Title: Lover Of Light
Author Name & Publisher: Mel Bossa (Samhain Publishing, Ltd.)
Publication Date & Length: January 25th 2016- 225 pages
It only takes a touch to shatter the line between hate and love.
Andy genuinely tried to be happy when his best friend, Dimitry, decided to marry his on-again-off-again Bulgarian boyfriend, Alexei—a beautiful problem case who’s obviously using Dimitry to get a green card. When Dimitry admits only days later that it’s over between him and the little gypsy jerk, Andy can barely contain his pleasure.
Then Andy’s boss announces he’s hired a new waiter. A real firecracker. When Alexei walks through the club’s door, Andy is completely unprepared to work with the man he blames for Dmitry’s broken heart.
In spite of himself, Andy becomes captivated by Alexei the musician, the singer—the man who still carries a light inside him despite his dark past. But Alexei’s time is quickly running out, and his health is fading fast. Though the love growing between them gets brighter every day, Alexei will soon have no choice but to return home to Bulgaria.
Unless Andy can convince him that home is waiting for him—right here in his arms.
Warning: Contains a bartender who thinks he’s got his enemy categorized as neatly as a row of shot glasses…until his heart is straight-up shaken and stirred by love.
Mel Bossa is one of my go-to authors, and this book is exactly why. Although there’s a love story, that is really not what this is about. Sure, there’s a lot of angst and drama, but those aren’t the point either. There are some deep themes about the complex relationships between family, friends, and lovers.
Andy, the narrator, is surrounded by flawed people. He doesn’t seem to realize at first that he has his own troubles–he views them as being more or less caused by the tension in his family. We meet most of them right away, as the story begins with Andy’s father’s funeral. For the first part of the story, he seems to see himself as having been wronged by a number of people–his father, his siblings, his partner, and his best friend’s lover. Only his best friend, Dimitry, seems immune to Andy’s scrutiny.
Over the course of the novel, he slowly gains awareness of his own brokenness, and that leads him into a tentative relationship with Alexei. I loved when Andy thought of Alexei as his mirror, because I think it’s true. It’s only through Alexei that Andy could understand his own place among his family and friends.
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