If You Say So by Teagan Hunter

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Title: If You Say So
Author: Teagan Hunter
Published by: Indie
Release Date: May 22, 2018
Format: Kindle Book
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, LGBT
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 #LetsReadIndie Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 AtoZ Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Adult Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Platypire Diversity Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon
My rating:

Blurb:

Blake and I weren’t always together. But, to be fair, we weren’t always not together either.

It began innocently. We were friends, nothing more.

Then two years ago, everything changed.

I noticed his stares. He noticed mine.

We weren’t just friends anymore—we were a whole hell of a lot more than that.

And that’s how we remained, blissfully in love and ready to conquer anything that stood in our way.

Except for ourselves.

Coming May 24th! This is a new adult m/m romance. This book does feature characters from my novel We Are the Stars but you DO NOT have to read that first to enjoy If You Say So.

My Review:

4 stars — I really enjoyed this one!!  It was a bit rough, starting the book with our main characters being split up, but I enjoyed getting glimpses of the past and seeing them work through their problems.  It’s funny, b/c in another situation I could see this not working for me, so I’m not sure why I was immediately connected to both Blake and Nate.  I guess I could feel their connection, I could feel their loneliness and despair, I could feel their regret…  I LOVED getting those tastes of how they went from friends to lovers in the past, because it helped me to want to root for them.  And hoo boy did they have chemistry!!  I was seriously tummy tingly all over for them!!

I was worried about how I would feel about Nate in this situation, because of what happened on New Year’s.  But I could really feel how regretful he was…  There’s a part of me that wishes for something more in that resolution, but I’m not sure what, you know?  It’s kind of a strange story, b/c we don’t get to see that part play out…and we don’t get to see much of who Blake and Nate were for the majority of their relationship.  We end up meeting them at a very inopportune moment.  Seriously, I’m totally baffled for why that didn’t bug me, but instead sucked me in.

I think part of it is that both boys were easy to connect with.  They both felt very real, and could be funny, and adorable, but were also very clearly flawed.  They both made bad choices.  But by the end of the story, they were both trying very hard.

I’m torn about the novella length.  In some ways I felt like the pace was fantastic, and it worked very well.  In other ways I would have liked a full novel about these two.  I have a feeling there was a lot more I could have learned from them…and a lot more I could have understood about their past.

I appreciated that there was a light delving into depression…I think that’s another area that in a full novel could have been explored in greater detail.  But we got to see Blake suffering under depression’s lies (being a burden, dealing with it on our own), and I appreciated how Nate supported him once he found out.

This story definitely made me want to read about Elliott and Carsen too…totally putting that on my wishlist.  I’ve read an earlier work by this author, and found it only OK…so I can tell that her writing has improved, and I was excited by how much this story captured me.  Yay!!!  I love it when that happens!