The President’s Husband

Title: The President’s Husband
Author: Michael Murphy
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: January 29th 2016
Genre(s): M/M Contemporary Romance
Page Count: 220 pages
Reviewed by: Belen
Heat Level: 2 flames out of 5
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Blurb:

When an assassin’s bullet strikes his predecessor, Grayson Alexander becomes the first openly gay President of the United States and his husband, David Hammond, becomes the first openly gay First Husband. With their world turned upside down, David relies on his career as a medical school professor and ER doctor to keep him grounded. But his decision to keep working ruffles feathers from day one.

Gray throws himself into learning everything he needs to know to be President, especially a liberal president surrounded by a conservative cabinet and staff. Even though he puts in outrageous hours working and traveling seven days a week month after month, he’s happy. But David has trouble coping with Gray’s new job requirements. He can’t help but feel abandoned by his husband of ten years.

When Gray asks for his help with a public-health crisis, David obliges, but he is furious about what happens once the emergency passes. When they learn that the President’s staff has manipulated them both, they wonder if their relationship can survive the White House.

After the inauguration of a new President is ended minutes later with an assassination, Vice President Grayson Alexander is suddenly made President of the United States, and he and his husband David Hammond are completely unprepared for it. After ten years of happy marriage, the new changes to their status and Gray’s new responsibilities begin to quickly take their toll on the couple.

Told entirely from medical school professor and ER doctor, David’s POV, the story chronicles the ups and (mostly) downs of their first year as President and First Husband.

This isn’t a political or medical story, and if you’re looking for a political, or medical, tale – you should look elsewhere. There are no actual politics at all. The character’s jobs are really secondary to the story. This is really about a marriage and what happens when circumstances change and the person you loved doesn’t hold up their end of the work.

It’s a story solely focused on the relationship of the two men, and how the smallest cracks become wide chasms when lies, meddling people, improper communication and too little time spent together, all work against them.

I spent most of the time feeling for David, and being thankful that I’m not a politician’s spouse.

Two details were disappointing to me in the story: the reader never finds out what happened with the assassination, it’s just let go entirely, and on a smutty side – though there is some sex, it’s not described in detail. I was looking forward to both things and neither panned out.

On the whole I enjoyed the story and read through it quickly in one sitting. For those who like a story that focuses more on the relationship than anything else, I would absolutely recommend.

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