Name: Love After Hours
ISBN: 9781635550900

Radclyffe

When Gina Antonelli agrees to renovate Carrie Longmire's new house, she doesn't welcome Carrie's overtures at friendship or her own unexpected attraction. A Rivers Community Novel.

Love After Hours

Carrie Longmire loves life with a passion—whether it’s her job as a hospital CEO’s admin, star pitcher for the hospital’s softball team, or her latest romantic possibility, she gives 110 percent and won’t take less from anyone else. Maybe that’s why she’s still single. She’s never met anyone who could convince her they wanted anything more than a fling. Friendly was fun, but not where she wanted to hang her heart. Gina Antonelli had big dreams once, of riding her athletic achievements all the way to West Point and being the first in a long family line of soldiers to serve as an officer. When that dream died along with the girl she’d planned to marry one day, she’d vowed to forget about happily ever afters. Love hadn’t gotten her anything but a broken heart and a ruined body. When Gina agrees to renovate Carrie’s soon-to-be new house as a favor to her brother’s boss, she doesn’t welcome Carrie’s overtures at friendship or her own unexpected attraction. A Rivers Community Novel

Jude Silberfeld

After a series of books which broke my heart in various ways, I needed something a little more predictable. Predictable isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can also feel comforting. I hadn’t read a Radclyffe novel in years but recently got books 4 and 5 in the Rivers community series (number 6, Love on the Night Shift, is coming out soon) and since I’d really liked the first three, it sounded like a safe bet.

One of the things I love with authors like Radclyffe is you know what you’re getting: consistently good writing, hot and badass women, steamy sex and sweet romance. This book was the perfect mix of all these, and exactly what I needed.

Carrie Longmire, Presley Worth’s executive admin and best friend, is incredibly efficient and precise, not to mention an extraordinary pitcher. When a misunderstanding delays the start of the building of the new ER extension, she’s all set to fix things ASAP, despite what Gina Antonelli, the construction crew manager, seems to think. Gina soon discovers she shouldn’t underestimate Carrie, nor the attraction they both feel. While Carrie is more than ready to be all in, Gina struggles with the past.

There’s a second storyline, which I liked, but I’m not sure about the balance. Blake, Abby’s trans son, is having top surgery, and he and Margie, Harper and Flann’s sister, are contemplating having sex. These are important and interesting stories but in a novel that’s about another couple, they take a tad too much space. And I know the Rivers family is perfect, even in its imperfections, and all these people are what everyone should be like (gorgeous, smart, talented, open-minded…), but it sometimes is a little too much, almost like a how-to guide to transition. Another detail grated some: I love Flann for adoring Abby and embracing her teenage son, but they’ve been together an objectively short time and she’s already calling Blake “our son”? Real-life experience shows that rarely happens (and when it does, it’s often fake). Flann loving Blake while still referring to him as Abby’s son would have worked just as well and felt more realistic. I won’t expand on Flann performing the surgery herself but it sounds like a lot of pressure. Then again, I guess Radclyffe knows the issue much better than I do.

Which brings me to this: most of my favourite Rad books involve doctors. I love authors who know what they write about, either through their own experience (Carsen Taite and lawyers is another example) or through thorough research (E.J. Noyes, Lee Winter and Jessica L. Webb come to mind, among others). There are doctors in this book but they’re all part of the secondary cast. Carrie and Gina’s story nevertheless benefits from the Rivers atmosphere, not only the “doctors” thing but also the small community. One of the parts I preferred was Carrie’s lightbulb moment at how much life in the countryside fits her: “She seemed to be rapidly losing her city sensibilities and replacing them with something slower and quieter and, in a strange way, deeper”. This I can absolutely relate to.

Megan Cooper

Yay ... Carrie finally gets her own story. I've enjoyed her so much as a secondary character in this series and have been hoping she gets a HEA.

Love After Hours is part of Rad's Rivers Community Romance series and, as with all of Rad's series, the cast of characters continues to grow. Although this book is focused on Carrie and her hunky contractor, Gina, all the couples and secondary characters from the previous books are still front and centre so you can keep up with how things are progressing with them. It was nice to see the other characters, but I was a bit miffed that their time on the page meant less time for Carrie and Gina. 

Carrie, the hyper efficient admin assistant to the CEO of Rivers Hospital, has been kind of left in the lurch as every other lesbian in town has been hooking up. Enter Gina, the dark and broody butch (Rad does these characters so well) who Carrie hires to renovate the old house she has just bought. There's a great physical chemistry between the two - their first meeting is a bit of a disaster and that helps with the push/pull and flirtation that builds the overall relationship. 

One of the elements I have been enjoying in this series is the relationship between Margie and Blake. They are technically secondary characters, but they take over the page when they pop up. Unlike most of Rad's characters, the relationship between these two is moving at a rather demure pace - their friendship based on acceptance, common ground is rock solid and you can't hope that they end up together and even if they don't, their friendship is something very special.

A great addition to the overall series - more Carrie and Gina would have been better but I'm sure we'll find them popping up in the next books in the series and stealing time from the other leads. :)

Love After Hours

Reviews

Highlights