Title: All the Way Happy
Author: Kit Coltrane
Publisher: Carina Press
Release Date: December 27, 2022
Genre(s): M/M Young Adult, Enemies to Lovers, Second Chance
Page Count: 336
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
What initially grabbed me about this book was the plot - two boys meet in school, hate each other, fall in love, leave each other, and 17 years later as their sons are enrolling in the same school, meet up again.
HOWEVER ... this story is cloaked in memories, events are alluded to and not fully discussed, one of the MCs' internal dialogs will start down an interesting path, only to abruptly end with little information to further the story, and so on. Once I got to around 75% of the story, it seems as if - for the first time - the story existed in the here-and-now rather than as a flashback.
I particularly found this frustrating as we readers never really get the full picture, and little in the way of character development. Jack is poor, Theo is rich. Theo is a nasty piece of work (for reasons ....) and Jack has issues. Each man was married and have children, but the boys are basically just a plot device to get the two men back together, and the ex-wives are wafer-thin character-wise.
I would welcome the opportunity to read more from this author (this appears to be a debut novel) as I generally liked the raw ingredients but felt the soufflé fell flat. 3 stars.
I received an ARC from the Publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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