Regret Me Not

Both of these men so much more in the other man than they see in themselves. It might be that they each bring out the best because they see what is truly there on the inside.

Regret Me Not is a beautiful story about two men struggling to stay true to themselves despite a round of hard knocks. A quick and fluffy read with two strongly developed characters that suck you right in to rooting for them!

Pierce is tired and in pain. Following a bad car accident, the implosion of a bad marriage to a judgmental woman, and the loss of his job, he’s angry at the world, and he goes to hide out at a friend’s beach house to get over himself before Christmas or curl up and die. He's not quite sure which when he meets Hal.

Hal is nine years younger but nursing a broken heart and the deep wounds of having parents who have never accepted him for who he is. An eternal optimist and a perpetual student, he's finally taken to massage and physical therapy but his parents refuse to pay for more school unless it’s law school. He has until the New Year to decide to be true to himself or play it safe and keep his family.

Hal takes a reluctant Pierce under his therapeutic wing after a meet-cute at the pool. As Pierce regains his strength, their attraction builds, but Christmas is coming and they both have decisions to make.

For those familiar with Amy Lane, this is her yellow lane to perfection. It wouldn't be Amy without tugging on your heart strings, but she does a great job keeping it light and fluffy to the end. This story is set in the lead up to Christmas so it's a great holiday read, but the holidays aren't so prominent that you couldn't read it at any time of the year. Pierce has known he's bisexual since college, so there’s no identity angst. This is a fantastic story with a happily ever after that you can read in comfort from beginning to end without waiting for the ax to fall!

It’s interesting that all of the reviews below, for a novel written for a gay man, are all from females without a male review...but that’s 90% of this site unfortunately. Saying that, I so much appreciate all of the fabulous female authors though.

I’m sorry, I really tried to get into the story and love it. For four days, I started fresh but just couldn’t see this story unfolding and I was bored. I did not finish, so a waste of money for me.

I will definitely try this author again. Sometimes, it just doesn’t click.

I barely got through the first couple of pages and wanted a Kleenex box near me. I never needed it but oh boy, this one hit so many feels, and I felt every one of the emotions the Hal and Pierce were dealing with you. It made me sad and it made it hurt, and I rooted for both of them to find themselves and each other. The holidays are a tough time to deal with, and when family makes it so much harder, well, then drowning in doubt and loss of self worth, and even failure makes it hard to stay upright and move forward. I felt like I knew Hal and Pierce, and that maybe they just knew me as well. Another absolutely wonderful, well down story.

It was tough not to empathize and feel for both Hal and Pierce. Two very lonely and lost souls, one recovering from a horrific accident, and the other trying to decide his place in the world. The writing is fabulous just as I find it always is with this author, but there’s something a little different here, a romance that is just packed with glances, hidden touches, innuendos that might not have been innuendos, a friendship they both desperately need, and the most wonderful sexual and intimate, tension.

“You can’t,” he said fervently, because this suddenly seemed important. “You can’t. A relationship isn’t like that—you can’t protect yourself, even if you know the dangers. You protect yourself and you’ll just… it’s like a circuit. You can’t make a circuit with the vinyl still on the wires. You either strip the protection off to make the circuit complete and hope it doesn’t explode, or nothing ever happens.”

Hal and Pierce aren’t that different from each other even with the nine-year age difference. Pierce may have been a crotchety, bitter, sometimes a**hole man when he got to his sister’s in Florida, but he almost died in that car accident and everything hurt. He still showed how sweet he was when he took his best friend up on his offer to stay in his condo on the beach, and got out of his sister’s hair until he could find his inner unicorn again. Hal is at his parents’ condo because Dad is a conservative judge in North Carolina and his parents are having a lot of friends around over the holidays and their gay son is a huge disappointment. Hal needs to take this time to decide whether he wants to stick with what he wants to do with his life, or give in and end up at college majoring in what his parents want. He’s very good at being a trainer, teaching yoga and massage, but somehow this past year with losing his boyfriend he thought would be forever, Hal has lost his unicorn, too. Both men have crappy childhood memories to go along with the crappy parents they got. Pierce protects his baby sister and her family from theirs but who protects Hal?

“You’ll always be a unicorn,” he promised. “You’ll be forty-five and a unicorn. Or sixty. Just because I’m not as strong as you are doesn’t mean I don’t believe in you.”
Hal shook his head and buried his face in the hollow of Pierce’s shoulder. “You are,” he hiccupped. “You are a unicorn. You just won’t see….”

An absolutely lovely, sweet, and delightful slow-burn romance. ‘Regret Me Not’ should be read in front of a fire with a mug of hot chocolate, and perhaps a little peppermint schnapps added. Every moment of this story I could see Hal and Pierce in my mind and it was everything I hoped and needed it to be.

NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews