Reviewed by Stephen K

TITLE: Hide Your Love Away

SERIES: If I Fell #1

AUTHOR: Mia Kerick

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 221 pages

RELEASE DATE: July 26^th , 2021

BLURB:

Too young.
Too damaged.
Too close to Cole’s enormous secret for comfort.

Rough and tumble Edgewater University maintenance man Colton Ledger should keep his distance from the sleek and snarky college junior who has caught his attention. After all, Timmy is half his age, not to mention that Cole has a secret life he can’t afford to reveal. So why is he compelled to undermine the young man’s cocky game and lure him into his private life?

As the product of an unwanted late-life pregnancy, Timmy Hale has been emotionally shattered by a loveless upbringing. After years of desperate attempts to garner attention from his apathetic parents fail, young adult Timmy changes course. He hides his feelings of vulnerability behind meaningless sex, endless partying, and a big, bad attitude. Until Cole comes along…

When trouble finds Timmy in the form of a dangerous and relentless stalker, Cole must decide if Timmy is worth the risk of coming clean about the confidence he’s obliged to keep, as Timmy weighs the potential havoc falling in love could wreak on his heart.

Hide Your Love Away is Book One in the IF I FELL Series.

REVIEW:

In my mind, daddy son relationships have always felt rooted in unsatisfied needs. An unmet need for a nurturing adult male presence in the younger man’s life, and an unmet need for filial affection in the life of the older partner.

Having read a couple M/M book recently with age differences and some daddy-son fantasies, this tale appealed to me as being somewhat different… while still confirming my ideas. Here the “daddy” wasn’t necessarily a “sugar daddy” in that he was blue collar, while the younger man was in college. It also intrigued me that the younger man here was looking for a nurturing quality in a relationship that he’d apparently NOT gotten when he was growing up as the youngest in a brood of five.

Finding out that the older man had a son of his own who’d been spoiled a bit put me in mind of Able Magwich and Philip Pirrup and reminded me that some issues never change.

I was a bit surprised that the smart and snarky younger man insisted on being called Timmy. I suppose its a generational thing but I’ve always associated that name with the Lassie shows from my childhood. Names do often carry odd connotations. Not surprisingly the somewhat older diamond in the rough here is named Cole. I did chortle when Tim took joy in pointing out early on that the boy who was cruising him (and who Tim knew from past experience was poorly endowed) was named Lance.

While it was “convenient” that Timmy and Cole’s son, Robbie, were classmates, it wasn’t all that unbelievable. I’ve encountered more unlikely developments in fiction of late. Seeing straight boy Robbie’s character arc was a nice touch as well. Seeing how stoically Cole fended off Robbie’s more licentious demands robbed this relationship of much of the “ick” factor that some age gap scenarios can engender.

Of course, the downside of that is that this book contains fewer actual “naughty bits” than many books in this genre. But after so much exposure to the more graphic oohs and ahhs and “tab A goes into slot B” descriptions in other works; sweetness, kindness, and making a loved one feel like he’s worth loving is a satisfying change.

I am curious to see how this couple would evolve once their initial needs are met. And, with this book identified as the first in a series, I may well get that curiosity satisfied. Let’s hope so. This author has proven that she can tell an engrossing tale with likable characters that I enjoyed spending time with.

RATING: 

BUY LINK:

Amazon