I ended up waiting to pair my read with the release of the audio by [a:Charlie David 2895612 Charlie David https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1461856493p2/2895612.jpg], life got busy, other reads came and went and I just got back to North & Shaw and their super bumpy relationship road. I'm glad I took the respite because these two don't know how to do easy & sweet.Can you just jump into this series here? I wouldn't recommend it. The relationship between them and their individual histories has been teased out in the previous books and we are now getting to the part where the truly thorny things are being addressed. This book belongs to North. His still unresolved relationship with his soon to be ex-husband Tucker, the why & how he ended up with Tucker, his fraught relationship with his father, a bit about his own identity as a gay man, and most importantly his helplessness when it comes to his attachment & attraction to Shaw. There is of course a case and a victim I couldn't have cared less about save as it serves as a mirror (a horror funhouse one) to who they are or could have been given the time, place, and society they came up in. I enjoyed it way more than expected. I confess to sometimes being annoyed by the infamous N&S banter, which is charming to most readers, but I like to imbibe in small doses. Additionally the way they deal with serious issues affecting their relationship strikes me as a tad childish but then I remember that they are men, gay men, and that (much to my chagrin) the 20's are now the teens when it comes to people's development. Despite all of it I loved this entry in the series and it was in no small part because the author has never shied away from going into situations & places that perhaps many romance readers might recoil from, and he doesn't do it here either. He presents the nitty gritty of the lives of modern day gay men, the hookup culture, the casual sex that's just that, sex, the drug use, the self doubt, the acceptance, partial or completely denied by society and/or loved ones. How it affects the way they see themselves & others. It gets deep. My other cause for relief & joy was that Pari & Truck are barely in it
