Nicole Dykes

Keeper

Aishling

⭐️3.5⭐️

Thanks to GRR for the arc ❤️

Keeper was such a sweet best friends to lovers story. Camden and Kingston have been best friends for years, and while Kingston is carefree and enjoying his life in Kensley, Camden feels like the weight of the world is on him and can’t wait to escape for college. 

Camden lives with him mom and sister Lucy, and spends most of his time working or taking care of Lucy. He’s also gay which no one knows about because he’s afraid of the hate he’d receive from the bigoted people in his small town. Between his secret and the stress of having to be depended on so much by his family, Camden really feels like as long as he lives in Kensley he can never truly be happy. The only problem is that he’s in love with his best friend, and Kingston has no intentions of ever leaving their home town.

 “You can do that here. You don’t need to run.” 
“I do.” I point to my chest. “I really do. I’m drowning here. And you don’t see it because you don’t want to.”

Not long after Kingston breaks up with his ex girlfriend Kennedy, Camden finally tell’s the truth about his sexuality and of course Kington takes it well. So well in fact that he suggests that he and Cam start hooking up for purposes that benefit them both. Kennedy knocked Kingston’s confidence after the break up, and Cam has never had any sexual experiences, so why not kill two birds with one stone and rebuild Kingstons confidence while giving Cam the experiences he’s never had a chance to have? 

“You could get some gay-sex practice, and I can find out if I suck at sex. And if I do, I can improve. See? Win, win.”

You can imagine what comes next so I won’t go any further, but it honestly was such a wonderfully cute and angst free read. Definitely a refreshing take on this trope.

You definitely have to be open to some crazy ideas and a lot of obviousness to enjoy the book but if you can handle those it’s well worth it for a sweet read.

(view spoiler)[The only thing I didn’t love was how long it took Kingston to realise his feelings. It was pretty obvious how in love they both were and even Cam should’ve realised it. I initially thought Kingston was the oblivious one but by the end they were both pretty oblivious to the obvious. 

Also Kingston seemed to forget the Cam had already told him he was in love with him? And later still doubted Cam’s feelings? It was a bit weird. 

There was no talk about Kingstons sexuality either even though I expected something since he mentioned at the start that he didn’t understand the bit hype around sex when he was dating Kennedy, and he had thoughts that made it seem like gender didn’t really matter to him when it came to loving Cam so I thought those moments would be brought up and talked about further but they weren’t. 

Not that I mind when authors don’t define their characters sexuality because it’s not necessary, I had just thought we were getting hints towards a conversation that was going to happen and was sort of waiting for it but that’s my own fault lol.  (hide spoiler)]

Keeper

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