Mirrigold: Mutterings & Musings

The Happy List by Briar Prescott

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blooming brilliant.

I just love the way Briar Prescott writes. Her narratives always speak to me and I fall madly in love with the characters she creates and the worlds her men inhabit.

This one hits one of my favourite tropes, realising you’re in love with your best friend. It also has sexual awakening, demisexual rep and an opposites attract plotline which sings as it marries up a repressed lawyer with a free-spirited furniture maker.

I loved both Gray and Kai. Each of their personalities sparked and when they were together, the sense of that bone deep lifelong friendship, where you know all the secrets was clear to see.

Except for the one secret that Kai never told Gray – that he’d had a crush on him when they were teenagers that he’d basically run away to deal with 10 years earlier. When he lands back in Boston, he thinks he’s over it but Gray’s got a few surprises of his own to reveal.

What I appreciated a lot about this romance is that it really does flow organically from the moment Gray realises his life is missing something, to his dawning awareness of not only how much he loves Kai as a friend, but how he’s actually attracted to him.

The fact he’s demisexual isn’t obviously declared, but Gray’s aware he doesn’t like the idea of one night stands, he’s never felt great passion outside of his friendship with Kai, and the woman he was with two years never made him feel the jealously he gets when he sees Kai out on a date.

I also really appreciated that Gray went all out! There’s no casual I might be experimenting here, it’s a full on I’m attracted to you and you make me horny when he finally twigs about his feelings.

They’re incredibly hot together, but it has a weight of feelings too, because of their shared history, Kai’s crush, his fears of having his heart broken, and Gray’s inability to work out Kai’s thoughts for the first time in their long friendship.

This is much lighter in tone that Briar’s previous book Rare, and obviously more grown up than Project Hero, and I think it worked even better for me because of that.

It’s just a really happy read. It’s sweet and has a great sense of its setting, Kai’s family is fab, Gray’s grandmother is a riot, even his stuffy brother Con is coming from a place of love.

#ARC kindly received from the author in return for an honest and unbiased review

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