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I'm becoming quite a fan of this author, and this is my favorite book of hers to date. And that's saying a lot considering I don't like romances with big age differences. But the writing was so strong that I believed the two MCs belonged together anyway. Vanya broke my heart from the first page, a young Russian immigrant who is in limbo without official asylum status, despite the fact that he was the victim of brutal homophobic violence in his home country. He's fortunate to have the close friendship of another immigrant, Kasper (who is allowed to work because his country of Estonia is part of the EU) but his days are a combination of boredom, fear and bureaucratic nightmares. When he meets Jason, who mistakenly thinks Vanya is a personal shopper working out of Kasper's store, he doesn't correct him, eager to make a little bit of money under the table and save for the apartment he and Kasper dream of renting together. Jason can't believe a young, handsome guy like Vanya would be interested in a middle-aged, unfashionable, frequently dusty renovation specialist, and Vanya can't believe that such a successful guy would want an immigrant whose English isn't great. Once they get over this silliness, they start to develop a lovely relationship, equal parts emotional support and physical attraction.
I'm also not a big fan of stories where one or both MCs are keeping secrets from each other that are always just about to be revealed...and then something happens to prevent the secret holder from fessing up. It is often a lazy attempt by the author to pad the page count when there is no real reason to continue. In Vanya's case, however, his secrets affect Kasper and his new girlfriend Ana as well, so his reticence is a little more understandable.
Of course Jason eventually discovers the truth and the shit hits the fan. The book almost lost a star at the end because Jason's anger seemed way out of proportion to magnitude of Vanya's lies. Sure, Jason has the old “my ex lied to me so I can't forgive liars” thing, but Vanya has serious, life-threatening reasons for the choices he made, so get over yourself Jason. Plus he needed to grovel way more than he did to get Vanya back. It helps that the author shows many more examples of Jason being extremely kind and generous to Vanya, but it still left me a tiny bit unsure of whether he was worthy of Vanya's love.
The book is enriched further by the MC's relationships with the secondary characters. Besides Kasper, prominent roles are played by Jason's foster brother Andrew and his (third!) wife Chantel, who Jason initially considers a gold-digger until Vanya helps him see how immaturely he is behaving.
TL, dr: Considering how much I have written about a simple M/M contemporary romance, I guess I must have found a lot of depth and great appeal in this book. Highly recommended!
Note: this book was written before Brexit's status was finalized, which adds quite a bit of poignancy to the passages in which Kasper and Ana are considered “safe” because they are from an EU country. What would happen to them in 2020?
