eBook Review - Tight Quarters

• Title And Author: Tight Quarters by Annabeth Albert
• Publisher: Carina Press
• Physical, eBook or Audiobook: eBook
• Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Gifted by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for honest reaction
• Length: 336 Pages

Don’t give me that look. I know what you’re thinking. “Another gay romance, Andrew? Really?” Well, yeah. And be warned, I have one or two others within my TBR so you will see a few more in the coming few months within my blitz of murder and dragons. 

But I wanted a change of pace. And I wasn’t in the mood for anything too heavy. Plus, I wasn’t ready to start my reading of Eragon or Grave Mercy, both first books in the two series I want to read in 2019 and, while looking through my NetGalley eProofs (I have around 60 to be read - a few from when I started on NetGalley. THE SHAME!!! But, am making plans to try and cut down my requesting of eProofs and try to read a good few before I got on a blog break in April/May. I am making plans!), this title catch my eye and went “Ok. I can hammer this out fast. Let’s see where I go with it.” Plus, I did read the previous book in the series, Squared Away (write-up for that is here), and I did enjoy that hugely at the time (I read it in two days flat). 

Petty Officer Bacon, a Navy SEAL, has been asked to in a beta team due to a minor injury and, due to that, been asked to babysit a forty-something journalist, Spencer Bryant, a man who gets Bacon’s blood racing. But when the mission goes sideways, the two men find themselves falling for each other. But keeping a relationship alive in the real world is very different from the front lines - the stakes can be much higher… 

So, what did I think of this? 

Well, it was fun. I know I don’t read the romance genre much/ever but it was nice to read this and go with these characters and see what happened next, even though we were told from the get-go that this was going to end with a Happily Ever After (HEA) or Happily For Now (HFN). So, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. A gay romance with one character being in armed forces. 

Plus, it’s kinda refreshing to read a romance where the age gap wasn’t an issue (Bacon is in his late 20s [29?] and Spencer was in his later 40s {48/49?]). And I liked how the romance/sex scenes were handled (yes, there are sex scenes and no, none are fade to black). 

Before I go any further, I’ve seen a few reviews on Goodreads mention trigger warnings such as homophobia, mentions of suicide, gun violence and warefare, serious injury, etc and yes, these are in here so if they affect you, go in with caution or avoid. 

This book isn’t perfect. This is me, of course am going to pick at things. While I instantly liked and rooted for Bacon, Spencer took a little longer to like which might annoy some of you guys if you want an instant click. But the main issue that, the more I think about, the more annoyed I get, is the angst and the drama that, of course in a romance novel, causes friction and them to spilt up for a while. Am just going to remind you of Bacon and Spencer’s ages - 29 and 49. Both characters have had serious relationship (hell, Spencer is divorced from first husband as they both were very career driven journalists) and both character are career driven. So when the angst causes them to fight - their first real argument - why do I get the feeling it’s a fight teenagers in a relationship would have? If only they both communicated BEFORE it got to this point, maybe they could have come to a compromise or the blowout wouldn’t have been so bad. 

This is a beach read for me, a read I can switch my brain off to while reading and, while I do have plans to read the next book in the series, Rough Terrain (which has a gay porn star as one of the cover models - how I know that I have no idea!), I think I preferred Squared Away out of the two as it was a tad more sugary and the communication issue in that didn’t bother me as much as the communication issue in Tight Quarters is bothering me now.