Book Title: Love’s Magic
Author: Janice Jarrell
Publisher: Self Published on ACX
Narrator: Walker Williams
Release Date: June 17, 2019
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 9 hours and 11 mins
Finding Love's Magic is hard. Keeping it is harder.
Blurb
Nate is a professor at the university, content with his life, his job, and his partner David. But when he jumps in to defend a student under attack and is injured himself, Nate becomes a leader in the campus movement to end sexual assault. When David doesn’t understand his militant reaction, Nate feels abandoned and betrayed, and begins to question their relationship.
David's love for Nate is deep and true, but he can’t support Nate’s confrontational stance, fearing that the consequences will destroy his career. Forced to choose between his love for Nate and his own sense of what’s right, David feels trapped in a hopeless impasse.
Colin, an Irish Sergeant in the campus police force, is a legend on campus. A fierce protector of assault victims, he is merciless in pursuit of their assailants. When he meets Joshua, a Title IX consultant, sparks fly, and their relationship quickly becomes passionate.
Joshua wants more from Colin, much more, but Colin clings to his independence, fighting against his feelings for the soft-spoken psychologist. When Colin’s past comes back to haunt him, an explosive quarrel sends Joshua home without a word. Will Colin care enough to seek him out?
It would take a miracle to resolve these issues and bring these men together.
Love's Magic is a gay romance featuring two couples, who will both find their HEA.
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Karen's review:
'Love's Magic' is the story of how 1 event touches 4 lives, leaving them forever altered...
From the bigger picture issue of sexual assault and violent crimes in the setting of academia, Janice Jarrell takes us into the lives of four men, giving us a very up close and personal look at how one act of violence touches their lives...bringing them together, driving them apart, making each man look more closely at what he has, what he could loose and ultimately what he's willing to do to keep it.
'Love's Magic' isn't an epic or grand action or romance story, but rather it's a story about how one event unfolded to touch the lives of four men. We begin with David and Nate, who are in a committed relationship at the start of the story and we follow them as they each struggle to deal with Nate's attack. While each man's reaction to events is distinctly different their love for each other and their desire not to give up on the relationship that means so much to them remains strong within their hearts. It's going to take a lot of introspection on both of their parts to find their way back to each other.
When Professor David Gardener gets a call telling him that Professor Nate Reese, the man he lives with and loves more than life itself has been seriously injured preventing the assault of one of the college's students all he can think about is getting to his lover. What neither David nor Nate could possibly foretell was how much their lives and the lives of those around them would be affected.
As the reader, or in this case the listener, follows David and Nate, while each man deals with the effects of Nate's attack in their own way we are introduced to a number of secondary characters and while our look at the effects on their lives isn't as in depth as that of David and Nate it is undeniably present from the strain it creates between David and his fellow professors to the bond that forms between Nate and the guardian of the student he rescued to how it draws Sergeant Colin Campbell from the campus police and Dr. Joshua Abrams, the colleges Title IX Consultant, together...ultimately becoming the catalyst that pushes them apart leaving Colin on his own to deal with the memory of events from his past that could keep him from having the future that in his heart he knows he wants with Joshua.
Ms Jarrell has created four characters that are all very likable and by the end of this story I was a fan of all four men...each of them containing their own admirable traits and imperfections...making all of them seem not just human but so very likable and real. While the focus of the story is David and Nate along with Colin and Joshua the author also weaves other characters into the story giving a more thorough and well rounded picture of the story's events along with who and how their lives were touched. At the end of it all we are essentially given David and Joshua's story with a solid HEA and we are left with Colin and Joshua in a good place.
If you’re looking for a steamy, sex fixes everything story than I have to admit you’re probably going to be disappointed. That’s not to say that there aren’t any sexy times here but the sex in this one is very much a part of the relationships and often times almost fade to black and not a driving force of the story. This ones definitely more plot driven than sex dependent and if you’re a fan of stories where it take more than some dazzling sex for the MCs to be able to overcome obstacles and get their lives on track than I think maybe like me, you won’t be disappointed.
I'm not really sure what I was expecting when I started this one but what I got was a story that drew me in, was compelling, realistic and told with very believable characters and was narrated by new to me narrator Walker Williams, who did a superb job of giving added depth and emotion to both the story and the characters while bringing them to life. While his overall narration was enjoyable for me his voices for David, Nate, Colin and Joshua connected incredibly well with each of the characters and meshed perfectly with the images that I had in my mind. So in the end what I was given was a story that I loved and that I’m looking forward to continuing with more of in regards to Colin and Joshua but if David and Nate turn up from time to time you can be sure that this listener/reader will be doing a bit of a happy dance.
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An audio book of "Love's Magic" was graciously provided by the 'Gay Book Promotions' in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
My name is Janice Jarrell. I am a retired grandmother who lives in Seattle, WA. I have two children and three grandsons. I’ve been writing gay romance since I was twelve years old, only back then it wasn’t called ‘gay romance’. In fact, it had no name at all. It was the fifty’s, and it was worth your life to admit to being gay, let alone confess to being a girl who constantly fantasized about relationships between gay men. Hell, I didn’t even know what a homosexual was. I lived on a farm out in the sticks in a tiny Michigan village and I’d never, to my knowledge, even heard the word. I just knew I loved the thought of boy on boy romance. I just knew that there was something hot going on between Tom Corbett and his Space Cadets and all those guys on ‘Combat’.I wrote slash fanfiction for 30 years, writing over 337 stories, some as short as 100 words (a drabble) some as long as a series which was over 119 012 words. I enjoy writing my stories. I enjoyed the feedback I received from my readers. It was a creative release I’d been searching for my entire life and I blessed the Internet for leading me to this artistic oasis for my spirit.
Love’s Magic was my very first step into writing my owncharacters. I will always be grateful the slash fanfiction community for nurturing the budding author until she was ready to blossom into a fully realized novelist, and I am thrilled that it is now available on Audible!It’s been an amazing thing to watch the gay community’s growth over these past twenty years. My own journey has echoed theirs in many ways, and I’m grateful to all those gay activists who fought to give the gay community the rights and privileges they always deserved.
My second contemporary gay romance novel, Love's Trials followed Colin and Joshua on their journey as men and as a couple. The readers who fell in love with them in Love’s Magic were thrilled to see their romance continue to grow and blossom, but were forced to watch our beloved boys go through some pretty traumatic trials in this book, trials which nearly shattered their relationship. But their love proved stronger than any troubles in the end and they now move forward into the happiness they know they deserve.
In Love’s Glory, my newest release, Colin and Joshua bask in the happiness that eluded them in Love’s Trials. If you’re looking for a book filled with anger, fear, and anxiety... look elsewhere. Love’s Glory is about just that... the glory of love and the continued growth of these two extraordinary men and the amazing friends who are a large part of their lives.
I’m also grateful to the gay romance community, readers, authors, publishers and promoters, who are making these, my retirement years, the most creative ones of my life. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling, walking, hiking, knitting, crocheting, and weaving, and enjoying my life here in the heart of the Pacific Northwest.
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Your review brought me to tears. Thank you!
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