No strings attached is all Oliver can offer. He’s hiding a broken heart that holds him back from diving into a new relationship, but he’ll go on a blind date to make his family happy. Just one date, though; he doesn’t have time for love to derail his plans.
Divorced and demoted to the night shift, Nick has his own problems. He’s got an ex-wife who needs him and a kid with one foot in juvie. The last thing Nick needs is to butt heads—or other body parts—with a tempting hipster who wears a sad smile on their blind date.
Their chemistry can’t be denied, though, in an argument or in bed. No strings sex is uncomplicated and that’s what Nick and Oliver need. But getting into bed together is one thing. Staying out of each other’s hearts soon becomes so much more complicated than either one imagined.
Cold Pressed is an 80k contemporary MM romance. It features a smoldering bisexual single dad, a broken-hearted hipster with a thing for beet juice, and a friends-with-benefits arrangement that blooms into the HEA you’ve been looking for.
Amazon – Kindle Unlimited
First things first… I was skeptical coming into this one because I was not a fan of the first one in the series. I’d luckily forgotten most of it or I might’ve passed this one up. I’m so glad I didn’t!
In this one, we have Seb’s brother Oliver, remember him? It’s okay if you don’t, I didn’t in the beginning… he’s moved to Seacroft after his long-time partner left him high and dry after talking him into quitting his job to open a juice cleanse bar… it’s a lifestyle, really, but, it was hard to get it started, especially because it wasn’t really Oliver’s dream, but Coopers (the ex, he’ll have very little page time and really just cuz he pops up sporadically, he’s not too important, thankfully)….
Nick works dispatch at the firehouse across from the farmers market where Oliver is set up and their first meeting wasn’t a good impression on either of them. Nick has a lot of baggage, an ex-wife, a troubled teenager and a job that he was watching from a desk due to an injury on the job… when Oliver gets his car towed after a long night shift, he’ll admit that he wasn’t so friendly when they first met…. Or the second time they met when his buddy/coworker Brian sets him up on a blind date with the gorgeous jerk who got his car towed!
Thankfully, after the initial shock wore off, the two guys were able to have some wine and get to know each other. They were about as opposites as two people could be, but you know what they say about opposites and all that… while they didn’t see a future beyond maybe messing around, neither had the time to devote anything more than that anyway, what with Oliver trying to get his failing business up and running and Nick trying to keep his sully teenager out of juvie without letting Oliver in on the more personal problems in his life… they’d agreed to that, not getting personal, but it was hard for them to stay away from each other… I kinda loved that too.
Now, Nick’s son… I saw that coming… maybe not the how… but the why…. I would’ve liked to have throttled him about a half dozen times. As a mother of a 14 and 15 year old (though, 16 in August)…. He was so disrespectful and hateful and I just wanted to beat the attitude out of him. Some of the things he said to Nick was unforgivable… child or not, he knew the shots he was firing when he ran his mouth, and did he even apologize, ever? I don’t remember it if he did. Just like Oliver and Seb’s dad in the last one, Nick’s son, Hayden was a big pain in the butt for me. I’m glad he got his stuff worked out, but he never redeemed himself for me…. I’m also glad their dad wasn’t in this book like he was in Seb’s, because I would’ve stopped reading immediately, if he was.
I’m curious to see about Avery though… the ginger twink, as Seb called him. I kinda hope he’s next! I hope he does something about the town meeting people too, they never got the karmic kick back they deserved either… Jerks!
Overall though, watching these two fall for each other and then lean on each other when they both needed each other was sweet. I kind of fell in love with Oliver myself. He was so patient and understanding and …. Did I mention patient? He’d have had to have been with Hayden.
It was a really sweet story and one very much worth the read.
4 pieces of eye candy
Whether I knew it then or not, I’ve been a writer since the second grade, when I wrote a short story about a girl and her horse. My grandmother typed it out for me and said she’d never seen so many quotation marks from a seven-year-old before. I took that as a challenge and have tried to break that record in all the stories I’ve taken on since then. It’s good to have goals, right?
I live in Toronto with my very patient husband and the world’s neediest cat. I try to split my time between writing, community theater stage management, and traveling anywhere that has good wine. Tragically, this leaves no time to clean the house.
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Giveaway details: Enter the giveaway on Instagram by following @allisontemplebooks & comment on any tour host photo using #ColdPressedTour. There will be one winner of a paperback copy of either Top Shelf or Cold Pressed. Open Internationally.
