Title: The Making of Matt (Souls of the Knight #3)
Author Name: Nicola Haken
Publication Date: October 19, 2015
Matt Carter, self-proclaimed sex-god and drummer for world renowned Souls of the Knight, didn’t have the time or inclination for planning his future, preferring to fill his days with music, women and alcohol. He didn’t want or need anything else in his life.
Until the band parted ways and he found himself no longer living the dream.
Bored and lonely, with too much time and money on his hands, Matt turns to his best friend, Alex Clark, to help devise a new direction to take his life in. Together, they embrace their newfound venture, as owner and manager of one of L.A.’s hottest gay clubs – Kaleidoscope. For the first time, Matt has a plan. He knows where life is heading.
Until a devastating phone call turns his whole world upside down, sending him straight into the comforting arms of his best friend and leading him to doubt everything he’s ever known or believed about himself.
Alex had always been content with his unrequited feelings for his rockstar friend, but as Matt starts to question if he might actually feel the same, he runs as fast as his feet will allow.
Has Matt gone too far? Has his reputation as an irresponsible womanizer who refuses to take life seriously, finally managed to push his best friend away for good?
Or is Alex hiding secrets of his own?
They way they were together from the start…
I just honestly loved everything about this book! I also loved seeing all the old band mates and friends.
You get your misunderstandings, Secrets, the sweet and of course the steam!
I really do not want to give anything away because this is one you defiantly need to read for yourself.
I need to start by explaining how much I love this series. When I volunteered to review this, I pulled the first two books off my Kindle intending to glance through… I read them both again in a single evening and I loved them both just as much the second time.
Because I love Nicola Haken and her men so much, it is with great reluctance that I am awarding the third book in the series only four stars. If you are reading the series back to back, this one makes more sense. As a stand-alone, it doesn’t work terribly well at all for me. There are so many characters by book three that each of them really needs an introduction. Readers either need to start with book one (fantastic!) or resign themselves to a little confusion. (In the UK, the first two books are available on Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime.)
Matt was a great character in Ryder’s book. I loved his childlike interest in sex and his complete lack of filter. Matt is back in this book as the star, but I feel like a little of the character has been diluted. Relationship angst doesn’t really suit him, the storyline with his mother makes him a little too fragile for my liking and he loses a little of his playful edge as his relationship with Alex becomes more serious. I like the way he starts to grow up in this story, but he is still so useless that I feel more like mothering him than falling in love with him.
Alex is a little more grown up, but he is also a little flaky at times. It is only after reading book 2 that we learn how brief Alex and Matt’s relationship has been. This made all the cross communication make more sense to me. In this book, it seemed like Alex and Matt have been best friends forever and I didn’t understand how new the relationship was until re-reading book 2.
I think it was pretty brave of the author to add an HIV plotline. She does it beautifully – managing to be neither flippant nor maudlin. I’d like to see more authors in the m/m genre (even m/f writers) explore this as well as Nicola Haken does.
While this isn’t my favourite book in the series, Nicola Haken is still a fantastic writer. I loved catching up with her men and she still makes me cry. As part of a fabulous series, this is a really good book. As a stand-alone, it doesn’t always work. I would recommend that any new readers start with Sawyer’s book and read the series from the start. It is a brilliant series.
“Matt, are you telling me you think you’re in love with Alex?”
“No! Yeah…fuck I don’t know. I can’t be, right?”
“If you’d asked me an hour ago I’d have said ‘don’t be so fucking ridiculous’, but after listening to you, fuck I really don’t know. Answer me this, you said he touched your dick and you freaked. Why, if you kissed him first?”
“Because I almost came right there in my fucking sweatpants and it scared the shit outta me. It made me question everything I’ve ever known. I mean come on, you can’t just turn gay, right?”
Just saying it out loud sounded fucking ludicrous.
“You’ve lived an extraordinary life, Matt. Maybe it’s something that’s always been there but never had an opportunity to come out.”
“I’ve met plenty of guys, Saw. Never once have I been attracted to a single one of ‘em.”
“Have you ever had your dick out of a woman long enough to actually get to know a guy before though?”
“Touché.” I laughed, not just at Sawyer’s comment but at the whole situation I found myself in. “This is all Jake’s fault, you know.”
“And how the hell do you figure that?”
“Because everything was fine before he came on the scene. We were happy living for the music and women, and then he shows up with all his fucking gayness and passes it on to you. Then, like the pair of you were some kind of butt bandit magnets, Ryder comes along. Then like the gift that keeps on giving the gayitis spreads and suddenly life is all gay porn, gay clubs and gay fucking underwear. It’s gayness overload, dude! I’m fucking telling you that shit is contagious.”
Sawyer snickered, rolling his eyes at the same time. “Is there such a thing as gay underwear?”
“According to Ryder,” I said, shrugging before undoing the button on my jeans to expose the branded hem of my underwear. Sawyer raised his eyebrow, one side of his mouth curling up into a smirk. “They’re comfortable,” I said, feeling the need to defend my favorite pair of shorts. “What the fuck am I gonna do?”
Author of the New Adult/Contemporary novels Missing Pieces, Saving Amy and the Take My Hand series, and m/m romance Souls of the Knight series.
I live in Rochdale, England with my wonderful family and when I’m not playing with my imaginary friends I can usually be found looking after my four adorable (sometimes!) children (six if you include the dogs, seven if you include the hubby!) or studying towards my English Literature degree.
All in all I’m just an ordinary mum with an addiction to reading about hot book guys, writing about hot book guys and Pepsi Max! Oh, and if my kids ever ask… I moonlight as the Pink Power Ranger 😉
