I can't unread this so I'll just wait for what comes next...

Never Too Early: Finding Their Way - Chris Owen, Tory Temple

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not but this has ended up being one of the most thought provoking and disturbing books I've encountered in quite a while. The premise of this book is essentially what happens when 2 couples who are both in long-term established relationships and who live a fair distance from each other meet and what starts out as friendship becomes something more. Where do the lines get drawn? How do you protect that original relationship? What happens if it doesn't work? Can 4 go back to being 2 and if so will it ever be the same or as good, is better possible? So many questions and so far not really any answers.

 

I love Tory Temple's Firefighters which is the series that introduces us to Chance and Tucker and I also loved Chris Owens' series Bareback where we got to meet Jake and Tor now the question is do I enjoy what happens when these four men come together in one series? The answer for me is 'I still don't know'. There were things I thoroughly enjoyed about this book. I love the way Tucker and Tor interact, their playful nature with each other and I enjoyed the interaction between the four of them as a group but ironically I found myself uncomfortable with the strength of the attraction between Chance and Jake. Something which is a bit hypocritical even in my own opinion. I do wonder if this is due to the fact that Chance and Jake's relationship is played out more on page while Tor and Tucker are more of an off page thing.

 

Ok, this is the point where I'm going to put stuff into spoiler tags, so read at your own risk. If you are planning on reading this book maybe avoid this until after you've done so. If you're curious and if you're one of those people that aren't bothered by something that is possibly TMI, feel free to continue reading...

The biggest question that I have is 'at what point is it cheating? If you both know and have agreed to what's going on. Then is it ever really cheating? I've read more than a couple of ménage books and I've even read Willa Okati's duology 'Love is Endless' and I've been cool with them all. But these books for me are different because we have 2 long term established relationships that rather than merging into one relationship with 4 people seem to be turning into 2 more separate sets of relationships. Instead of having Chance & Tucker and Jake & Tor become Chance, Tucker, Jake & Tor what seems to be emerging is the continuation of the original relationships as well as the development of Chance & Jake as one couple and Tucker & Tor as another. My brain is not seeing a happy ending here and to be honest it's kind of making my heart ache and my head hurt. Honestly so far when Chance and Jake are together I feel like Tucker and Tor are taking a backseat with each of their respective partners and while we haven't had a lot of page time with Tucker and Tor, I'm still getting the same impression and this is in spite of the fact that when Tucker and Tor got into a disagreement Chance and Jake were each quick to come to the defence of their original partner to the point where they ended up having a disagreement .

(show spoiler)

 

I was really torn when I finally made myself start this review because I couldn't figure out how many stars do I give? I don't have a set guideline for rating and I'm pretty sure even if I did it wouldn't have helped on this one. I went back and looked at the first book again and decided that while this one left me feeling in some ways sad and a little nervous as to how things were going, it wasn't a bad book. Especially not when it has challenged my to step outside of my comfort zone and look at things from a very different perspective.

 

I also did something that I normally try really hard not to do right before writing this review and that was to peek at what others have written and to be honest it didn't help. It's a real mixed bag out there for this book and I can't say I'm really surprised by it. But, the one thing I do know is that there's another book coming it's going to be titled 'Never Too Early: Full Circle' I'll be reading that one for sure because I can't take back what I've already seen and I'm hoping there's that it will give me some of the answers to my questions that right now I'm just not able to see. So I'm going to hang in there and trust that the authors have this figured out because to quit now would leave my heart aching and my head hurting and that's just not acceptable. Of course I'm hoping that the next book isn't too far from being released as well. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.