Reviewer's Rating:
5
5.0Overall score
This broke my heart and put it back together again.
Connor & Ash By A. E. Ryecart
Genre: Contemporary Romance, GLBTQ, MM
Released: June 16, 2017
Publisher: Self-Published
Series: Barista Boys, Book 3
When you live in the shadows, it’s hard to believe in the light.
Each time Ash Hemsby strips off for a stranger in a hotel room or gets down on his knees in a back alley, a little piece of his soul dies. But debt is a hard task master, and money lenders don’t take IOUs.
From a shadowy corner of a hotel bar, Connor O’Brian watches the rent boy’s clumsy attempts to ply his trade. Beneath the younger man’s brash exterior Connor senses desperation and vulnerability, and his heart goes out to him – because he too bears the scars of living crushed and defeated.
A whispered conversation, a key exchanged, and the deal is struck. Yet the night turns out in a way neither expects.
A chance meeting brings Connor face to face with the man he can’t stop thinking about, and he’s determined not to let him get away a second time. Ash owes Connor for what happened that night in the hotel, but what was meant only to be the fulfilment of a promise begins to feel like something more.
Step by step, they begin to mend what is broken in the other. But life has a habit of tripping up the unwary. A random discovery, a scribbled, desperate note and a race across London brings each man face to face with the secret shame they have only ever wanted to keep hidden.
Secrets and half-truths have kept Connor and Ash in the shadows. Only the raw, heart wrenching truth can lead them out of darkness and into light. But is it already too late, and will the shadows reclaim them?
Connor & Ash is the third instalment in the Barista Boys series. Each book charts the lives and loves of the men who work in a funky little café in the heart of London’s Soho.
Barista Boys, where it’s not just the coffee that’s hot.
Connor & Ash can be read as a stand alone, and is a full length novel of approx 84,400 words.
Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003
This broke my heart and put it back together again.
Connor & Ash is book three in the Barista Boys series but you don’t need to have read the others to enjoy this one (they are really great, though, so give them a try, too).
I wish I had the right words to describe how this story made me feel. I knew within the first few paragraphs that it was gonna make my eyes leak. Ash is in an unimaginable position and I was heartbroken for him and what he felt he had to do. When he meets Connor he just can’t trust that the only thing Connor wants is a dinner companion.
Connor has his own demons that he doesn’t want to share with Ash because he’s afraid it will scare him away. We are given both characters backstory in bits and pieces throughout the book. While at times I just wanted to know all of it (right now!) not knowing everything all at once was perfect and kept me glued to my e-reader.
There were a couple of times I wanted to knock some sense into these guys and make them just talk to each other. But, it’s been my experience in real life that people don’t really talk things out when they should so why should it be any different in fiction?
Connor & Ash is a wonderful story with a fair amount of suspense that brings two characters together in a way that I won’t forget for a while. For those who want to know the sexy time is pretty hot, too. <smile>
Ms. Ryecart seems to have a knack for writing stories that really rip me apart at times and yet I can’t say that I think they are filled with too much angst at all. What her characters go through never seems contrived or designed to hurt them just for the sake of doing so.
For readers of the other books in this series who might be fans of Bernie, owner of Barista Boys café, he gets quite a bit of time in this story and I loved that. I can’t wait to read his book and see him get his HEA.
♥♥♥♥♥
O Factor: Scorcher
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A E Ryecart writes mm romance/gay fiction about complex, multi-faceted men who don’t always make the right decisions. Filled with angst, high drama and emotional tension, she writes the books she likes to read. An avid people watcher, most of her writing takes place in a local café amidst the background hum of hissing coffee machines, where she can check out the other customers for character and story inspiration!
A born and bred Londoner, she may have moved to someplace more leafy but the city is still very much part of her DNA, which is why her books are set in and around present-day London, providing a thrilling, metropolitan backdrop to the main action.
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