Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  French Kiss

SERIES:  Flying into Love, Book 1

AUTHOR:  CF White

PUBLISHER:  Self-published

LENGTH: 226 pages

RELEASE DATE:  May 30, 2022

BLURB:

Can a French kiss persuade an uptight Englishman to leave his city behind and start a new life in rural France?

Clean-cut London businessman Dale Calverley doesn’t do relationships.

Rugged French handyman Valentin Aubrey doesn’t do city men.

When Dale hires Valentin to help him fix up his inherited farmhouse estate in rural France and sell to the highest bidder, sparks fly.

Complete opposites, can they really expect their insta-lust to last beyond the storm that forces them together?

But how can Dale walk away from a man so alluringly rogue as Valentin Aubrey?

And how can Valentin expect a man so money-orientated to throw away his career and stay in the wilderness with him?

French Kiss (Flying into Love #1) is a Contemporary, Opposites Attract, Age-Gap, Forced Proximity MM Romance featuring an uptight English businessman with a preference for nameless hook ups and a rugged half-French handyman with a chequered past.

REVIEW:

French Kiss, the first book in CF White’s new Flying into Love series, provides a sweet story with a surprisingly strong undercurrent of poignancy. The premise revolves around Dale, an uptight, money-is-everything, career-obsessed London businessman, who finds himself as a fish out of water in rural France.  He’s been called there to handle the disposition of his deceased father’s estate.  

Dale and his father, a famous romance writer, had grown apart some time ago, so traveling to the middle of nowhere deep in the French countryside to sell his father’s dilapidated country farmhouse estate appears to be nothing more than an inconvenience to Dale, especially in light of his caricaturish demanding boss harping on him about shirking his responsibilities in closing an important deal.  Additionally, Dale is excessively disgruntled by the lack of modern conveniences – and no internet or cell service *gasp* – and the necessity of speaking and understanding French, neither of which he can do, because people who speak English are few and far between.  Compound that by the unexpected discovery that his father’s home is not abandoned after all.  It has a tenant – the gorgeous, burly handyman Valentin, who’s been living with his father for the past year as his caretaker and handyman, fixing up the farm.  Dale quickly realizes this endeavor will be more complicated than he anticipated and he’s none too happy about it.

But just as we are almost convinced that Dale is nothing more than a hard-hearted snob, hidden layers start to appear.  We see that there’s more to Dale than meets the eye. He’s actually grieving the loss of his father and the lost opportunity to reconcile with him before he died.  As he interacts with Valentin, we also start to see cracks in his armor – his discontent at living a closeted, lonely life in London where work is everything, and his blooming fascination and affinity for the simple life, getting back to nature and the basics.  We see his desire deep down to have a partner, someone he can love and be loved in return. Dale struggles with the language and the circumstances, but he surprisingly allows Valentin to see his vulnerability and opens himself up to allow Valentin in and to let him help.

Valentin’s plight is quite sad, and I found his devastation over Dale’s father’s death to be very touching.  Valentin’s desperation over keeping the farmhouse isn’t just because he needs a roof over his head.  He’s been a drifter for a long time, moving from place to place with no one and nothing, constantly being left behind by family or lovers who don’t want Valentin and his simple desires. But Valentin genuinely loves the place, understands its significance to Dale’s father, and considers it his home. It’s a place with meaning, where he spent time with an older man with similar likes and interests.  He and Valentin bonded over their love of books, nature and living without material trappings.

French Kiss tugs at the heartstrings and has some persistent low-level angst throughout.  However, I loved every minute of the story and engaged strongly with both characters.  Even some of the improbable events and circumstances that force Dale and Valentin together and the instalove aspect of the story are easy to accept because of White’s lovely worldbuilding and the overarching romantic, emotionally significant relationship development between Dale and Valentin.  French Kiss is a story I recommend, and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

RATING: 

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