Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: You & Me

AUTHOR: Tal Bauer

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 382 pages

RELEASE DATE: March 30, 2022

BLURB: 

A single dads, friends-to-lovers, bi awakening MM Romance.

We’re a puzzle made of two pieces.

Landon Larsen is the envy of all the dads in Last Waters, Texas. He’s cool, confident, and put together. He and his son—the high school’s all-star quarterback—have the perfect father-son relationship. He’s such a Super Dad, it’s almost sickening.

I’m not cool, or confident, and my relationship with my son couldn’t be worse. He’s barely speaking to me, and a year after my wife died, we’re both clinging to the wreckage of our family.

Landon’s son and mine are best friends and—of course—Landon is the football Team Dad. And though I know nothing about football, Landon convinces me to volunteer to be closer to my son. Volunteering might give him and me a chance to rebuild what’s broken between us. Now I’m spending all my free time with the team—and with Landon—and the more we’re together, the deeper our friendship grows. My son is opening up, too, little by little. I think I’m getting him back.

There’s just one giant problem.

I’m head over heels for Landon.

I’ve never been attracted to men in my life… until him. Landon draws me in without even trying, and the harder I fight this, the deeper I fall.

Crushing on my son’s best friend’s father must be my biggest parenting failure ever, but I can’t get enough of Landon. Falling for him puts each fragile moment I’ve rebuilt with my son at risk. What would he think if he knew I craved his best friend’s dad? I’m playing with fire, but I can’t turn off these feelings Landon has unlocked inside of me.

Of course, a guy like Landon could never fall for someone like me. It’s pointless to even imagine we could be something together.

So why did I just kiss him?

***

You & Me is a single dads, friends-to-lovers, bi awakening MM romance, full of dads and their exasperating teenage sons, high school sports shenanigans, and #FoundFamily. Come for the epic love, stay for the forever feels.

REVIEW: 

Tal Bauer is a versatile writer with a unique writing style and an uncanny ability to keep me guessing as to exactly what direction he will go with his books.  You & Me is a perfect example of that.  It’s a heartfelt story of two lonely single dads, Luke and Landon, who find love after loss in each other.  However, while you expect the “You & Me” in this story to be Luke and Landon – and it is – “You & Me” represents more than that.  It’s four pairs of people in love:  Luke and Landon, each man and their son (Luke and Emmett and Landon and Bowen), and Emmett and Bowen who are best friends, almost like brothers.

You & Me is a character-driven story, and Mr. Bauer does an excellent job communicating their turmoil.  That is notable given that Luke is the single narrator of this story.  Mr. Bauer deeply explores Luke’s loneliness and desperate need to reconnect with his estranged son who he loves dearly.  Luke’s got a lot to deal with, and we see him wrestling with reassembling his life.  He’s hanging on by a thread when he meets Landon.  Landon saves him in many ways, but Luke helps Landon too.

We understand how Landon, who appears to be the “perfect” dad, struggles in his own way in his relationship with his son.  Unlike Luke and Emmett, Landon and Bowen are incredibly close, but Landon has his own ghosts to banish as he struggles to balance his anxiety over Bowen and his well-being and the complicated relationship between him and his ex-wife.  Landon also has internal struggles about his sexuality, which he only discovered later in life, prompting his divorce.  Interestingly, Landon, who is openly gay, seems to have more conflict about his sexuality and how he came to discover it than Luke does with his bisexual awakening.

Mr. Bauer’s writing is distinctive and always pulls on the heartstrings, usually pretty hard.  His prose tends toward emotional heavy-handedness resulting in high angst.  I usually go into one of Mr. Bauer’s books with a box of tissues at my side.  You & Me has plenty of heartbreaking moments, but compared to some of his other stories like The Jock and The Quarterback, You & Me is much lower angst, albeit still quite poignant.

The most beautiful aspect of this story is the rebuilding of Luke’s relationship with Emmett.  But hand in hand with that is the creation of a loving family of four made up of these two men and their two sons. This portrayal represents the epitome of found family, and you’ll finish this story with a smile on your face and warmth in the cockles of your heart.  You & Me is yet another captivating story by Mr. Bauer that I recommend.

RATING:  

BUY LINK: 

Amazon