Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Fighting Attraction
SERIES: Sentinel Protection
AUTHOR: Laura John
PUBLISHER: self-published
LENGTH: 225 Pages
RELEASE DATE: October 7, 2021
BLURB:
Stepping out of our comfort zone is where real love begins.
I never thought I’d fall in love. I was content with my life the way it was.
Then a man came into my life like a tornado. He made me feel things I’d never felt before and completely turned me inside out.
When I was just coming to terms with my feelings for him, he got swept off the market and I lost my chance.
Life hit him hard, and now I have a second chance. Can I push aside my insecurities and fight for our love, or am I already too late?
Trigger warning: This book has a scene of sexual assault and in-depth talks of conversion therapy.
REVIEW:
Damon is a band manager whose last relationship ended when he caught his ex in his house and his bed with both a man and a woman on their anniversary when he made a surprise early return home to celebrate. Side note: I’ve yet to read a book where that idea goes over well or leads to anything good. So six months later he’s on the road with the band in Las Vegas for some concerts and he just wants to get laid. So he gets really drunk and makes perhaps an unwise choice and gets assaulted and nearly raped. But he’s rescued by the band’s head of security.
Bruno, said head of security, feels guilty that he didn’t get there earlier to save Damon from the assault. He tries to get Damon to tell his friends what happened, but Damon refuses saying he doesn’t want anyone else to know how stupid he was to get into that situation. No matter how much Bruno tries to convince Damon that he’s not at fault for another person’s terrible actions, he can’t convince Damon of that. So there they are – both feeling guilty and Damon feeling stupid. Damon’s on a hair trigger and when they get back to Sienna, Bruno convinces him to at least confide in his friends.
Damon confesses to his gal pals what happened and it seems that perhaps most of them have also experienced sexual assault. One convinces him to talk to her therapist and so reluctantly he does begin seeing her. She tries to persuade him to work on factions and not opinions. He does eventually share his past with her and she realizes he’s got a lot of baggage he’s dealing with.
Then there is the situation with Bruno. Bruno has never been with a man before but he’s attracted to Damon. When Damon got with his ex though, he backed off. So for two and a half years, they have been distant – with Damon assuming Bruno hated him because he was gay. Bruno was just trying to keep his feelings in check. But when he finally confesses his feelings, Damon wants go full bore ahead. He wants to demand that Bruno take away the bad memories and “replace them” with good ones. He has trouble accepting Bruno’s feelings and wants to press for more than Bruno may be ready for. This leads to more discussions with Damon’s therapist.
Quickly Bruno and Damon are on the same page. There is still some issues for Bruno coming out since he’s not dated a man before. He’s not really worried about it except for his family But things go better than expected. And this seems to be the last roadblock in their relationship.
I really really struggled with this book. The story is told from alternating first person POV and I just did not connect with either character. I didn’t believe much about this story. I get that Damon was dealing with the aftereffects of conversion therapy as a teenager, but the constant in head negative talk got quite repetitive in the story and it lost it’s impact quite early on. Too much of the story did not ring true to me. First time with a man a first time giving a blow job and the guy deepthroats? That’s some mad skillz man. The thing that really bugged me the most though was the whole looking at sex as a way to “heal” from the bad memories. I just could not relate to that mode of thinking. I just found too many of Damon’s actions unbelievable. I didn’t read any of the previous series books which this new series is apparently related to as they are all M/F pairings save one. Maybe I would have found the relationship more plausible had I done that. But I just struggled with the actions and reactions of the characters to all the drama/trauma and so I didn’t believe this love story. The relationship goes from 0-65 in 4.8 seconds which was also hard to fathom. The writing style didn’t appeal to me either, so it’s definitely as case of this book was not for me. As usual, YMMV.
RATING: 
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