Sailor Proof

Solid Military Romance. This is a fairly standard romance / Annabeth Albert romance with one guy in uniform and the other not... and eventually, neither is. ;) She's done the virgin thing at least once or twice (I fully cop to not reading her full back catalog, and I seem to remember her covering this even in the books I have read from her), and here it works just as well as it did the last time. For those looking for “clean” / “sweet” romance... Albert uses the virgin trope to explore as many successive sex acts as she can squeeze into a book. So this won't be something that fits those definitions, but will work well within the more general romance/ gay romance reader crowd. The family dynamics are fun, some of the situations border on silly yet work, and the military scenes are accurate enough for someone who is only vaguely aware of US Navy operations. Looking forward to seeing where this new series will go. Very much recommended.

The tropes are heavy and the angst is light in Albert's return to military M/M romance. You've got fake boyfriends, best friend's brother, only one bed, virgin MC, and your basic opposites attract. Totally predictable but thoroughly enjoyable.

As the author notes in her acknowledgements, Shore Leave will have a “lighter military vibe” than her popular Out of Uniform series, so we don't see a lot of Derrick while he is actively on deployment. Most of the book takes place at Arthur's annual extended family camp, with the aforementioned one bed. There are numerous detailed sex scenes, but also the chance for Arthur to re-examine some long held beliefs about how his military, do-gooder family members feel about his geeky career scoring video game music. And the way that Arthur and Derrick work together to make the annual family camp talent show a success clearly demonstrates that they make a strong team outside of the bedroom as well as in.

Although Derrick and Arthur are very different men, I had some trouble remembering which of them was narrating the chapter I was reading, and I think Albert could have done a better job of distinguishing their narrative voices. But both of them were such decent, lovable characters that I didn't mind too much that they blended together sometimes. Annabeth Albert's recent series have been hit or miss for me, but I'm hopeful that this strong start bodes well for more tales of Shore Leave. Arthur's brother Calder is next - could his complaint during family camp that he doesn't like kids be a case of ironic foreshadowing?

ARC received from Net Galley in exchange for objective review.