Books

Book 736: Romantic Renovations – Blake Allwood

Book cover of "Romantic Renovations" with Amazon Affiliate link"I stumbled across Blake Allwood on the MM Romance Reader blog with their review of Love by Chance and thought I’d give him a chance (ha!). Allwood isn’t a five-star read for me yet, but there is a lot of potential. I will say though, if he doesn’t hire better developmental and copy editors and proofreaders he’ll never get there for me.

Rather than diving directly into the Chances series that MM Romance Reader reviewed I thought I’d start with a stand-alone. It didn’t hurt that this one was set on a home renovation show.

We’re currently obsessed with Maine Cabin Masters on DIY Network. Tim usually likes them more than me, but for some reason I just love the Maine Cabin Masters, probably because if I had my druthers that’d be where we bought a vacation home. It’s close enough to drive to and anytime we can escape up there we do 🙂

The book kicks off with Bennett in the hospital after his cohost attacked him on the set of their renovation show. The premise of their show is that Bennett’s recently inherited a large number of properties in Seattle and they’re going to renovate twelve of them in twelve months—that’s clearly not going to happen now. The network brings in Les, a successful contractor from another show that’s also run its course and they need Les to finish out is contract.

No matter what, he was my business partner, not my lover. The sooner my pops and mom got here, the better. Nothing like overbearing parents and a few nosey ass siblings to cock block you and keep your mind on the task at hand. (56)

Sparks fly as Bennett and Les learn to work together amid a reality TV show and the chaos that Bennett’s life is slowly turning into. He’s had a hard life of familial abuse and subsequent homelessness. There’s some drama with a mob (I think?) at least one explosion and murder, and yeah there’s a lot.

I would say there’s too much, but Allwood, for the most part, did a good job of balancing all the drama and the characters so that the reader was never lost. It easily could’ve devolved into an overwhelming jumble of characters and plot lines, but thankfully it didn’t.

The view from the Puget Sound was spectacular. I hadn’t been to Seattle more than to layover at SeaTac Airport while going someplace else, but it really was a beautiful city. I’m Boston, deep into my soul. Since my great, great grandparents on both sides had immigrated to America from Europe, we’d been firmly rooted in that city. (103)

Bennett and Les’s stories were complete opposites: an only child who ended up homeless versus one of four who had a huge immediate family that all lived near each other and worked together. It did work though because when Les’s family arrived in Seattle (from Boston!) to help out with a big renovation project, they adopted Bennett and of course there was some internalized drama around it.

Honestly, the mob/murder/drugs/weapons part was a throwaway for me. It added some character to lesser characters and to further increase the degree of Bennett’s trauma, but overall it was just a meh plot line when he could’ve spent more time focusing on the family.

On the sex scene front, they’re okay—not spectacular. I was glad he’s more on the Annabeth Albert (slow simmer, big payoff) side of things than the Damon Suede (hot and heavy from the get-go and continues to ramp up) side of things, but when it came to the actual scenes, they were just middle of the road. I’ll mention it in the later reviews, but I’ve already figured out his tell (a not-so-kinky kink he’s referred to in all the books so far).

I know Allwood is planning to release a book a month in 2020 and I really hope the editing improves because the stories have been solid MM romance plots. As I’m writing this I’ve already finished the first two in his Chances series (Love by Chance and Another Chance with Love) and the outlook isn’t great as they had similar issues with copy editing and probably could’ve used a bit more development (continuity, jumpy plot lines), but that being said I have read worse.

My Recommendation: I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it, PAY FOR A PROOFREADER/COPY EDITOR if you’re going to self-publish. Maybe for Allwood it should be pay for a good one, because he lists a proofreader (and multiple editors) in the front matter and yet the book is littered with grammatical and continuity errors. There were also some formatting errors with the Kindle file, it was all one chapter and it sucked not being able to go back to a specific chapter without knowing the exact page number. But what sucks the most is the story is actually pretty good and probably would’ve gotten that fourth star out of me if it hadn’t had so many errors!

Opening Line: “Beep – – beep – – beep. The noise seemed to be echoing inside my head.”

Closing Line: “I doubted I’d ever be able to repay him for what he brought into our lives, but I’d certainly do everything I could to try.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

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