Sandra @ My Fiction Nook

When one door closes, another door opens...

What I expected: A tale of new love, renewal, a chance to rise above the past.

What I got: A short story that was over much too quickly.

At about 40 odd pages on my Nook, this book was just too short to come even close to accomplishing what it apparently tried to do.

The main characters, Canyon and Simon, meet after Canyon's lover Robert dies in a car accident, and Canyon is left part of Robert's fortune, with a note to go deliver news of Robert's death to Simon in person.

Canyon still loves Robert even though their relationship ended 6 months prior, when Canyon wanted more than Robert was willing to give.

The rest of Robert's fortune goes to the wife. Yep, you read that right. It turns out that Robert was married and therefore a cheating bastard. The circumstances around the accident, and the letter Canyon carries to Simon notwithstanding, it would have been nice to have known this little tidbit from the blurb. Add to that, the wife, Natalie, is given the role of shrill, hateful bitch, without any further character development. We are apparently to assume that she is that way because of her husband's cheating. Or maybe not. Since no background information is given for her, we only see her at the beginning of the book being hateful.

So Canyon, who apparently can just take time off to hop a plane across the country, does as he is asked, and ends up in a small East Coast town where Simon lives and delivers the letter.

I guess your brand new three million dollars inheritance help to just drop whatever life you had and take some time off.

Once with Simon, who turns out to be not much younger than Robert, and therefore older than Canyon, the two men get to know each other a little bit. Some stuff is revealed. Canyon does a nice thing, but gets his head bitten off for his troubles. Simon is an asshole to Canyon. Canyon makes excuses.

Time jumps: Time passes that could have been used to actually let the reader see that there is more to this relationship than Canyon being a doormat and apparently thinking he doesn't deserve any better than what he gets.

I didn't like Simon. And Canyon felt too much like a doormat to have any appeal to me. I think that if the book had been longer and taken its time to explore the grief, the cheating, the budding relationship between Simon and Canyon, it might have rated a bit higher.

And demonizing the wife, whose only apparent fault it was to have married a cheating bastard, didn't do anything either to endear this book to me.


** I received a free copy from Indigo Marketing as part of a blogtour. A positive review was not promised in return. **