Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Perfect Ten
SERIES: The Off-Season, Book 1
AUTHOR: K.M. Neuhold
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 222 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 4, 2022
BLURB:
A cheeky virgin, a surprisingly romantic bartender, one house, and six months of nothing but fun…
I came to Palm Island two seasons ago, confused about my life and desperate for a change. The island drew me in, but I’m still not sure why.
Maybe it’s time I cut my losses and go back home, back to med school like I always planned.
But when the breathtaking, flirtatious, tattooed bartender I’ve been crushing on for ages offers to let me room with him this off-season, there’s no way I’m leaving now.
I can’t believe I’ve lived here this long without truly appreciating everything the island has to offer: the beauty of its untouched nature, how to catch a wave, the appeal of casual s…well, you know. But Ten seems determined to make sure I experience every last one, and then some.
Will this be the last off-season I spend here or could this thing between Ten and I be perfect?
***Welcome to Palm Island: Come for the sweaty nights and beach parties, stay for the endless swoon and heart melting romance.
REVIEW:
Perfect Ten, the latest from K.M. Neuhold and the first book in her new series, The Off-Season, revolves around the life and times of the residents of Palm Island, an isolated, gay resort island paradise. The only way on and off the island is a ferry that runs with frequency for only six months of the year during tourist season. Once off-season starts on Labor Day, the ferry rarely runs, essentially trapping the Palm Island residents there for six months until tourist season begins again. Perfect Ten shines a spotlight on what the few residents of Palm Island get up to during the off-season, and it’s as sexy and wild as you might expect.
Ten is a thirty-six-year-old doctor who was just weeks shy of completing his residency when he walked away from it all after a car accident nearly killed him. He changed his whole life, moving to Palm Island where he works as a bartender. Bambi is ten years younger than Ten, and coincidentally, is studying to be a doctor. He left med school after his first year when his father died, and came to Palm Island to mourn and try to heal. He has been working with Ten at the bar for two years, but Bambi’s never fully settled, knowing he’d need to return to New York at some point to finish his schooling.
Ten and his buddies are a bunch of guys who like to drink and party, but who also love the calm, meditative nature of the sun, sand, and sea. They love to hike and swim, and surfing is life. In terms of romance, they are all hit it and quit it, but with such a small pool of men during the off-season, it’s getting a bit incestuous between them. They dub themselves sluts, and Ten is the worst of them. But he starts to realize that maybe he wants something more, with an innocent, introverted virgin – Bambi.
*sigh* How I wanted to love Perfect Ten but just … didn’t. It’s a sexy, silly, super sweet, low-angst, and fun story with steam and shenanigans, that’s focused on two endearing main characters in Ten and Bambi. I expected I’d love it just as I loved Ms. Neuhold’s Fours Bears Construction series. After all, Perfect Ten contains many of the same elements.
Ms. Neuhold’s books generally contain playfulness, rowdy behavior, bawdy language, and irreverent antics, like Ten and his crew get up to here. She usually shows the love and affection between the featured couple through swoony actions and plenty of hot AF sex scenes, as she does here with Ten and Bambi. She also typically constructs her stories around a found family, a group of men with a bond of friendship and support, as she does here with Ten and his friends, and as shown through how they readily bring Bambi into the fold. But despite all of these things being present in Perfect Ten, they, strangely, don’t produce the same result. It’s like two plus two added up to three and a half, instead of four.
I suspect it’s because several things served as detractors or distractors, at least for me. For example, Ms. Neuhold lays the groundwork for some intriguing backstories, like Ten’s car accident, the circumstance of him becoming a doctor, Bambi’s family, and his mourning and subsequent decision to come to the Island, but she doesn’t pull the thread on them. Additionally, Perfect Ten‘s premise is implausible (a bunch of guys that just frolic and f*ck for six months of the year without a care in the world? really??) as are some farfetched facts (how can these guys afford to stay on this Island year-round when they don’t work half the year? and Ten, a doctor??).
Also, the excessive use of nicknames grated on me, Bambi’s nickname being the worst offender. I found it challenging to focus on the storyline when constantly confronted with these names: Ten, Bambi, Nacho, Easy, Raven, Storm, Angel, Devil, Hen, Lux, Lyric, Boston and Goose. I read the blurb for book two, Taken by Storm, which will focus on Storm and Hen, and because of the nicknames, I immediately thought of chickens in a downpour. Clearly, the OTT names are problematic for me, but YMMV.
Overall, Perfect Ten is not perfect, but it is enjoyable. It introduces us to a host of intriguing characters that I’m hoping to learn more about in the following books in the series. While this book didn’t hit the mark for me, I’m still on board for book two, and Perfect Ten may still hit the mark for you.
RATING: 
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