Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: The Man Date
SERIES: The Love Broker Universe
AUTHOR: Tere Michaels
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 396 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 11, 2024
BLURB:
No matter how old you are, you want your best friends to be friends…
Mac Kelley arrives in Pine Lake to work his dream job at The Love Broker. He quickly befriends his shy landlord, Beck King, a retired model with two beloved dogs and a camera around his neck.
Deacon Wiley has been on the road with his beloved guitar, touring with country western bands for almost twenty years. He’s gotten used to having a job and an eight-by-eight cubical on the bus. But now his life has imploded, and he’s forced to high tail it to the tundra of Pine Lake to bunk with his best friend, Mac.
Three bachelors, living their best life!
Except Deacon thinks Beck is a fancy poser, and Beck believes Deacon should shower more.
However, with Mac busy working with a hostile boss and his ego, Deacon and Beck spend time together.
And then things get…interesting.
It’s a sexy secret but it’s just temporary.
It’s a connection between two people who’ve lived their lives moving and pretending to be something they’re not.
It might be bigger than either one of them imagined.
(And Mac is in for one hell of a surprise…)
Pine Lake has one rule – Fall in Love.
REVIEW:
This is an interesting story. The beginning really threw me off to be honest. There are some myths and fantasy elements and magic that lead to the introduction of our first MC, Beck, that confused me a bit. I could not figure out what was going on. It really just sets the stage for Beck’s backstory – so don’t worry that it is how the rest of the story goes. It’s all just background prep for Beck and his family and his dogs and the little bit of witchy magic he seems to have 
Beck is a retired model who at 29 has decided to locate to Pine Lake. He’s transformed a building to apartments and a retail space and he lives on the top floor. He rents out the second floor apartment to a newcomer who has taken a job with Love Brokers, a business across the street from his building. It’s a building business in this small town and Mac, the new guy has moved to this small town to take the business to the next level.
Mac is an ambitious guy. Things are going well except for Norah, a coworker who lives to make him miserable. He likes the work though and he’s spent his life being what he things is expected – best employee, etc. He and Beck become friends.
Deacon is a musician who has grown up on the road with Mac – the secret backstory of both of them – and his last gig has dried up. His apartment in Nashville is still sublet, so he goes to visit and stay with Mac. He meets Beck – and more importantly his dogs – when they get loose and he and Beck end up chasing them around town. They end up discovering they have something else in common. Something they have neither one shared with Mac.
When Mac catches Deacon and Beck in a compromising position, he is FURIOUS. He’s mad that his best friend didn’t ever tell him. But then he makes remarks that make it CLEAR why Deacon didn’t. He’s furious with Beck for reasons. Beck isn’t exactly out and he also hasn’t been open about his past as a famous and rich model, but that comes out too.
This causes a rift between all three men. Mac decides they should all go camping together. In the winter and the snow. To talk about things. What could go wrong?? LOL! Three men, all with past wounds and unsure where they want, what they want, and who they want. They are all breaking patterns of the past. It’s not easy. Honesty is kind of new to all of them.
Once things got going in this book and Beck and Mac and Deacon are all in the same place, it really became a study on the meaning of friendship. And love. And romance. All of these guys have things in their past that they are hiding – either because it wasn’t safe to share, they didn’t want to be pigeonholed by where they came from or to protect their anonymity. Mac and Deacon share a past that is not exactly glamorous and that has shaped them in a lot of ways. The homophobia, the “be a man” mentality, the poverty, the living on the road as part of a traveling band – all those things have a part in who they are as 40 year olds guys trying to live their lives. Beck’s poverty is different and his leaving to be a model as a child really changed his entire trajectory. He doesn’t want people to know because that life comes with assumptions – some right, some wrong. He’s not in touch with his family, so his friends are important to him. Losing Mac as a friend hurts. Losing Deacon as a lover hurts. He’s lived with basically his dogs as his friends, but could he have more? Can Mac forgive Deacon for not being honest with him? Can Deacon for Mac for trying to tell him what to do and demanding he change his life? This is a long road with some twists and turns on the path to love, but I think it’s worth it. I’m a fan of this author and I enjoyed the ride on this one. Recommended.
RATING: 
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