Continental Divide (Separate Ways #1)

Title: Continental Divide
Authors: Laura Harner, Lisa Worrall
Publisher: Hot Corner Press
Cover Art: n/a
Buy Links:Amazon,
Genre: contemporary m/m, thriller
Length: Novel (215 pages, 75 k words)
Rating: 4 out of 5 rating stars

A Guest Review by Feliz

Summary Review: A riveting start to an unusual series.

The Blurb: Detective Remington frickin’ hates the missing persons detail, but a cold fury builds in the pit of his stomach when he realizes that over the past three months six boys have disappeared from the smaller communities that surround the greater Phoenix area. All reported to be runaways looking to escape their shitty lives, but Remy’s starting to put together a different picture and he doesn’t like it one damn bit.

Inspector Jamie Mainwaring stares at the six reports, willing them to make sense. Six boys, six months, all from just outside of London, which meant six different investigations. All of the boys were between the ages of ten and fifteen, all purportedly runaways from dysfunctional families. Something was rotten in Denmark.

There are always runaways. Every small town loses them—every big city collects them. Kids look for freedom and discover they have more to lose than they ever thought possible. London and Phoenix, culture and cowboys, nothing linking these two sprawling metropolitan areas. Nothing except a hit on a computer data search.

Two cops, one a cowboy, the other a Lord. A secret government agency, human trafficking, and a blazing hot mutual distraction.

What the hell have Remington and Mainwaring gotten themselves into?

The Review: Although in the same professional field, Phoenix PD Detective Remy Remington and Scotland Yard Inspector Jamie Mainwaring are polar opposites in social origins and lifestyle habits. When unlikely circumstances force them to work on a case together, it’s instant dislike for both of them. And yet, the sexual attraction between them is just as instant and even more powerful than the former. Over the course of their collaboration, they realize they have a lot more in common than their attractive physiques and their sexual preferences. From mutual respect grows a tentative friendship that morphs into more fairly quickly, and once they realize how deep they’ve gotten under each other’s skin, it seems to be already too late for both of them. But their differences are as far and wide as the ocean that divides their respective countries, and it’s not only cultural differences that lead to deliberate misunderstandings and causes them to hurt each other, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes very much the opposite.

This book was purest vintage m/m romance, made all the more appealing by a decent (if not all too mysterious) mystery backdrop. All boxes are ticked: Insta-lust between two gorgeous men, to and fro between I hate your guts and I can’t keep my hands off you, possessiveness and jealousy and secret falling in love yet hurting each other through incommunicado… Even the follow- up of scenes and actions went along the established pattern–at times I felt like I was reading a good old-fashioned Harlequin Romance.

Continental Divide is well executed, fine entertainment. The joy of storytelling shone from every word, and I, as the reader, had just as much fun reading this book as the authors must’ve had writing about Remy and Jamie and their antics.

Although the actual case was closed (suspension of disbelief on the police procedure right from the start, but the whole thing was delivered in a way that made so much fictional sense I stopped caring about realism pretty soon), the romance ended on an open note and with a cliffhanger of sorts that made me curious about the sequel.

Definitely recommended.