Review: Meet Me in the Blue by A.M. Johnson
SYNOPSIS:
Meet me… in the place where the sun kisses the horizon and sinks into blue shades of you and me.
Meet me there… where everything was always perfect. You and me and the damp grass at dawn and the gray dirt in the late evening rain.
Meet me where we were ourselves and not these two people who can’t even say I love you.
Meet me there and maybe we’ll remember…
We’ll remember the us we were before them, before miles, before lost hours, and you’ll ask what color the sky is, and I’ll say blue like your eyes.
And you’ll smile, and I’ll forget I ever missed you.
****
Luka and Rook have been best friends since they were nine years old.
Five years ago, Luka threw it all away.
When his dad’s health takes a turn for the worst, Luka must come home to say his goodbyes and mend the bridges he burned all those years ago. But coming home is harder than he imagined, and after reuniting with his family, there’s only one person he needs.
Rook…
His best friend.
The one man he pushed away, the one man, no matter how hard he tried to forget, he can’t stop himself from loving.
Even if loving him means breaking his heart all over again.
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
It took me a moment to sink into this story and world. First because I knew this story was going to be emotionally heavy. Secondly, second-chance-ish romances usually aren’t my jam, in fact they fall pretty low on my trope list. But this story was so much more than a romance, it was coming home, healing, and finding yourself.
Rook and Luka were glued together from childhood to young adults, then distance separated them. I liked the contrast between characters. Luka has always loved Rook, it was the one solid constant he has known his whole life. Where he wants to live, what exactly he wants to do, everything else is a question mark…but his love of Rook is rock solid. In comparison, Rook has always known what he wanted to be and where he wanted to live but has never really grasped love. So while Luka finds himself and learns how to stay, Rook finds love and learns that sexuality isn’t so black and white.
The story of their romance could have been told as a stand-alone without the factors of Luka’s father’s failing health. But that acts as a catalyst to bring Luka back to Hemlock Harbor. I would have liked to have seen Luka and Rook reconnect a little bit more over the aspects of life they have missed during the last five years of being distant. But their friendship and ultimate relationship flowed seamlessly. Even with the cloud of death hanging over their heads, they find solace and comfort in one another.
Overall, I adored the character development and the friend group has me intrigued and thrilled for the next installments in the series. The demisexual representation was beautifully done and you can clearly tell A.M. Johnson has done her research and put a heavy dose of respect into the ace-spectrum. And while the book gutted me at moments, it left me with such a joyous ending that I couldn’t help but smile and look forward to Book 2.
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