Blue Skye (Woodland Village Series #1)

Title: Blue Skye (Woodland Village Series #1)
Author: Viki Lyn
Publisher: Self Published
Buy link: Amazon.com
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: Novel
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

THE BLURB

Skye Taylor lives the artist life in Manhattan, openly gay and proud. Drew Adams, socially conservative and from one of Woodland Village’s wealthiest families, lives within the limits of his father’s expectations. A successful architect, Drew is content with his work and his marriage. The secret he desperately hides remains safely hidden behind lies and deception, so he thought.  

Best friends in high school, Skye and Drew were inseparable. Quiet and serious, Drew was drawn to the outgoing Skye and his hippy loving parents. Then graduation night changes everything. Uncontrollable urges are discovered in a night of passion, a love Drew refuses to acknowledge, a love Skye refuses to deny. Skye leaves town, leaves Drew and leaves all his feelings behind. But he never forgot Drew and that one night that changed their lives.

Years later, painful memories surface with Skye’s arrival and Drew’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel.

Woodland Village Series

THE REVIEW

When Skye and Drew meet again, 7 years after parting, Skye is a successful artist and Drew is an architect. Drew had designed the gallery that would be showing Skye’s paintings so it was inevitable that they would meet and when that happened on the day of Skye’s arrival it was explosive, to say the least. Skye was still upset that Drew never showed up, as they planned, to leave town together for Manhattan all those years ago, after one night of passion. Instead Skye had to go it alone, while Drew stayed home and married a “suitable” woman who had his family’s approval. Since that time they had not communicated with each other but now Skye was back for his show, determined to ruin everything Drew had built, but he would not let that happen regardless of the fact that he was still obsessed with Skye, who was on a quest to win his man back!

Drew was conflicted because he would not admit his feelings for Skye and preferred to live in a sham marriage while knowing all along that he was attracted to men. But he could not resist Skye and eventually they had sex together on several occasions but he wouldn’t agree to leave Sam, his wife, because he wanted his father’s approval and he definitely did not want to be “out”. After Drew’s flip flopping on several occasions Skye couldn’t take it any more and went back to Manhattan because he was not prepared to be Drew’s dirty little secret, but before he left he did the unforgivable.

This book has quite a bit going for it but just didn’t make the grade as a “recommended read.” There were a number of errors including one glaring one where the author refers to the “prostate” as the “prostrate” on several occasions, there was also a name switch or two, and quite a bit of over the top prose. In addition I never warmed up to Drew who was still tied to his father’s apron strings and even married a conniving woman who only wanted the family’s name and money and a kid to cement her hold on him. Even though I understood Drew’s reasons for not wanting to be out, it seemed to me that a man with a successful career who could make it on his own would, at some point, decide to stand on his own feet and tell his family where to go. Skye on the other hand longed for a lover in his life, someone he could cherish, and Drew was that man as far as he was concerned, but Drew still held on to the myth that he was straight even though he fooled around on the side with men.

I liked Skye’s character because he at least was sincere in the way way he felt about Drew. Drew’s brother was another three  dimensional character who seemed to have it all together and he was quite funny. Sam, Drew’s wife was one dimensional at best, and manipulated Drew because she knew he was was gay, but she didn’t seem to care about that. Sam’s main objective was to have a child – which would be difficult since he was not sleeping with her – to keep him bound to her

There was a lot of potential in this story but it didn’t quite meet my expectations due to the errors mentioned earlier, some of the characterisations, as well as  a bit of purple prose.

This book would be of interest to readers of the genre.