Reviewed by Kat
TITLE: Overture
SERIES: Portland Symphony (book 3)
AUTHOR: London Price
PUBLISHER: The Sun Will Come Out Publishing
LENGTH: 210 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 26, 2022
BLURB:
Getting over your ex is tough when he lives right down the hall…and tougher still when he’s in your bed.
He wasn’t Andrew when we dated–he was a curvy, black-haired beauty I locked eyes with in a club. I didn’t realize it was serious when we stayed up all night talking about music. Nor when he was spending more nights at my place than his own. We fell into a rhythm I missed completely, and as a percussionist, that’s embarrassing.
Our break-up wrecked me more than I’ve been willing to admit. But when my ex shows up on the porch in the middle of the night, soaked and homeless, I can’t turn him away. He needs a place to stay, a job–I can give him that, at least. But when he wants me to hold his hand during his first tattoo and cook meals with him, fall asleep holding each other…that’s different.
Can I put my fragile heart on the line again, knowing how it ended last time? Or do I owe it to myself to see if what we had the first time was just the overture?
Overture is the third book in the steamy Portland Symphony series, but can be enjoyed as a standalone. If you like early transition awkwardness, bad boys who learn to communicate, and a gender-affirming HEA, one-click this book now. CW for coming out gone wrong, implied deadnaming and discussion of religious trauma.
REVIEW:
Evan is shocked when he opens the door one stormy night and sees his ex, now named Andrew, standing on his doorstep soaked and obviously shaken up. Life has been hard every since his girlfriend told him she was no longer going to live a lie and was transitioning from female to male. Evan, who is bisexual, has kicked himself for not coming around faster when she first told him this and then realized that he lost the love of his life. He didn’t care that she was now a he but he thinks that he lost him because of his hesitation. Now, with Andrew moving in with him and his roommates, his broken heart is being tested every moment. How can he convince Andrew that he didn’t reject him and his transitioning but just was stunned and confused at first. Or has that ship sailed?
I liked this book. It was a sensitive portrayal of the transitioning of a partner and the doubts that can arise when honest communication isn’t used. I get where Evan was probably shocked and confused when Leah told him of the journey she was embarking on. They sounded like they were in a very close relationship prior to their sudden break up. He was falling in love with his beautiful Hawaiian girl. I think that Leah, who was now Andrew, didn’t give him a lot of time to sort out his feelings and emotions. I don’t know if their relationship’s sudden ending was in the first two books or not. We come into this with Evan still being raw and now having Andrew living in his home. Poor Evan had no clue how to navigate this and was in constant turmoil that he was going to screw it up even worse and lose Andrew forever.
This book is pretty angsty. It is told from Evan’s point of view and he was constantly walking on eggshells for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and losing Andrew’s friendship forever. And I think that Andrew figured it out too late also that, even though Evan kinda stalled out on his reaction to the news, he didn’t really give Evan enough time to sort out how he felt and which direction he hoped they would go. Both of these two obviously loved each other. It was just that they didn’t know how to navigate this change in their relationship.
There is one line in the book that most people might not get the humor of unless you are from Oahu’s Waianae Coast on the West side of the island or you are from Kauai. Andrew’s dad Nick asked Evan “Do you know why my son named himself after a hurricane?” And Evan shared the reason for Andrew’s choice of his new name. At that point Nick joked “Well, at least he didn’t pick Iniki.” Iniki is the Hurricane that did major damage to the complex I live in and cut our end of the island off from Honolulu and the rest of Oahu. I did a double take when I read this. Also she mentioned “Māhū”. I remember the first time I heard that word used. My dearest friend wanted to come out to us when he moved to our island but didn’t want to just blurt it out. So he told us that he had just been called “Māhū” and it must mean something really special. One of our Hawaiian girlfriends was totally clueless to his orientation and got upset and asked who was picking on him because it wasn’t a nice word to shout at someone. It backfired on him and he simply had to come out and say he was trying to tell them but he guessed that was the wrong way.
I think that reading the first two books would have made this book and all the roommates interactions make more sense. I know that Colby’s boyfriend Chance (whom I finally figured out was also trans FTM) helped Andrew with having someone to talk to that was like him. Unfortunately he was over in England and it would have been easier for both Evan and Andrew to have had his insight and support. I did kind of feel like I was walking into the middle of a story line and those previous books must have laid out the framework going into this book.
RATING: 
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