Book Review: Deal Maker by Lily Morton

Blurb:

Sometimes your mouth makes deals that your heart can’t honour.

Jude is a highly successful model, but a very reluctant one. His life is full of casual hook-ups with pretty men in glamorous locations, but it’s still empty. However, circumstances decreed a long time ago that this was his path, so he’s resolutely stayed on it and accepted his fate with good grace. He made a deal with himself and his hook-ups. Get in, get out and no ties with anyone.

However, an accident at home one night leads to him making a new deal and accepting the offer of help from an unlikely source. It leads to an unexpected summer of falling in love with a larger than life man and his child.

But by the end of the summer his reasons for not staying are still valid. Will he turn away? Can he?

Asa is a talented actor who has spent time away from the scene to look after his son. But now he’s back, and the last thing he needs are complications from the gorgeous man who is staying with him. Scarred from too many betrayals, he has no intention of forming a lasting tie with anyone. However, he can’t resist the beautiful man with secrets, and to his horror he develops feelings.

But a deal’s a deal and they said it was just for the summer. What can Asa do with a man who has forever in his eyes and goodbye on his lips?

From the Amazon bestselling author of ‘Rule Breaker’ comes another scorchingly hot romantic comedy.

Todd's rating:

Okay, apologies in advance, but let the profuse gushing begin! : )

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK.

As much as I enjoyed "Rule Breaker," this story was so up my reading tastes alley that, for me, "Deal Maker" blew the first book completely out of the water.

Jude was a 29 y.o., fun-loving, irreverent, underwear model and best friend to Dylan (from book 1) since they were in nursery school together. But when his upstairs neighbor's bath tub was suddenly dropped into his bedroom, he found himself without a place to live for the next several months.

Asa was a 44 y.o., well-known actor with horrible taste in romantic partners and father to his 5 y.o. son, Billy. On his step-brother Dean's recommendation, he decided to give Jude both a place to stay and a job as his assistant.

What happened after that was EVERYTHING.

Asa's very verbal assertion (straight to Jude's face) that he was nothing more than an empty-headed, Calvin Klein billboard was jarring, but Jude decided to make Asa suffer for that judgement, as he 'accidentally' screwed up nearly every job duty that Asa gave him. If Asa was expecting Jude to be an air-headed bimbo, well, Jude was going to give him just that -- with both barrels.

And it was freaking hilarious to witness.

My single favorite comedic scene from the book was meeting Billy at the front door of Asa's Pink Palace, where Jude began to work his way into their lives.

A few minutes later it swings open again, and the little boy appears. “Oh, what now?” he sighs in a very world-weary manner.

My lips twitch. “I’ve been thinking about your password.” He brightens instantly, and I lean back against the doorjamb. “Has it got the word poo in the password?”

He looks at me as if I’m Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking rolled into one. “It has,” he breathes wonderingly...

I love books with true-to-life representations of kids and Morton completely nailed Billy in this story. He was so much more than a two-dimensional, miniature, scene-stealing, little ham, which was truly entertaining to read. She made me love that (fictional) little boy so hard.

The book was chock full of hilarity from start to finish, but written with such cleverness and subtlety that I never felt that the book was trying too hard to evoke laughs.

But along with the humor, there are plenty of tender, touching chapters as well, some with steam and some steam-free. The section where Asa finally gave Jude a truly happy birthday, and the 2 years later "adapt me" epilogue?

GAH! All the feels, folks!

This story was as close to perfect as I've read in the last several months, with my only criticism being Morton's tendency (in this series, at least) to write "The Big Break-Up" scenes waaaaaaay OTT, leaving me slightly pissed off and yelling "WTAF was that???"

Those scenes were very out of character for the MC's, so I felt that that particular dialogue could have been written with much more tact and less hurtful anger, staying much more true to whom the characters had consistently shown themselves previously to be.

Yet, that one bit of head scratching near-fuckery aside, this was still a solid 5-star read and I'd highly recommend it.

** NOTE: The author also wrote a free short story, "Green Eyed Monsters (Deal Maker 1.5)," which is available on her web site at the following URL, so don't miss that! : )

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17...

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