When Love Gets Hairy

I will be completely honest and say that when I read the description for 'When Love Gets Hairy', book three in Jacob Flores' 'Provincetown' series, I giggled off and on for two whole days. How could I not? Nino is totally and completely an Abercrombie & Fitch model, he loves the twinks who arrive on the ferry, he's arrogant, vain, shallow, and he really, really, really needs to meet his match. To have the author write his match as an older, out of shape Bear? Priceless, Jacob, simply priceless. I couldn't wait to open up this book and watch the verbal sparring commence. I was not disappointed. At. All.
The best thing ever? Watching Nino's reaction when he discovers the furry beast in his bed is just as repulsed by Nino. What? How could that be? He should be thanking his lucky stars he had the privilege of being with Nino. But, since neither of them can remember anything, it's good riddance to bad rubbish, respectively. *snort* Except Nino starts wondering if he's become as “plastic” as Teddy accused him of being and Teddy can't stop thinking about the gorgeous man. These thoughts cause serious concern, though. Nino dragged himself out of a miserable childhood where he was overweight, very poor, and rejected constantly to become a top male fashion model. Teddy had an equally miserable childhood with a stripper mother who fixated on looks, and since Teddy's broken heart in college by a “plastic” man, he has stayed with the real people, a little overweight and hairy, not waxed and sculpted. How are these two ever going to see eye-to-eye? Much less fall in love?
Oh but the author wove a tangled web running through P-Town. Everywhere Nino and Teddy went, they either ran into each other, or ran into friends who knew the other. They couldn't get away from each other and it wasn't helping the situation. Between Louie, Teddy's dog, who falls madly in love with Nino, to Jay, Teddy's friend with a heart of gold who adopts Nino as his friend, these men don't stand a chance. What was even better, though, was watching Nino thaw from being such a jerk. Granted, he was that way as a self-defense mechanism, but I loved seeing Teddy and him get to be friends, and then more. It was the absolute ultimate opposites attract, except at the very core, they weren't that different after all.
I can honestly say that, so far, this has been my favorite book of the series. I loved Nino and Teddy. The supporting cast including Irene, Jay, and Louie were fantastic and made the book even better. Thank you, Jacob, for another wonderful read that I can wholeheartedly recommend.
NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews

When we met fashion model Nino as Van's best friend and roommate in When Love Takes Over he seemed to be nothing more than fun loving, twink chasing, manwhore. When we first meet him again in this book, it seems we will get more of the same as he wakes up horrified to find himself in bed with a bear of a man, he obviously had sex with, but can't remember. We hear his inner monologue as he looks on in disgust at the hairy man whose body falls well below Nino's exacting standards. When Teddy wakes up to find Nino staring at him he writes him off as plastic and goes on his merry way. Teddy also has no idea how he woke up with the hot bodied Nino since he only hooks up with bears.
Of course Bear Week in P-Town is Nino's least favorite time of the year. Instead of hiding out in his apartment however, he finds himself somehow making friends with Jay, the biggest hairiest bear of all, and unable to escape running into Teddy. Soon their hate at first sight begrudgingly becomes something of a friendship. Nino has been struggling personally and professionally recently, and some old wounds are being reopened. Teddy is unable to commit to a relationship, still hung up on the man that walked out on him a decade before. As Nino begins accepting the bearish men as (gasp!) real people, he also begins to accept that maybe he needs to lower the walls he's built to protect himself and look at his life and future in a way he never expected.
This book had a very different feel from the first book. There was a slow development of a friendship between Nino and Teddy as the men find they had more in common than they could have ever expected. When Nino finally remembers what led up to that first night together, he becomes determined to show Teddy that he is not the shallow \"plastic\" of Teddy's first impression and only hopes he is not too late. As always, Jacob Flores' writing easily combines humor with deeper underlying emotion that really warms you to the characters, flaws and all.
We get to catch up with Van and Zach, Gary and Quinn and are introduced to some wonderful new secondary characters such as Jay. I have to admit that Teddy's fag hag friend Irene was a bit hard for me to warm to (and never really won me over) but since she had the same effect on the men in the book I'll assume that was to be expected. If you haven't read the first book, you can easily pick this one up as a standalone. I'm definitely looking forward to the next story in the series.