Prodigal Lost and Found
MM Romance
Dreamspinner Press
February 11, 2020
249
Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.
MENAGE REVIEW
She Said- Melissa Brus
He Said- Ulysses Diets
She Said- Gloria Lakritz
Reviewed by Melissa Brus
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
I stayed up way too late to finish this book. TA Moore managed to create a character that I found myself feeling ambiguous about until the last few chapters
Morgan Graves is likeable and despicable in turns throughout this book. Most of this is by his own design. His past has made him wary of trusting anyone. Ever. So when he is pulled into the 15 year old mystery of a missing boy, his protective instincts go into overdrive.
Then there is Boyd. Good gracious. Moore created a hunky, nerdy, firefighter! As if that isn’t enough to draw you in, Boyd is also slightly tragic, a little broken, and a lot committed to doing what he thinks is right for everyone but himself.
The scenes between Morgan and Boyd are examples of hot chemistry on a page. Of course, Moore leaves some page turning twists until the end-which is why I was up way late. This is the first of a series, and I can’t wait to see who is next on Moore’s list to be Lost and Found!
Reviewed by Ulysses Dietz
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Boyd MacCabbee is a fireman and an EMT, and even though he’s only twenty-three (by my reckoning), he’s really good at it. The intensity of the work focuses his ADHD, and it’s only during down time that his innate restlessness gets him into trouble. Haunted by the disappearance of his best friend when they were both eight years old, Boyd lives under the shadow of being “the boy who got home.”
Morgan Graves, on the other hand, seems to be a born loser. His anger is so deep-seated that its only outlet is to fight, regardless of whether there’s an actual fight to be had. Tossed from home to home as a child, then into the foster system as an adolescent, he has never known unconditional love.
The tantalizing premise of this mystery-romance is that, during what has become a routine arrest processing for Morgan, his DNA pings a police file in a small former mining town in West Virginia.
Looks like Morgan Graves could be the boy who didn’t get home fifteen years ago.
TA Moore subtitles this Lost and Found, which I only hope means that there might be a follow-up to this book, since there are two major questions left unanswered in the poignant mystery that hangs over the town of Cutter’s Gap.
The m/m world loves difficult characters, and in this case the prize goes to Morgan. Boyd is endearing – battered and emotionally fragile as he is. Even though he’s a hero for what he does every day, he is also despised and viewed as a freak because of his best friend’s disappearance when they were little boys. Beset by scandal-mongers and self-dealing journalists, the mystery of Sammy Calloway’s disappearance has never been laid to rest in Cutter’s Gap. Sammy’s mother, Donna, his older brother Shay, and his best friend Boyd have carried the burden of his disappearance for most of a generation.
Morgan Graves is supposed to be the answer to their prayers, but this belligerent petty criminal seems a far cry from what they all want.
Moore builds a rich visual and emotional setting, with all the claustrophobia of small-town social mores and politics. Interestingly, being gay is not a problem in this part of West Virginia, even among firefighters. I confess I had a little trouble buying into that fantasy, but let it go, so I could enjoy the rough pas-de-deux that Boyd and Morgan dance around each other. Boyd is drawn to Morgan because of his looks, but also because the obvious bad boy appeals to a good boy who is so constantly put-upon by his community. It is easy to love Boyd, but Moore manages to make us care about Morgan, too – because his world is desperately sad. As the tangled plot is picked apart, we begin to understand what Morgan has experienced in his relatively short life, and we also understand things that he himself can’t quite grasp. All we can do is wonder – as Boyd wonders – what’s really happened to Morgan Graves.
Moore brings freshness to her genre, with intense characters and (mostly) plausible settings, even if she relies on various small-town-America tropes so beloved by so many novelists over the years. I’d love to see these guys again.
Reviewed by Gloria Lakritz
Sr Reviewer and Chair of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
T.A. Moore is smoking hot! Her writing, story lines and characters are on Fire!!!!
This newest doesn’t disappoint.
Morgan Graves is arrested…..For head butting a cop and breaking the cops nose…..This is not his first arrest…..Unfortunately for Morgan, the last time he was incarcerated ,the cops took his DNA.
Boyd Maccabbee is a firefighter living in a small town of Cutters Gap…..The most famous thing that puts this town on the map is the disappearance of Boyd’s best friend Sammy Calloway. Boyd lives in the world of what if….Morgan is transferred to Cutter’s Gap when his DNA shows he might be Sammy Calloway…..
Tammy Moore writes a hard hitting story of what happens to families, and townsfolk when a horrible thing like this occurs and it is many years later…..THIS IS A MUST READ!!! Seriously, the story is great, the hotness is off the charts and it is a series and there is More!!!