans on to help deal with his painful past, and Leo is the key to unlocking Morgan’s inner strength.
Trusting someone is never easy, but it might be the only way they discover that everything they think is wrong about each other, could be everything that’s right.
*This book deals with domestic and verbal abuse and contains discussion of past traumatic events
REVIEW:
The Right One is Felice Stevens’ latest standalone story and focuses on two men dealing with trauma and struggling to open themselves up to love again. Both men have suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hands of a spouse or parent. Most occurs off-page but if this is a trigger for you, I’d skip this one.
Leo and Morgan are about as opposite as can be. Leo is the motorcycle riding, tough-talking, emotionally closed off owner and landlord of Morgan’s new apartment building. Morgan is a sweet, innocent, kindergarten teacher, a “babe in the woods” in the big bad city, who has learned up close and personal about the ugliness in life and of people who claim to love you. When Morgan and Leo meet when Morgan moves into the run-down apartment, Morgan is a bit of a disaster. He’s still skittish about his ex-husband coming to find him and nervous about living in the city on his own. Whether due to anxiety or just natural predisposition, Morgan is a discombobulated klutz, wreaking havoc in and around his apartment.
Leo alternates between being annoyed and downright pissed off at his troublesome new tenant. Plus, he makes a snap judgment that Morgan is a snob who doesn’t belong in Leo’s dump of a building. What results is a pseudo-enemies to lovers progression of Leo and Morgan’s relationship. The shift into love, though, happens quickly without a seamless connection from point A (they hate each other) to point B (they’re in love).
Both Leo and Morgan grapple with ugly pasts and hold secrets, and it, not unexpectedly, impacts their personalities and reactions to each other. Ms. Stevens has done a nice job with this type of dynamic in her other books. Here, I found it less successful. Ms. Stevens’ strives to balance the angst and emotional potency of Morgan and Leo’s respective traumatic experiences with snarky banter and spicy, sexy scenes reflective of a burgeoning new attraction and relationship. In order to do so, the story shows us different aspects and sides of Leo and Morgan, but they are stark, irreconcilable contrasts, not varied aspects of their personalities that, while different, reconcile into a cohesive whole.
Leo, in particular, is a difficult character to portray in a positive way because he consistently comes across as an a**hole. Snarky comments intended to rile Morgan up tipped over into demeaning and belittling commentary. Leo’s persistent need to poke at and upset Morgan translated to Leo acting like a d!ck, although likely intended to read as Leo doing the equivalent of pigtail pulling. The story explains that Leo’s background has caused his grouchy personality and emotional unavailability. But there’s much more to Leo and the story wasn’t able to excavate it in an authentic, believable way. The result was a guy who seemed to be all over the place. One minute Leo couldn’t stand Morgan and wanted him gone and mere paragraphs later, he thought he was sweet and didn’t want him to leave.
Morgan, similarly, seemed to have a bit of Jekyll and Hyde going on with his personality. I struggled to reconcile his understandable fear and skittishness with his lack of fear and assertiveness in relation to Leo. Frankly, I just couldn’t get my head around why on earth Morgan would want anything to do with Leo based on Leo’s actions and attitude.
Overall, The Right One has the bones of a great story. In my opinion, the end product felt like the result of rushing. I would have liked to see the story refined further, providing a more nuanced approach to the narrative and the development of Morgan and Leo’s characters and their relationship. More infer it and less tell it. More granularity and less summary.
My view of The Right One may be a case of “it’s not the book; it’s me”. I do enjoy Ms. Stevens’ writing on the whole, and The Right One fits within her general writing style. However, I was looking for something more subtle in the way the story was communicated. But hey, that’s just me. If you’ve enjoyed Ms. Stevens’ prior work, give it a shot; you may find you enjoy this one more than I did.
RATING: 
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