Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  Curious

SERIES:  IOU, Book 4

AUTHOR:  Leslie McAdam

PUBLISHER:  Self-published

LENGTH:   242 pages

RELEASE DATE:  August 21, 2023

BLURB:

I’m desperately attracted to my husband.

Which wouldn’t be a problem, except he’s straight.

What happened is, my longtime crush/hero got badly injured saving me from my evil ex-boyfriend. When I found out he (my hero, not my ex) didn’t have health insurance, I did the logical thing: I proposed. To my surprise, he said yes.

I knew that Camden wasn’t interested in me like that. This deal was always meant to be temporary—just until he healed and could get his own insurance and I found a place to stay, since I’m not moving back in with my ex. No feelings involved.

Except Cam kissed me at our wedding ceremony, and ever since, we can’t seem to stop kissing. He says he’s curious what sex with a man would be like, but I don’t want to be another straight guy’s experiment.

Still, Cam is so kind and beautiful, with his dark eyes and tousled curls shoved into a backward baseball cap. His patience makes me want to throw out all my carefully crafted rules. And don’t get me started on how his first instinct is to protect me …

But I’m scared if I open my heart, I’m going to get hurt. Again.

Can I risk telling Cam how I feel before our deal ends? Or should I let him go and lose the best (fake) relationship I’ve ever had?

Curious is a stand-alone contemporary M/M romance novel with a marriage of convenience and bisexual awakening. It features Shelby, a receptionist who’s never met a vision board he didn’t like; Camden, an internet-famous contractor; and a hasty wedding for medical insurance reasons. Happy ever after guaranteed.

REVIEW:

Upon cracking the cover of Leslie McAdam’s latest M/M romance Curious, one of the first things you encounter is her Author’s Note, where she calls out the implausibility of many facts and circumstances in Shelby and Cam’s love story. Suspension of disbelief is not only preferred, but required to tap into all of the yumminess in the story.  It’s an interesting way to start a story and a surprisingly effective one:  it opens the door for the reader to embrace pure escapism unapologetically. 

True to her warning, Curious does prove to be an implausible, contrived, opposites-attract, marriage of convenience (for health insurance), fake-it-until-they’re-head-over-heels-in-love-for-real romance – and I loved every minute of it. Cam and Shelby are generous, pure-hearted, forthright and vulnerable, and the joy of seeing them come together will make you smile.  It’s ridiculous how much I adore this ridiculous story – and I mean that in the best way.  McAdam told us so and still sold us the goods.

Like the previous IOU series books, Curious is a low-angst, sweet and spicy cocktail of sunshine and magic – it makes you believe in the Cinderella-esque purity of love even within an ugly world where the two kindest souls you’ll ever meet find themselves repeatedly rejected and left behind.  

There are some darker themes here, but they feel peripheral, notwithstanding that rejection (for both) and emotional abuse and abandonment (for Shelby) are core to the characters’ journeys. McAdam doesn’t really excavate those topics; instead, she presents them as fact and lets us see whether Shelby and Cam will be crushed by the weight of the baggage or support each other in throwing the burdens off and healing.

In Curious, McAdam successfully delivers an absorbing love story between two charismatic men making heart-eyes at each other, and in the process, accomplishes the best kind of bait and switch. McAdam’s story needs to be taken with a grain of salt (and then some), but within it is an absorbing, absolutely genuine romance that can easily be accepted at face value. Nothing made me happier than to see these endearing men find love – their home – in each other.  

McAdam says it best in her Author’s Note:

“In short, this book requires suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader in the name of fiction, fun, romance, and love.” 

Heed her PSA and you’ll get all of those things in Curious.  Highly recommended.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon