DOUBLE UP

DOUBLE UP by Vanessa North

 

Pages: 139

Date: 23/08/2014

Grade: 4.5

Details: Received from Riptide Publishing

            Through Love Romances and More

Kindle

The blurb:

“Fifteen years ago, Ben Warren was a wakeboarding champion: king of big air, ballsy tricks, and boned grabs. Until a career-ending injury left him broken in ways he still has no hope of fixing. Now he takes his thrills where he can get them, and tries not to let life hurt too much.

Then Davis Fox arrives in Ben’s sporting goods store with a plan to get in touch with his estranged brother by competing in the annual wakeboarding double-up contest. The catch? He’s never ridden before. It’s crazy, but Ben’s a sucker for the guy’s sob story—and for his dimples, too—so he agrees to coach Davis.

Davis is everything Ben isn’t: successful, confident, and in love with life. And he wants Ben to love life—and him—too. But before Ben can embrace a future with Davis, he needs to remember how to hope.”

My thoughts:

This story took me by surprise. It is told in Ben’s voice and at first he appears to be rather gruff and not altogether nice. In fact for a short while I was worried he would be too self-obsessed and opinionated for me to take to him. That impression didn’t last though. It wasn’t long before I discovered that all the bluster serves only to conceal a world of pain. Ben in fact turned out to be a very sympathetic, not altogether sure of himself and vulnerable character with issues and fears that were all too easy to relate to.

Davis was just as fascinating. I liked his decision to learn wakeboarding just so he can get back in touch with the half brother he hasn’t seen since the boy was a toddler. And I adored his tendency to blush at the slightest provocation and the stark contrast it made with his dominance as soon as he and Ben became intimate.

In fact I admired nearly everything I encountered in this book. I liked that the story dealt with real issues without spelling them out or rubbing them in our faces. Both Ben’s injury and its consequences and Davis’ troubled relationship with his mother and half-brother were presented as part of the men’s lives that had to be dealt with rather than insurmountable obstacles. There were no easy or perfect solutions either, although everything is dealt with and brought to a more than satisfying conclusion.

I loved Kinky Eddie, Ben’s friend, sometimes lover, and employer. He was a perfect secondary character, bringing both humour and an extra level of depth to what already was a gripping story.

The writing in this book was good. It gave me the opportunity to get to know Ben, and through his eyes the other characters, at a pace that was as near to perfection as a reader could hope for. If I had one issue it was that Ben would shift from dialogue into thought almost mid-sentence. I found myself having to pay close attention to punctuation marks just to know where one ended and the next started; not something I want to do when I’m lost in a story.

On the other hand, the relationship and intimacy between Ben and Davis was mesmerizing and very, very hot. And the words this author used to show us what the characters we’re experiencing occasionally took my breath away.

“I let him gentle me off to a dreamless sleep with his kisses on my tongue and his hands on my body.”

Overall this was a wonderful story and very enjoyable read by an author I’ll have to investigate further in the not too distant future.