Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Limelight
SERIES: Vino & Veritas Book #15
AUTHOR: E. Davies
PUBLISHER: Heart Eyes Press
LENGTH: 2740KB
RELEASE DATE: August 12, 2021
BLURB:
Save the bees, ride a rock star.
Formerly famous . . . and planning to keep it that way.
After my band kicked me out, I ran away to Vermont, changed my name, and kept my head down. So far, it’s working and nobody knows who I am. Or who I was. Until I see geeky poet Caleb stumbling through his first open mic night and I can’t help rescuing him. He’s as sweet as the honey my bees make and sexy enough to make me rethink so many things. But I can’t tell him my secret, or I’ll lose the anonymous life I worked so hard to build.
Everyone warns me he’s too good to be true.
I can’t believe a gorgeous, successful winemaker like Tag is into shy, geeky little accountant me. But he helps me blossom and believe in my talent, and works his way into my heart and my bed… not necessarily in that order. I’m falling for a man for the first time, and now I know what the missing number in my equation has always been.
When lies are revealed, though, someone’s going to get stung . . .
REVIEW:
E. Davies certainly picked an apropos title for this low-key, super sweet M/M romance. Limelight, the fifteenth entry in the multi-author Vino & Veritas series set in Sarina Bowen’s True North universe, features an opposites-attract, age-gap love story with a precious, unique meet-cute as its premise. The story is high on everything sweet and low on angst and provides an easy, enjoyable read that is just happy, happy, happy.
Tag is the former rock star frontman of an uber-popular band on the rise to superstardom. Now, he’s semi-hiding away in Burlington, Vermont, tending to honeybees, making mead, and loving on his adorbs overgrown chocolate Lab puppy Queenie. All he wants to do is avoid the limelight.
In contrast, Caleb, a young, sweet, accountant with the heart and soul of a poet, wants nothing more than to be thrust into the limelight for his writing talent. But Caleb’s well-meaning but overprotective family has undercut his self-confidence. So when he finally pushes himself out of his comfort zone and gets up in front of the Vino & Veritas crowd to do an open mic poetry reading, he freezes up.
Tag happens to be in the right place at the right time. He’s at V&V for a delivery of his mead, lays eyes on Caleb up at the mic, and just can’t look away. His rock star instincts kick in and he can’t stop himself from jumping in to save Caleb by helping him through his stage fright.
The romance that plays out is instalove and yet slow-burn. Caleb is inexperienced so they decide to take it slow even though it’s obvious from the first moment that a strong connection exists between them. The trajectory of their relationship is pretty straightforward, with an obvious looming conflict that ultimately presents itself in a rather anticlimactic way.
Tag and Caleb endeared themselves, but something about them as a couple just didn’t click for me. I suspect this was mainly due to some inconsistencies in the story that kept pulling me from the thrall of the romance into the reality of whether the way Caleb and Tag were acting made sense.
For example, Caleb is sweet, introverted, and inexperienced. Yet he’s inexplicably forward and even aggressive in his flirting and sexual advances. The words on the page would say he felt awkward or anxious and show him nervously giggling or squirming. But then he’d be as aggressive in the bedroom as someone with much more experience and confidence. I just couldn’t get out of my own head when I was reading, too busy trying to reconcile these incongruities. Whether or not I was ultimately successful in rationalizing them is almost beside the point. The whole exercise broke the romantic aura the author was no doubt trying to create and it impacted my enjoyment of the story.
That being said, Limelight definitely has some bright spots. For example, Caleb’s family dynamic surprised me. It had a complexity to it I didn’t expect and I ended up really enjoying their relationship with Caleb. Also, Tag’s belief in Caleb’s talent and dreams, and Caleb flourishing as a result of Tag’s unwavering support, provide a beautiful message that is perhaps the best part of this story in my view.
Overall, Limelight overarchingly satisfies a reader’s desire for a warm and fluffy romance with two very likable guys. If you’ve been faithfully making your way through this extensive Vino & Veritas series, and if you are able to disconnect better than I did while reading, you may want to give this a try.
RATING: 
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