Reviewed by Kat

TITLE: Bigger Than Us

SERIES: The Shoe Books

AUTHOR: Jodi Payne & BA Tortuga

PUBLISHER: Tygerseye Publishing

LENGTH: 249 pages

RELEASE DATE: November 23, 2021

BLURB:

When Daniel McCaverty gets the call that his best friend and mentor up in Vermont has cancer, he expects to have plenty of time to go help. He never expects that Adam will be gone before he gets there, or that he will suddenly be in charge of Adam’s two small children. He’s a loner, an artist, and a wanderer. What’s he supposed to do now?

Mitchell Brown is a white-collar kind of guy. Organized. Careful. He has a plan in place for Adam’s kids long before Daniel arrives, and is shocked when Daniel is given custody. But for Vicky and Emory, he’s willing to put his hurt and confusion aside to help Daniel figure things out, to make the whole situation work.

Daniel and Mitch have to deal with a tidal wave of grief while getting one kid started in school, and keeping up with their work. But they’re going to have to figure out their unexpected attraction to each other if they’re going to build something together that’s bigger than either one of them alone.

REVIEW:

This was a real one. One that tugged at your heart from every direction.

Daniel thought he had more time to get to his best friend’s side and help him deal with this cancer thing. After all, people don’t die from cancer anymore do they? But, when he gets back down out of the mountains to civilization and cell coverage, he doesn’t expect to hear Adam voice one last time in a recording. Now he’s headed to see is godchildren and bury the man that is more than a best friend and he doesn’t know how to say goodbye. Color the wandering, loner artist confused when he learns that Adam left the business to his partner, Mitch, but left him the home, all his possessions to him. Oh and guardianship of his two small children, a precocious 5 year old girl and a poop machine baby boy! What the heck was Adam thinking? And how could he have blindsided Mitch, who had basically stopped his life when Adam fell ill, with this revelation?

I honestly believe that Adam knew exactly what he was doing when he set the two men up. His best friends together to love on each other through their grief and raise and love his babies he had to leave behind. Yeah, he knew exactly what he was doing!

I loved that Vicki and Emory were an important and important part of this story. Both men were bachelors that lived solitary lives, more so with Daniel because he was a wandering artist hence his home being a fancy travel trailer, and suddenly thrust into parenting was a huge adjustment. And Adam made the right decision choosing Daniel as guardian. I think he knew that Mitch could never leave those babies so now Daniel was forced to settle down there and let them into his life fully and Mitch would just fold into the new family dynamic. Mr. Poops-a-Lot and explosive diarrhea is something I’m well familiar with and it’s definitely a chore. And the precocious Miss Vicki kept them on their toes from the start. Emory won’t have memories of his parent’s but Vicki lost what was her whole life in a super short span of time and adjustments were going to be rocky with lots flare-ups and abandonment issues.

Even though this was a tough story to read at times, the love and caring that developed between Mitch and Daniel was touching and I loved that it didn’t feel rushed. Yes, it was a relatively short time span however, due to the circumstances that forced them to be living together and raising the kids together, they found true and lasting love. I love all the Shoe Book stories and really loved this book. They are all touching, real and are stand-alone books with a reoccurring theme of men-with-children struggling with adversities to over come.

RATING:

BUY LINK:

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