Title: Chasing the Sun
Series: Provincetown #2
Author: Jacob Z. Flores
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: Novella (118 pages)
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (October 16th, 2013)
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥4 Hearts
Reviewer: Thommie
Blurb: As a physician and prominent citizen of Victoria, Texas, Dr. Gil Kelly took a hard fall when his vengeful wife revealed his infidelity with other men. Closing ranks around her, the town’s elite ostracized him, and his relationship with his children was nearly destroyed.
After spending his life focused on living for others, he has no idea how to live for himself. He wants to find love but now settles for anonymous sex that only further clouds his world with shame and guilt. Gil believes finding true love is an unobtainable dream, what his father used to call “chasing the sun.”
Then he runs into Tom Martinez, his son’s childhood best friend, who returned to town a grown man and offers everything Gil needs. But Gil hesitates to fall into Tom’s arms, because after his high-profile divorce, the potential scandal of loving a younger man could separate him from his children permanently.
Product Link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4260
Review: Jacob Flores returns with a spin-off of When Love Takes Over and in this story we get to meet the oh so demanding father who was the cause of so much pain for Zach, Gil Kelly. However as all coins have two sides so does this character, so while our first glimpse of Gil was through Zach’s eyes and feeling, now we get to meet the real man and decide for ourselves.
I loved this book! That sated I have to say that this was not the story I expected. There is no Provincetown this time around and with the lack of the actual place, there is also a lack of fun and games that accompanied the first story set there. This is more a story of growth and fight, and internal search and a game of wills if you like. This story is set back in Victoria, Texas and it’s the story of a grown man who has lived his entire life inside a lie and is finally chasing for his dreams.
I loved this story! I loved Gil! I’m always more than happy to read a story where the main character is not twenty, thirty or even mid-thirties as most are. Gil is in his early fifties, a man who has quite literally lived a whole life, a man who already has two children in their thirties. There is no midlife crisis about him, but in a crisis he’s still living ever since his sex life became public by the mouth of his very wife, when she caught him in the middle of tryst with another man. This is a story that has too many bitter feelings waiting to be solved in the corners of this character’s life, while in the meantime it’s one hell of a romance.
While Gil has exiled himself from society and runs the other way whenever he sees a former acquaintance out of shame, there is one person that during these five past years has never stopped trying to close the gap. Tom, his son’s best childhood friend has never stopped trying to get close to Gil again whenever he’s in town. Now that Tom is returning back to Victoria for good he is giving it a shot again, and this time Gil lets his shame on the side for a bit and makes room for a man that he used to look as his own son. Well almost. After all one of the reasons Gil had been avoiding Tom was the fact that he long ago stopped seeing him as the little boy Tom once was, and more as the extremely charming man he has become.
I have to say that when it comes to man on man intimacy Jacob Flores has a peculiar way of taking you in a wild ride no matter the genre of the book. I quite love his men, they are not only hot, and they are irresistible. One moment you are reading and getting attached to the personality and the struggling Gil suffers, the next you are in wonderland and panting along with them in a highly erotic beat, and the very next you get almost wrung out with the emotional state this character brings you while he’s trying to bring his life and family in order.
I loved his daughter she was such a strong character. I loved Zach when he came in the end. But most of all I loved how the author turned Donna around, how he made her pain a spotlight and gave her the outlet she got in the end. Yes, women can be bitches, big ones at that, but damn if this one bitch didn’t make me feel for her in the end. It was also the last point Gil got and made him shine as a character, made him one of the best and in my favorite list.
In the end, I might not have gotten what I expected from Provincetown #2, but I got an even better deal. I loved every single line written and I’m absolutely sure you will too. Strongly recommended!
p.s.
I keep feeling that Tom resembles too much of Jacob and Gil somehow is based on Bruce…
