Release Day Review by Gillian: Love in the Time of Hurricanes, by CC Bridges

Love in the Time of Hurricanes, by CC Bridges
Series: States of Love, Standalone
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: March 8, 2017

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The night Nick Henderson storms into Martelli’s Pizzeria, he’s just looking for something to eat. Along with dinner, he finds Lou Martelli—pizza cook extraordinaire and Jersey Shore native. Nick is renting a Shore house for the winter while taking classes at the local community college as he devises a way to escape the accounting major his father chose for him.

When Lou offers to show Nick around, heat flares between them as they realize they have more in common than domineering families. But it’s not all fun and games on the boardwalk. Hurricane Sandy blows ashore, changing the place Nick was starting to think of as home. His peace is shattered, and it will take everything he has to keep his relationship with Lou from being torn apart by the storm brewing around them.

States of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the United States.

M/M Pairing
Gay Characters
Contemporary
Novella
Restaurant/Diner
University/College
Natural Disaster

With the disaster that was Hurricane Sandy as it’s backdrop, Love in the Time of Hurricanes, is a pleasant timewaster about family obligations and delicious Italian cooking.

Nick Henderson is in the town Seaside Heights, NJ while on a break from reluctantly pursuing a degree in accounting at Rutgers University. Staying at the home of his best friend’s parents, he’s enrolled in community college and trying to figure out what he really wants to do with his life. When he runs into Martelli’s pizza one night, looking for a late night dinner, he meets the gorgeous and talented cook, Lou Martelli. While they both have their hands full with school and work obligations, the little free time they do have is spent getting to know one another. But when Hurricane Sandy destroys the Jersey Shore, and the house Nick is staying in along with it, they have to decide if their new relationship will survive Nick returning home, or if they’ve got the beginning of something a little more permanent.

While I can’t say that this book overwhelmed me with awesomeness, it was a quick and enjoyable read nevertheless. I liked how both Nick and Lou initially felt pressured by their respective families to live up to a standard that neither of them wanted, but by the end they were both able to voice their displeasure about their situations and set about making choices they could all live with. For Nick, it meant finally talking to his dad about his education and his future, and for Lou, it was owning up to the real reason why he worked so hard at the family restaurant.

Love in the Time of Hurricanes is part of ‘States of Love’ series by Dreamspinner Press and thus far, it’s been a bit of a hit or miss for me. But this one was one of the better books in the series (and by series, I mean that it focuses on different US states, not that it’s part of any continuing storyline) and I would recommend this to anyone looking for a short, pleasurable read.

I’ve written several ‘official’ bios and they go something like this:

CC Bridges would like to say that her writing is influenced by a variety of wild and exotic sexual experiences. It turns out she just has a really good imagination. She writes surrounded by books, spare computing equipment, a very fluffy dog, too many video game systems, plenty of yarn, and a long-suffering husband all in the tiny state of New Jersey.

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