reviews_and_ramblings | Grey’s Awakening by Cameron Dane

This is probably one of the few time in which I will not have to find the hidden reasons of the characters' behavior since the author herself gives plenty of them. She did a wonderful job in building a nice background and current setting for them and how they behave and react is in according with them.

Grey is a wealthy businessman; his parents were not exactly two role models and even at 9 years old Grey knew it, and for the good of his sister and his, he convinced their grandmother to take them in. Even if life with his grandmother was good after that, Grey developed a chronic inability to trust people when his feelings are involved. It's strange, Grey's business is to give a chance to strangers with good potential, so you would believe that he is a trusting man, and instead he risks only when nothing of important is on stake, money is not important, your heart is. As an adult Grey is an apparent successful man with a satisfying life, but instead he is a repressed man with a lot of personal issues. I believe that Grey is basically a man who would love the simple things of life, a partner, a family, a nice home, and since that moment he probably provided to this needs with his special relationship with his sister. But when his sister marries and gets pregnant, Grey realizes that it's not him that is building a family, but it's his sister with another man, and Grey is not part of that. He decides to go away for a bit, claiming with himself that he is tired to see "too much" happiness around him, but it's not tiredness, it's more regret that he is not him to have it all.

On the other side of the story there is Sirus, a big man with even a bigger heart. He lives in the cabin near the one owned by Grey, and he is more than willing to welcome Grey. At first Sirus tells to himself to not get involved, but it's too much of temptation for him... Sirus, even if he is not aware of it, tends to build a nest as soon as he finds a good man. And Grey is a good man. Sirus wants a family, he wants acceptance, total acceptance for who he is and what he does. He doesn't want to fake to gain love. Sirus comes from a very loving family, but his mother seems to not accept that her son is gay. She is not rejecting him, she is rejecting the idea, and doing so, she drove him apart. Grey rebels to his family choosing a job, truck driver, that is not up to his family standards... in this way, maybe, he can convince himself that is not him being gay the reason why his mother doesn't accept him, or at least that it's not the only reason.

And so here we have two men that basically are searching the same thing, a family, but that for different reason, refuse to see that they have already found it. Grey opposes his inability to trust enough a man to allow him to be the top, and obviously arrives to the conclusion that Sirus is not the right man for him, since Sirus is not a man that can always play the bottom; Sirus opposes his sine qua non condition that a man has to accept him like that, without trying to change him, and a wealthy man as Grey probably will never consider a truck driver as a possible life partner. Both men arrive to their conclusion without even asking the other man opinion, letting their prejudices speak for them. And so, in a way, these two men are very balanced, they are both very wrong!

The nice reserve power games (who is making the bigger mistakes...) is coupled with very hot and detailed sex scenes... even if they are doubting the reasons why they are together, the two men are together and they are very much enjoying it. In particular I like the nice contrast of Grey, apparently the more refined of the two, that behaves like a dog with his favorite bone (Sirus), while Sirus, the truck driver, comes out like the more sentimental and gentle of the two.

Side note: Grey's Awakening is setting in the same cabin where a previous book in the same series, took place, the story of Grey's sister, Kelsey, who fell in love for Grey's best friend and business partner, John. And I have the idea that also Sirus made a cameo in that book, so, if you are in the mood to read a nice het romance, knowing Cameron Dane, I think that one will be a good choice.

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Amazon Kindle: Grey's Awakening

Series: Cabin Fever
1) The Sweetest Tatoo
2) Grey's Awakening

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle

Cover Art by April Martinez