Last year, law student Brady Madison’s binge drinking left him naked, unconscious, and in trouble with the law. Now 350 days sober and with only two weeks to serve the last twelve hours of community service, Brady’s faced with another difficult choice: take an offer from the jerk who took the incriminating pics or spend the remaining hours in jail.
Tate Quinn’s snap judgment in Brady’s hotel room on New Year’s Eve ruined any chance he had of hooking up with Brady. Worse, his parents refuse to pay for another semester of grad school until he makes his mom’s New Year’s charity event a success.
Tate needs a volunteer to help him herd the cats, er, kids, at the New Year’s Eve afternoon party, and Brady has always been good with kids. Can they put aside their past anger and shame for six hours, or will these potential lovers turned enemies resolve to remain enemies in the new year?
New Year Not You is a 63k-word enemies to lovers M/M romance between a recovering alcoholic and a recovering man-child. This novel has an AA sponsor moonlighting as a DJ, a cold war between two moms, and two dudes who are not looking for true love (but find it anyway).
Amazon – Kindle Unlimited
This was a new to me author, but I liked the premise so I decided to jump in. Not bad. Definitely not great, but not bad.
Brady and Tate have been acquaintances since they were children in the same church. But because they went to different high schools- public versus private- they didn’t really travel in the same circles. But in college they are at the same party (we’ll get back to this) and Tate agrees to be Brady’s date to his parent’s New Year’s Eve party. Until a misunderstanding upends Brady’s life and he tells Tate to never speak to him again.
Nearly a year later they cross paths again. And the rest of the story is them finding their way back to each other through forgiveness. Forgiving each other and themselves. And while I found that story very sweet and I liked that it wasn’t instantaneous, there were just a lot of things that hampered it along the way for me.
There are a couple of smaller things that bugged me-overflowing shower? cracked marble? to bigger things- taking the Bar exam while still in law school. BEING in law school and studying for the Bar while doing community service hours. And OMG the New Year’s Rockin’ Afternoon party Tate throws at the library for 500 kids. FIVE HUNDRED KIDS? Come on. And Brady had been drinking and getting drunk at his party’s HUGE party since he was 15 and no one noticed or said anything?
I’m also a bit confused about the so called rivalry between Tate and Brady’s moms. It was really weird.
I definitely enjoyed Tate’s little sister and Brady’s sponsor. They definitely added to the story dynamic. I wanted more of the sponsor though. More of Brady struggling with sobriety.
So it was kind of cute, but some things were just too much for me to let go.
3 pieces of eye candy
Edie Montreux is demisexual and an ally for all aspects of the LGBTQ+ rainbow. She loves her husband, Queen, dogs, and video games. Edie works full-time to support her LGBTQ-fiction writing habit, but still finds time to walk the dogs and protect imaginary worlds from fantasy creatures.
You can find her online at https://ediemontreux.com. If you want to know more about Edie’s upcoming projects, join her newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/t7b1x6.