There You Stand by Christina Lee (Between Breaths #5)

Original title: There You Stand

Year published: 2015

Published by: Penguin/Intermix

Number of pages: - (this is an e-book and a review edition at that)

First sentence: “I swallowed past the lump in my throat and leaned over to pat Chopper, the dog I’d inherited a couple of months ago from Joe, my latest asshole boyfriend.”

Plot: Tattoo artist Cory Easton has worked long enough at Raw Ink to know, just by looking at a dude, what his body art reveals, what makes him tick, what even makes him scared. Until he meets the quiet and remote Jude York—so unreadable, so unreachable, and so unlike anyone else, he can’t help but arouse Cory’s curiosity.

As captivating and complex as his ink, Jude is a mystery—and Cory’s falling fast and hard under his spell. Against his better judgment to steer clear.

The rumors of Jude’s past overshadow him—whispers of prison and an unmentionable secret that’s kept him in the protective shadows of a local motorcycle club. As Cory probes deeper, he wonders how much he really wants to know. Especially since Jude has awakened something inside him that has been buried too long—and has him feeling completely alive for the first time in forever…

(Taken from Goodreads because I’m still reeling)

My thoughts: Holy fucking shit! Pardon the language. This is just too much. Okay so this was my first male/male romance read and I was a bit weary at first and worried that I thought it might not be entirely for me. But holy shit it was! I absolutely loved this. And not just the romance stuff but the story was great, the language was great, it was funny and oh my god, yeah this book has it all!

Both of the guys have these really complicated back stories and you’d think that would be something that scares them. And it sort of does, though Jude is a lot wearier for reasons that become very obvious as you get farther into the book. They get off to a slow start with one of them trying to ignore his feelings for the other (doesn’t that always happen? It pisses me off) but they slowly accept (more or less) that there’s something between them.  They start to build some form of relationship, they connect over their love of dogs and the fact that Jude is getting a tattoo at the place Cory works. Jude is a very quiet person (for reasons, obviously) but Cory manages to draw him out of his shell eventually. Together they share a lot of things, things they’d never shared with anyone before and I just fell in love with their love, does that make sense?

Anyway, I thought for sure I’d be embarrassed when it came to the sexy times, and I was. But I realized I almost always am even if it’s the standard male/female situation. I was embarrassed because it was kind of an embarrassing situation. I mean the things that were said, I’d probably be embarrassed if someone had sad that to me in real life. But still I loved it, I never in my life imagined that two guys together would be that interesting (HOT, yes of course I mean HOT!) but it was.

Christina has a really nice language. It doesn’t feel forced, it felt very natural to read and I could really imagine Cory and Jude’s voices in my head. I even read Jude’s lines with an accent. It was brilliant (said in an English accent of course). There was a sense of humor there that I absolutely adored but there wasn’t so much humor that it took away the seriousness that was ever present in the story which was great because no matter how funny something is we can’t just forget everything bad, right?

So to sum it all up, I loved the book, and if you feel like this would be something for you I think you should definitely read it. Hell, I’m still reeling.

Now I just need to read the rest of the books in the ‘Between Breaths’ series and swoon over some other people.  

There You Stand will be out on April 21^st of this year!