Let Leaves Lay Where They Fall

It wasn't as good as the AJ Truman one I read earlier this year, but it was a pleasant read, and I might try more from this author.

However, it baaaadly needs another few passthroughs from an editor, because the typos in the KU edition are egregious. Weird punctuation, missing words, extra words, broken sentences, characters switching names... oof. It's rough. But at the end of the day, it's hardly meant to be fine literary fiction, and it was never so bad that I couldn't understand what the author meant. I still enjoyed the story overall.

The leads I think both were well realized and their romance felt believable. The obstacles were realistic and caused enough drama without being OTT or arising from complete stupidity on the characters' parts. I particularly enjoyed Nathan, but found Jamie a bit trying at times, especially when overstepping bounds with other people's pets and it just being portrayed as a cute thing. That was weird to me. Also, this one had some women characters for once, so that was nice, I guess.

The ending dragged out a bit, seemingly only to set up the next book in the series. It just felt tacked on rather than organic to the Jamie and Nathan's story.

There were some cringy tropes and stereotypes sprinkled through it, and some of the emotional beats veered a bit too far towards overreaction, but not so far that it bothered me. The sex scenes were frequent and explicit, but made sense with the narrative and pacing, and didn't go too overboard with dopey euphemisms (I mean, there were some, but somewhat restrained).

I don't know if it just wasn't as bad or heavy handed as in other books, or if I'm just acclimatizing to the genre — and I think my tolerance for spice is increasing, for better or worse — but I'm happy to have enjoyed another m/m romance. Good times.