Review: Up in the Air 2: West Coast by George Loveland

19 June of 2018 by ButtonsMom2003

Reviewer's Rating: 4

4.0Overall score

Max and Antonio; I loved them together.

Up in the Air 2: West Coast By George Loveland

Genre: Contemporary Romance, GLBTQ, MM

Released: June 11, 2018

Publisher: LoveBow Publishing

Series: Up in the Air, Book 2

Cover Design: Ethereal Ealain

Synopsis

Max Cooper has never known love and uses drink to numb the feelings of rejection he’s faced with. It doesn’t help him in his career as an air steward when after a very drunken night his best friend swaps their flights over so Max can keep his job.

When Max flies out to Los Angeles, his patience is tested when he offers to help fellow air steward and rising drag queen, Dai Zee, with her costume changes at the best drag club in LA, Flamingos. While he watches Dai Zee perform, he catches the eye of a guy in the corner, but fails to find him when the performance ends. An ill-timed text message sends Max back to the bottle, and into the bed of a man he doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to be with.

The next night at Flamingos he finds the man he was searching for, but it’s not as easy as he’d hoped. Antonio Baldini isn’t interested in a drunken Max and rejects his advances until another drag queen, Miss Crystal, plays a hand in getting the two of them together. As Max and Antonio step past the initial confusion, they tread carefully with each other, neither one wanting to get hurt.

Even when Max is back in London, the late-night video calls don’t stop, but it’s when they are reunited in Las Vegas that things turn serious.

Max can’t shake his past, and someone is out for him and his job – trying to stop him from flying altogether. He’s worried about what it will mean for his new relationship if he can’t fly; and whether he can stay away from the drink long enough to be with a man who seems to care for him.

Review

Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003

Max and Antonio; I loved them together.

While Up in the Air 2: West Coast is the second in a series it can easily be read as a standalone story. We met Max in book one – which was about his best friend, James – and he was a drunk screw up. I was so happy that he got his own book and was able to be redeemed.

Max is on the verge of losing his job as an air steward. (Note: this is a book written by a British author and uses British terms and spelling. In the US we now call them flight attendants.) He’s swapped flights one too many times and someone also seems to have it out for him.

Max sees Antonio in a club one night and tries to make contact but Antonio brushes him off. When they finally do get together both of them are a bit wary of each other. It’s not too long before they acknowledge they have feelings for each other but Max’s poor self esteem makes him feel like he doesn’t deserve Antonio and he nearly screws up a good thing.

There’s a lot going on in this book and I enjoyed it very much. Max’s backstory isn’t too different from a lot of others – tossed out by his family when he came out – but there’s much more to this book than that. I was so sad for him in places and so angry at how he was done wrong by more than one person. I loved the scenes with Max’s Gran; she’s a bit of a character and someone I wouldn’t mind knowing in real life.

I was also pleased that the scenes set in Las Vegas seemed to be pretty accurate to me. I’ve visited there often and love it. Often times authors don’t do enough research about details of the city they set their stories and if you’re familiar with the city it can take you out of the story.

Max and Antonio truly deserve their HFN (happy for now) and I hope we get to read a bit more of them in future books. This would have been a five-star read for me except that I felt there were a couple of things left hanging, not a cliffhanger, just a couple of loose ends that I thought should be wrapped up.

Minor spoiler: All things seemed to be pointing to someone close to Max setting him up but nothing ever came of it in the story. Perhaps I was reading to much into it but I don’t think so; I hope it comes up in a later book. This definitely isn’t enough to keep me from recommending this as an enjoyable story to read.

♥♥♥♥

O Factor: Scorcher

Up in the Air Series

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About Author

George was about eighteen when he told his friend that he was going to be a writer. It took him another eighteen years before he finally did anything about it and wrote his first short story. A typical Englishman, he drinks buckets of tea with milk—but no sugar, because he is sweet enough. His Nan told him so.

George lives just outside of London, but close enough to enjoy Soho and the West End, where you will find him in a bar with a pint, in a club dancing into the early hours of the morning, or enjoying a musical in the theater; but more than likely he will be in a coffee shop reading a book or writing a new story. Currently single, but taking applications for future husband position, George enjoys crafting romantic stories in which he hopes that one day, life will imitate art.

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