Sandra @ My Fiction Nook

While I really liked this book, and two of the main characters, I absolutely hated Bobby. I read the second half of the book with rage and clenched fists because Bobby is an absolute asshole. With friends like that, who needs enemies?I really wanted to hurt someone when I finished this book. Actually, not someone. Bobby. His behavior made me so angry, I made a new shelf especially for him - sucky friends are sucky. This book was my first exposure to Rick R. Reed, one I picked up during a tweetaway from the publisher. It languished in my TBR for a while, but I kept seeing it pop up on my feed, and my co-blogger had read it, so I finally opened the file on my Nook. And didn't stop reading until the very end. It sucked me right in and didn't let me go, laughing and crying and ranting and cheering and wtf'ing throughout. Caden and Bobby are best friends, out on the prowl on weekends looking for love in all the wrong places. While Bobby is self-centered and vain, only looking for the most prime choice of fresh meat while screwing his way through the Chicago gay population, Caden is secretly attracted to the type of man that might be considered 'chubby' - a word I dislike - which is something he's kept hidden from Bobby.While Bobby hooks up with the latest gorgeous guy, Caden locks eyes with Kevin, a blond hunk with a beard carrying a little extra weight. Their first meeting in the club's bathroom has Caden checking out Kevin's equipment, getting caught and feeling embarrassed. On his way home after a disappointing attempt at hooking up with some random guy, he runs into Kevin again on the El, and the spark that was evident in the bathroom earlier carries them to Kevin's apartment for a night of holy hot boysecks, Batman. Caden is hooked. Waking up with Kevin the next morning, he starts to feel the first inklings that this might turn into a long-term relationship. And he likes it. He also knows that he has to keep it secret from Bobby bc reasons. Of course, that's not conducive to getting the romance off to a good start. From there, the book unfolds their romantic story, with false starts and misunderstandings and misconceptions and sucky friends who are really fucking sucky.I liked the characters Mr. Reed created - Caden's secret longing for something more permanent, his strong attraction to what is usually not considered a love interest in romance novels, and his strange friendship with Bobby all brought something to the character's depth. We spend time in Caden's head and see his own insecurities and questions. Kevin is also a great character - steady, kind, conscientious - and makes a wonderful love interest. And where he might have stayed one-dimensional as the pudgy guy, the author creates realistic conflict about perceptions, visual preferences and what really matters about a person, as well as Kevin's own misconceptions about himself and Caden's needs and wants.In effect, this book was a character study about a man who thinks he shouldn't be attracted to what is attractive to him and questions his own shallow behavior and a man who changes himself in an erroneous attempt to make himself more attractive, pushed by his own insecurities. There is character growth in both Caden and to some extent Kevin, which made sense within the overall story line. The author also touched on how expectations can derail a relationship when they're not met, and how what's on the outside doesn't matter as much as what's on the inside. It's almost an homage to the old saying that beauty is only skin-deep - and the heart wants what the heart wants. As for Bobby - well, nicely put, he is an ass. Seriously, I hated him from the start, with his pompous 'Gorgeous men like me only fuck other gorgeous men' BS, and when he started to intrude on and then jeopardize the budding relationship between Caden and Kevin, all for his own personal gain by lying, cheating, creating false evidence - yeah, I wanted to see him bleed. I wanted him to hurt, and I wanted to be the one to hurt him. Until... well, until I realized that there was a sequel in which Bobby was featured in a completely different light. See my review of [b:Raining Men|17880311|Raining Men (Chaser, #2)|Rick R. Reed|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367600199s/17880311.jpg|25040036] for more.