I wanted so badly to love this. And I did really enjoy it but this is not my favorite of Roan’s work. The depth of exploration into the dynamics of these characters and this couple was lacking for me. And honestly this is probably just a personal beef but my gawd…3 pages at 50% just kinda destroyed things in my eyes and I lost my feelings for this couple to the point that as wonderful as the end was, I just couldn’t get back the feelings I had developed for them as a couple.
What Will did in “Where We Left Off”, I understood. His actions and their relationship was so beautifully crafted that it just made sense to me and I never hurt the way I did in this book. In a matter of 3 pages, when I had thought a reconciliation was coming, I got handed “Two Months Later” followed by “I plucked him from the small crowd waiting for us backstage and fucked him against the counter in my dressing room, his hands and his release leaving smears on the mirror. This was how it had been. A parade of men who, for just a few minutes, gave me something to hold onto.” And then throw in a real reconciliation and the decision to forgo condoms after months of fucking around with no mention of testing…yeah, I kinda lost my shit over Theo’s actions and honestly was not able to really let this go in my head.
What occurs is almost stating in passing as if it meant nothing. And I get it probably didn’t in the grand scheme of things, but in reality, it did. At least to me. I never felt the reason he was doing this…there was no lead up to these actions for me to understand why and as a result it made the relationship he did have with Caleb less important in my eyes. I mean towards the end of the book, he realizes Caleb needs time to process things. Why couldn’t he see this earlier…that Caleb was just being fucking stupid and needed time. Instead he resorts to what I perceive is typical Rock Star behavior and fucks nameless faces in his dressing room…which for me did not seem like the Theo we were getting to know at all. Nice.
(show spoiler)
Oh well. Overall, this is beautifully written, as all of Roan’s work is…just wish I had connected to these two more. And know my personal issue with this book is just that and did not seem to bother the others reading this book with me at all. To each his own. I will definitely be reading more in this series
