Title: Learning to Breathe
Series: Arbor Heights, #2
Author: Diana DeRicci
Genre: Contemporary
Length: Novella (141 pages)
Publisher: MLR Press (January 3rd, 2014)
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥4Hearts
Reviewer: Eli/Mandingo
Blurb: To Remy, size is a state of mind, a fact few really learn to appreciate. When it wasn’t clear he’d live past being an infant, he grew up fighting. Fighting to live. Fighting to be treated with respect. The last thing he thought he’d have to do is fight his own heart. Getting clocked across the face wasn’t one of Ben’s better moments. Grudgingly accepting help from a pint-sized, argumentative Remy, he’s among those who learn the hard way small doesn’t necessarily mean weak.
Purchase Link: http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=DDRBRETH
Review: Since the blurb is scanty, let this review add a bit more colour. Bank teller Remy is short and feisty. He’s overcome a lot in his life and takes flak from no one, least of all the ex of his best friend’s current partner. Ben is a construction foreman who still has not managed to find that special man to call his own. After a rough night, he seeks Remy’s help and the men will begin a roller coaster of a relationship.
Community is always a theme in m/m romance books because men who love men must often find a new community for themselves and also find people who are like them in order for them to be able to fully express themselves. The theme of the Arbor Heights series is all about community. In this second instalment of the series, the reader meets gets to know Remy and Ben who they met in Learning to Live. Again, the reader is presented with polar opposites who prove to be the perfect foil for each other. Outward appearances are deceiving, yet what Remy and Ben have together does not need to be shared with the world, instead they can share that with each other and find their happiness this way.
Readers will love Remy and Ben as a couple and they will especially love the heat that these two men generate between the sheets. Often in stories, sex is gratuitous, but in this story, the sex helps to break down barriers for Remy and Ben and have them establish an intimacy that is essential to their owning their lives both separately and together.
In Ben, Remy finds everything that he thought he couldn’t have; and, in Remy, Ben finds all the things he never knew he wanted. Both men grow and mature in their relationship and learn to love, trust and rely on each other. As the story ends, the reader is aware that there is much more to their story and hopefully the third instalment in this series will see the men not just happy but also settled.