★★★★ Legally Wed by Rick R. Reed ★★★★
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The blurb…
Love comes along when you least expect it. That’s what Duncan Taylor’s sister, Scout, tells him. Scout has everything Duncan wants—a happy life with a wonderful husband. Now that Seattle has made gay marriage legal, Duncan knows he can have the same thing. But when he proposes to his boyfriend Tucker, he doesn’t get the answer he hoped for. Tucker’s refusal is another misstep in a long line of failed romances. Despairing, Duncan thinks of all the loving unions in his life—and how every one of them is straight. Maybe he could be happy, if not sexually compatible, with a woman. When zany, gay-man-loving Marilyn Samples waltzes into his life, he thinks he may have found his answer.
Determined to settle, Duncan forgets his sister’s wisdom about love and begins planning a wedding with Marilyn. But life throws Duncan a curveball. When he meets wedding planner Peter Dalrymple, unexpected sparks ignite. Neither man knows how long he can resist his powerful attraction to the other. For sure, there’s a wedding in the future. But whose?
So what did I think?
This is not the typical romance story, at least not in the sense of man meets man, they deal with some issues, fall in love and live happily ever after. In most books the story is centred around the main characters, allowing us, the reader, to get to know these men as they discover each other.
However this book is more one man’s journey as he reaches the point in his life where he wants marriage and a home and a family. Duncan’s latest relationship is a bust as a finds he was on a totally different wavelength to the man he just proposed to. In his grief he decides that marrying a straight woman (in an open fashion) is the way to go. He places an ad which leads him to Marilyn.
Marilyn is a driving force in this book and is absolutely wonderful – a strong, tell-it-like-it-is woman who agrees to marry Duncan after they get to know each other. Duncan and Marilyn’s whole arrangement sounds absolutely insane to me however the author does such a great job of providing insight into Duncan’s frame of mind and reasoning that somehow it makes sense that he would do such a thing!
Yes, I wanted Duncan to find the man of his dreams earlier. Yes, I wanted the interaction between the two men to happen earlier (it was fabulous when it finally did!) but Duncan’s journey needed to be experienced to make his happy-ever-after all that more special.
This is a story that reinforces that there is someone out there for everyone. You may need to wait a while to find them, things might not always be perfect and there can be pain but you need to grab true love when you find it and make the most of it. Don’t settle for second best because everyone deserves the magic.
I loved seeing the little reflections of the author’s own life woven throughout the story. If you don’t know much about Rick R. Reed, do check out his bio/website or the blog posts he’s done in conjunction with this book release and you will see what I mean!
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in return for an honest review.
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To find out more about Rick R. Reed and his books visit his website.
Buy Legally Wed from Amazon.
Buy Legally Wed from Dreamspinner Press.