Rebound M/M Romance
Dreamspinner Press
February 12, 2019
202
Professional basketball player Bri Early needs a physical therapist after an injury, and he’s heard that Obie is the best. Bri takes an immediate liking to the out-and-proud man with the magic touch, and even though Bri isn’t openly gay himself, he’d never let anything stand in the way of something he wants.
Obie can’t deny that the sexy athlete presses all his buttons, but he’s a professional and has no intention of getting involved with a client. While they’re working together, it’s hands off, no matter how great the temptation.
But being a pro athlete isn’t easy. Bri has enemies, and one of them is making his life hell. When his house is set ablaze, Bri can no longer pretend the threatening messages he’s receiving are jokes. He needs a safe place to stay, and Obie can’t turn his back. But the two of them in the same house is a recipe for combustion that could burn them both….
Reviewed by: Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Review Team
Bri Early is a professional basketball player with the Philadelphia Rockets but an injury to his knee could mean the end of his career. He has managed to piss off one therapist after another and they all refuse to deal with him again but a recommendation by one of his friends leads him to Obie Kenoble who unlike most therapy places deals with his patients one on one giving them what they need, and he will give Bri what he needs in more ways than one.
Obie is a proud and out gay man and Bri is a man whose career dictated everything in his life including his sexual desires. Bri was always afraid that revealing his sexual preferences would be the end of his career. In high school he was a jock and afraid colleges would not accept him if they knew he was gay. Then of course he feared being banned by professional teams and their players so all his life he has lived a lie.
Although Obie and Bri are as different as night and day they can’t help the attraction they feel for each other but Obie will not mix personal with business and Bri is his client and Bri still lives in fear of discovery. Everything changes when Bri begins getting threatening phone calls, calls that threaten not only his life but those he cares about. He wonders if he did something to someone in his past, he knows that he was not a man to be proud of in his youth and if a gay kid was picked on he stayed in the background and did nothing to help. Has his past come back to punish him.
Obie and Bri do give into their feelings and in spite of Obie being small in stature and wears makeup at times including glitter Bri sees a side of him that he never expected, Obie is not afraid and doesn’t tolerate bullies. Facing the possibility of never playing basketball again and the threats he is receiving Bri has to reconsider what is important in his life and whether he is ready to give up the lie and live freely as a gay man.
I loved this story, it is about two men one openly living as a gay man unashamed and proud and another man who lives in fear of those around him. We live in the twenty-first century and things have become much more open in the gay community but not open enough, there will always be those that hate anyone or anything different and as far as we have come we have much farther to go. I did get a kick out the Bri and Obie’s real names and they gave me a laugh so I won’t reveal them and take away your chance of finding out what they are, they are a hoot.