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A review by kaje_harper
Home the Hard Way by Z. A. Maxfield
4.0
This book has a different feel from most of this author's other stories - more complex, darker, and full of flawed characters. There are no knights in shining armor here (other than perhaps Finn's Aunt Lyddie.) Every character has made major mistakes in their life. Every one has dark places inside them, regrets, blind spots about themselves, others, and the past. I loved that about this book - I enjoy heroes, but I often identify most with the flawed main character who has to fight himself as well as life for his HEA.
Finn is the small, odd-looking, bullied home-town boy who appears trapped in his fishbowl oppressive town by the needs of his dying aunt. But as the story goes on, you find out that that's far too simple a view of such a complex character. Finn has resources that are unexpected, and the factors that hold him in his current life are as much about the past as the present.
Dare was Finn's older best friend as kids, until Dare's father's suicide drove his mother to move them out of the state. In that move, Dare deliberately let go of his friendship with Finn, which had been vitally important and yet strained by ill-defined hero worship and the deaths of Finn's mother and Dare's father. It was easier to walk away.
When Dare messed up on the job as a Seattle detective, in a moment of drink-clouded misjudgment, he needed a sponsor to find a new position. A hometown friend of his father's stepped up for him and he has come home to work for the local police force. Inevitably, he has to meet Finn again. In that first meeting, there is an echo of the older protector and worshipful follower they once were, but it is immediately clear that their current status is a long, long way from those childhood roles.
Death and vandalism in town force Dare to investigate crime in Finn's aunt's hair salon, tangling the personal with the professional. Dare feels obsessed with Finn, but he quickly discovers that the boy he remembers has gone through a lot, and taken paths to adulthood he'd never have envisioned. The BDSM in this story isn't heavy but plays a vital role in the confusion and the complexity of relationships, and not just between Dare and Finn.
This was close to a five-star story for me, but I felt like things moved too fast between the MCs somewhere in the middle. I loved some of the twists and turns, loved that the secondary characters also turned out to be living in the shades of grey, but was unconvinced that all the whiplashes of emotion, need and understanding could have happened quite at the speed with which they did. Still this is one I'll reread to see the story from the beginning, colored with the knowledge from the end.
If you like a mystery, complex and deeply flawed heroes with weaknesses, emotional BDSM relationships, and second chances, give this book a try.
Finn is the small, odd-looking, bullied home-town boy who appears trapped in his fishbowl oppressive town by the needs of his dying aunt. But as the story goes on, you find out that that's far too simple a view of such a complex character. Finn has resources that are unexpected, and the factors that hold him in his current life are as much about the past as the present.
Dare was Finn's older best friend as kids, until Dare's father's suicide drove his mother to move them out of the state. In that move, Dare deliberately let go of his friendship with Finn, which had been vitally important and yet strained by ill-defined hero worship and the deaths of Finn's mother and Dare's father. It was easier to walk away.
When Dare messed up on the job as a Seattle detective, in a moment of drink-clouded misjudgment, he needed a sponsor to find a new position. A hometown friend of his father's stepped up for him and he has come home to work for the local police force. Inevitably, he has to meet Finn again. In that first meeting, there is an echo of the older protector and worshipful follower they once were, but it is immediately clear that their current status is a long, long way from those childhood roles.
Death and vandalism in town force Dare to investigate crime in Finn's aunt's hair salon, tangling the personal with the professional. Dare feels obsessed with Finn, but he quickly discovers that the boy he remembers has gone through a lot, and taken paths to adulthood he'd never have envisioned. The BDSM in this story isn't heavy but plays a vital role in the confusion and the complexity of relationships, and not just between Dare and Finn.
This was close to a five-star story for me, but I felt like things moved too fast between the MCs somewhere in the middle. I loved some of the twists and turns, loved that the secondary characters also turned out to be living in the shades of grey, but was unconvinced that all the whiplashes of emotion, need and understanding could have happened quite at the speed with which they did. Still this is one I'll reread to see the story from the beginning, colored with the knowledge from the end.
If you like a mystery, complex and deeply flawed heroes with weaknesses, emotional BDSM relationships, and second chances, give this book a try.