TITLE: ⟫ The Other Half of Me
AUTHOR: ⟫ Aiden Wilde

SERIES: ⟫Straight Friends Fall in Love #1
RATING: ⟫ 3.5/5

BLURB: ⟫ MATTY

We hadn’t spoken for years. Then, out of the blue, Chad messages me. He’s getting divorced. He needs to get away.

Did I want to go camping with him again, like we did when we were young? Is he forgetting what happened between us before, why we stopped speaking in the first place?

CHAD

People think I am the straightest of straight guys, the bro-est of the bros.

Kara wanting to divorce me wrecked my heart. I just need to get away, two old friends, the sun on our skin, hiking, fishing, swimming in the river.

But when he reminded me of what happened between us before, I felt new things.

He was always the half other of me, but can he make me whole?

Sometimes, a love comes along that will make you change how the world sees you, and how you see yourself.

THE OTHER HALF OF ME is a steamy, high-quality MM gay romance with a theme of straight guys secretly falling in love, and old friends becoming lovers, with a straight-to-gay / gay-for-you trope.

If you love sexy but emotionally satisfying journeys of romantic self-discovery (some angst), as well as beautiful writing and all the classic romance beats with a happy-ever-after ending (HEA), then this novel is for you.

REVIEW: ⟫ This was a quick, easy read – I haven’t read anything else by the author that I can remember so I went into it with no preconceptions. I must admit, I didn’t like Chad – I didn’t like the fact that he only reached out to Matty because he was getting divorced; I didn’t like the whole frat-boy jock thing that he had going on, and he came across as really conceited, even when he was being self-deprecating. Matty, on the other hand, came across as more than a little beaten down by life – being scared of his sexual orientation during his formative years meant that he wasn’t sure who he was apart from being Dylan’s father. I felt that he was possibly too easy going – Chad basically just asked for anything and Matty gave it over.

Matty’s mother was the ‘bad’ guy with her attitude towards homosexuality and, although she redeemed herself slightly with her love for Dylan, she wasn’t a character I enjoyed reading. I think that I could quite enjoy reading more of this series – I like the gay-for-you trope when it’s handled well so I will look out for more by this author.

I received an ARC from BookSirens.