Luke & Billy Finally Get A Clue

by Cat Sebastian

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
Pages: 102
Rating:

Synopsis:

Billy Reardon’s spent the past five years trying and failing to keep his teammate Luke Novak at arm’s length—or at least a normal, friendly distance. Or, failing that, he’d like to not make a fool of himself. But a month after getting seriously injured by a wild pitch and disappearing off the face of the earth, Luke shows up at Billy’s isolated house in the mountains just as a storm’s about to roll in. Now that they’re stuck together in the middle of nowhere, Billy can’t even pretend not to have feelings that go beyond what he ought to feel for a teammate.

Meanwhile, Luke’s acting strange and Billy doesn’t know why. And Billy can’t seem to fight the urge to make Luke sandwiches and hot cocoa, lend him cozy sweaters, and watch him play with the dogs. It’s all pretty terrible, and the one thing Billy’s sure of is that things between them are going to be different after all this is over.

This is cute and basically exactly what I needed when I read it. Billy and Luke are kind of assholes, each in their way, and they’ve been gravitating together for longer than either would care to think about. They’ve been part of the same team, ending up an integral part of each others’ lives, and it’s really sweet to watch them edge around that, and gradually move together.

It’s a fairly claustrophobic story, mostly just the two main characters, so it works at this length as an exploration of two guys (somewhat hampered by external homophobia and the fact that they’re in sport where that’s potentially even more dangerous for them) getting together and figuring out how to make it work.

And hey, it’s kinda cute to get a grumpy/grumpy relationship instead of grumpy/sunshine! Not that Luke is always grumpy, but he has a grumpy side that he allows himself around Billy.

Rating: 4/5