Cloud White Nailed It #3
Bi Sexual, Romance, Humor
Independent
August 10, 2023
Kindle
255
Amazon
Meet Milo and Mungo. Mungo and Milo.
Just friends. Best friends.
Honestly, there’s nothing more to it.
Just best friends. And bad timing.
That awkward moment when you realise you’re dancing alone. That you’re hopelessly in love with your oldest friend, except somehow along the way, you forgot to tell him. Tired of waiting for you to come to your senses, he’s moved on, he’s found his significant other.
And now it’s too late.
Though slowly dying inside, you pick yourself up, swallow your pride, and grieve from the side lines. And everything is fine, until the day you notice him acting strangely.
Why is he unhappy? A shadow of his former self?
You know him better than anyone and something is not right. Against good advice, you confront him. And risk ruining everything.
Cloud White is a friends-to-lovers romance with a hard-won happy ending. Be kind to yourselves and heed the trigger warnings.
Review by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Milo and Mungo White work in the same law firm on London. They’ve been friends for twelve years – good friends. But Milo was always a player, a party boy, devoted to hook-ups and the endless possibilities of Mr. Right Now. Mungo has always been the steady one, big and bearded, endlessly kind and patient. The springboard into this story is the moment when, a year prior to the main action, Milo finally decides to make his move on Mungo, only to find that he’s begun seeing someone.
And therein lies the painful story arc of this friends-to-lovers romance. Milo, the gadabout, decides that he loves Mungo just a little too late. Milo, whose miserable childhood and threatening, parasitic family are the reason for his inability to belief in his own lovableness; has never really looked inside his own feelings. Mungo, whose sense of justice and his longtime yearning for coupledom, can’t turn his back on a commitment that gives him everything he wants (except for Milo).
Against the backdrop of the triplets (one straight, one gay, one bi) from the first two books in this series, Milo and Mungo struggle to cope with their conflicted feelings. Milo picks up a legal-but-inappropriately-young boy (Danny) at a club, and finds himself first in the role of a horny virgin’s first go and then as a mentor-protector to a kid who’s wise beyond his years. Mungo, meanwhile, is building his relationship with the ambitious and snobbish Cav, whose controlling ways set off all sorts of alarms in the reader’s mind (and, eventually in Mungo’s). Lulled into a false sense of contentment with Cav, Mungo blinds himself to the problems in his superficially idyllic life.
There’s a lot of emotional stress in this story as it unfolds, but the author dives deep into both Milo’s and Mungo’s minds, shedding light on their motivations and their true feelings. Danny, the enthusiastic 17-year-old who basically becomes Milo’s little brother (something he sorely needs), is a sly revelation. His love for Milo is innocent and healthy, and he becomes a kind of Greek Chorus for Milo, offering unsolicited advice and an emotional anchor.
Cav, Mungo’s upscale and intolerant partner, is a subtle narcissist. He’s not an obvious monster from the start, so we can understand his appeal to a gentle soul like Mungo, who yearns for the kind of settled domestic life that his chosen family enjoys.
There are a few shocks along the way, and a flash of violence I didn’t expect from a book so filled with humor. I do find that, at my age, I’m less interested in the sexual aspects of these stories than the emotional ones. The strength of the characters and the writing make this all a moot point. Fearne Hill delivers.