Reviewed by Sadonna

TITLE:  The Mayor and the Mystery Man

SERIES:  Single Dads Club

AUTHOR:  A.J. Truman

PUBLISHER:  Truman Books

LENGTH: 274 pages

RELEASE DATE:   March 28, 2022

BLURB:

An MM Fake Relationship, Friends to Lovers Romance

To win this election, I should be trying to kiss babies, not my best friend!

My chances of reelection have gone from slam dunk to nose dive.

What happened? A former hookup sold me out to the press, complete with screenshots. In my defense, between being mayor and parenting twins (double the puberty!), I have zero room for relationships that go beyond one night.

My campaign manager says I need to change the narrative, aka get a boyfriend ASAP to make me seem more (ugh) likeable. The only person I trust with this ruse is my charming best friend Dusty.

Despite living 3,000 miles apart, thanks to endless text chains and 2 a.m. phone calls, we’ve been the constant in each other’s lives, navigating through single dad fails (me) and breakups with cruel ex-girlfriends (all him).

Each day we spend as fake boyfriends feels more real, which is odd because Dusty is straight.

And yet our playful banter is shifting from friendly to flirty.

And he doesn’t stop holding my hand when the crowds leave.

And was he always this attractive?

With reporters sniffing for the truth, exploring these feelings could mean the implosion of my political career and our friendship.

The Mayor and the Mystery Man is book 2 in the Single Dads Club series, but can be read as a standalone. Join Leo and Dusty as they stumble toward their happily ever after!

REVIEW:

Leo McCaslin is running for re-election for Mayor of the town of Sourwood.  The person running against him is a woman on the City Council whose family is behind some of the biggest real estate ventures around.  One of their pet projects is to scuttle the park that Leo is building along the riverfront to sell to the highest bidder for waterfront condos, thereby ruing the view and controlling access to the river itself.  Then a sex scandal hits – of a very minor variety – but it’s enough to put Leo’s re-election in jeopardy.  He’s not coming across as warm and nice like Rita Buchanan and her cute family on tiktok.

Vernita, Leo’s campaign manager is trying to do damage control, but Leo is suffering from a “likability” factor.  One thing that could help him was if he was in a relationship.  Leo’s worried and he’s been calling his best friend Dusty in California to commiserate.  But then he has the idea that maybe he could ask Dusty to be his fake boyfriend for the campaign to help his image.  Dusty has been through a bad breakup and his life is a shambles. He doesn’t share all that with Leo, but he jumps at the chance for a break and heads to Sourwood.

Leo and Dusty are happy to be back together.  Things are going pretty well and Leo seems to be making some gains thanks to Dusty, but then some question whether or not they are really a couple and not just friends.  So they need to go on the offensive with some PDA.  Somehow Dusty not only doesn’t find this to be a problem, but suddenly he’s got new feelings about Leo.  As a man.  And while they are different, he’s not freaked out by them.  It’s not like he’s exactly been with a guy, but he’s been guy adjacent shall we say.  Leo is the one who is freaking out because unbeknownst to Dusty, Leo’s always had a bit of a crush on him and he’s afraid that this will ruin their friendship if they get beyond the friendship zone.  But they are both game to do what they can.

As Rita and her campaign try to one up Leo at every turn, it’s Dusty who come up with some great plans to thwart every dirty trick.  Leo is scared a few times, but with Dusty’s support he goes for it.  At the end of the day, Leo is going to have to fight for both his job and for his relationship with Dusty, no matter the stakes or who wants him to do otherwise.  Leo’s feelings for Dusty run much deeper than his desire to keep his job as it turns out 🙂

I absolutely loved this story.  I really liked the first book in this series, but I think I liked this one even more.  Where there is plenty of humor in this book, it is a little more serious than the first one.  Leo and Dusty are such good guys.  They’ve both got some issues that they are dealing with.  I loved in particular some of the political discussions – about “likability” and how Leo had packaged himself as the mayor.  Dusty really was the impetus for Leo changing how he was perceived by the good people of Sourwood.  I loved Dusty’s insight into some issues with Leo’s kids and how he managed to fit into the family so well.  I’m a sucker for friends to lovers stories and this one was really a very satisfying read.  Getting both POVs was pivotal to understanding the long road of Leo and Dusty’s relationship from their college days through their realization that what they’ve been looking for has been right in front of them the whole time.  Their very legitimate concerns about losing their friendship if they took this next step I thought was well written and discussed.  Leo in particular had been hiding his true feelings about Dusty for years and so when it looks like Dusty might actually want something more, Leo isn’t sure how to handle it.  The awkwardness after the first time of them being intimate was definitely realistically portrayed.  Luckily Dusty was kind of a bulldozer and wouldn’t let Leo get stuck in his head.  There are some good commentaries on social media woven into the narrative as well as some timely and common themes of gentrification and who really gets to decide the direction of a town (we’re dealing with this in my town right now as more expensive condos go up and affordable housing continues to be a problem).

The supporting cast of this story is fantastic.  The other guys from the Single Dads Club feature in helping Leo in his campaign and helping with ideas to thwart Leo’s competitor in the mayoral race, including Cal and Russ from The Falcon and the Foe, with some timeline overlap.  Leo’s kids get an appropriate amount of page time and help us to understand Leo’s motivations.  Vernita, Leo’s campaign manager is an awesome character who really helps Leo and Dusty hold it together.  We even get a nice cameo from the couple in the “prequel” of these series, Three Nights with the Manny, Buzz and Shane.  Mitch is our next Single Dad up to the plate, and I can’t wait to see what awaits him.  This series has truly been fun reading and I can’t wait for the next one. Highly recommended but especially for fans of Friends to Lovers and fake relationships 🙂

RATING:

BUY LINK: 

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