Amy Aislin, $3.99, ISBN 979-8201305864
Contemporary Romance, 2021
In Amy Aislin’s Chasing Sunsets, NHL superstar Dane Roxborough is back in his small town of Glen Hill, Vermont, having fled Boston like he’s a romance heroine needing an excuse to hook up again with the guy he left behind.
Well, that guy is Grant Lilly, his “college boyfriend-turned-ex-turned-friend”. Really, I don’t understand why some people make life so complicated for themselves.
Anyway, Dane’s excuse for coming back to town is that his one night stand put up sexually explicit photos online. Photos? In the current year? What amateurs, as the Kardashians are doing videos way back then, hmmph.
You may be wondering why the photos are such a scandal. After all, these days, barely a week passes by without some quasi-celebrity’s naughty video gets put up online, and most people just yawn at those things these days. Is it the homophobia? No, as this story is set in a world where you ain’t cool if you don’t pound the brown town every other day. So, what’s the problem?
Well, let’s just chalk this up as romance novel bashfulness.
Grant and Dane are already panting after one another the moment they meet again, so there goes any attempt at building up a romance at a slow burn. Unfortunately, this story has more than three chapters, so the author pads things up with flashbacks, Dane walking around town doing mundane things, Grant walking around also doing equally mundane things, they talk about things that don’t exactly make me feel excited about turning the pages.
It’s not like the two men are such riveting characters either. They come off like any generic Tom and Harry in gay romances, and this is a shame because this story desperately needs an excuse to be even halfway interesting.
I can’t help thinking that perhaps the author could have had these two men work together to achieve some common goal, and no, I’m not talking about that kind of goal. Maybe these two can start a lemonade stand business? Investigate what has happened to a neighbor’s missing cat? Start a reaction video channel on YouTube? Surely, these two can do something other than yapping boring things and doing dull stuff all the time.
Anyway, this is a polished kind of blah. I’m not hurt by the story, but boy, I’m definitely bored out of my mind by it.
