Title : The Ghosts Between Us
Author : Brigham Vaughn
Series : The West Hills book one
Genre(s) : contemporary gay romance, hurt-comfort-healing
Release Date : March 3rd 2019
Rating : 5/5 Stars
Buy link : Amazon
Dr. Christopher Allen knows how to deal with death. He’s a psychiatrist who works with hospice patients and their families, helping them cope with grief and letting go. But Chris’s job doesn’t prepare him for the sudden death of his devil-may-care brother Cal.
At Cal’s funeral, Chris is completely thrown when he meets Elliot Rawlings, an artist Cal has been dating. Chris is hurt to discover that the brother he knew as straight was actually bisexual. Elliot is angry and resentful of having been kept hidden from Cal’s family.
After the funeral, a night of drinking at the bar with Cal’s friends leads to Chris and Elliot falling into bed together. The next morning, they’re overwhelmed by guilt and grief and agree to never speak of it again.
But Cal’s apartment needs to be packed up and Elliot reluctantly agrees to help Chris, as well as answer some questions about Cal’s life and their relationship. Despite their guilt and initial dislike for one another, they sort through the pieces of Cal’s life and begin to fall for each other.
Despite his best efforts to fix things, Chris’s family seems to be crumbling around him and he begins to question who he is and what his role with them is. As his feelings for Elliot grow, Chris must decide if they’re worth further damaging his fragile relationships with his friends and family.
Elliot’s rough upbringing has left him distrustful of getting close to anyone, much less another man who isn’t willing to acknowledge him in public. The odds seem stacked against Chris and Elliot, but if they can overcome them, they may be able to lay Cal’s ghost to rest, along with their own demons.
Reader Advisory: This story deals with themes related to alcoholism, death (of secondary characters), and past abuse/neglect.
…despite the guilt and regret, there was no denying that a big part of me still responded to Elliot. And the more common ground Elliot and I found, the more difficult to ignore the attraction I felt to him. Nothing about him was my type and yet something about him drew me in.
🍀🍀🍀
I know that this book will gonna be something since the first time the blurb caught me. And I’m so glad that the book had fulfill my expectations.
The emotional journey about the grieving and how the two main characters trying to cope it had successfully gripping my heart right from the very first page to the end. I have this constant ache in my heart during the reading. The raw emotions the author trying to portrayed through some emotional scenes had success put me in constant gloomy. I cried, mad and my heart broke for both Elliott, Chris….and Cal….
I mad at Cal for what he did to Elliott, but completely understand why the guilty eat him slowly from inside. I mad at Chris for almost hurt Elliott like what his brother did, but again I understand the dilemmas and the guilt he feels about his attraction to his brother boyfriend, and I have this constant urge to hug Elliott almost the entire reading because this poor guy didn’t deserve for being a dirty little secret. Elliott deserve all the best in his life, that include love...
The way the author woven the conflicts between the two main characters and people around them feels believable and squeeze my heart again and again, the main characters raw emotions and vulnerability are strip bare to the reader through the dynamic of the ups and down of their fragile relationship. And it’s all combined beautifully with the good writing that made this book feel stellar.
Brigham Vaughn is a new author to me and this is the first time I read her work, but I’ll make sure it won’t be the last…
That was the odd thing about all of this. I hardly knew him, yet Elliot understood me better than anyone else in my life.
....the way he’d held me, let me grieve, anchored me. I had to believe it had meant something.
Recommended!
No comments:
Post a Comment