Sandra @ My Fiction Nook

Well, dayum. I think this has got to be the least angsty Amy Lane I've ever read. There was some heartache, sure, but not because of the MCs not wanting each other, and there was quite a bit of parental failure as well as social awkwardness, but that all made for one adorkable character in Zach, who through happenstance finds exactly what he never knew he always wanted.

The relationship is a slow burn, most of it conducted in the elevator of the building both Zach and Sean live in, but it's a realistic slow burn based on how repressed and lonely Zach is, and how he can hardly believe his good fortune to have met this special man.

I adored Zack. Adored him, this lonely, privileged man who works hard to help the less fortunate people who come to him for assistance with their work troubles, this pained soul who yearns to make a real connection but has no idea how to go about getting that done. He grows throughout the book's 60 odd pages, making changes he needs to make and finding strength he didn't know he had, with help from his secretary/friend Leah and Sean. Sean, who seems to believe there's a good man behind the rigid exterior and awkwardness, Sean, who's happy just to be himself and knows what love looks like, Sean who sees Zack smile and wants that smile to be just for him. Zack slowly, tentatively, begins to reach out to forge a life that is beyond the Ivory Tower he's known all his life. 

Their first (and only fully explicit) love making was so intimate, so overwhelmingly loving that I felt like an intruder reading it, despite the tears in my eyes. Amy Lane sure has a way with words to make me feel like an unwanted fly on the wall, but I couldn't take my eyes off the beauty of her words, of the emotions she showed us, of the awe that is in Zack's eyes and heart and soul. 

Told entirely from Zack's 3rd person POV, this was beautiful. Adorable. That is all.

** I received a free ARC from the publisher. A positive review was not promised in return. **