Pick it up for the hot and steamy central romance, but stay for how wonderful everything supporting and surrounding it is too.

If you can’t tell by the rating and the one liner already, I will say it explicitly here. Everything’s Better With You is a must read for fans of M/M romance. Author R.L. Merill manages to achieve a slow burn romance where the slow part happens almost entirely “off-screen” so to speak. Thankfully, the burn does happen in front of the readers.

Main characters Leslie and Joe met 15 years ago, and though sparks have flown since, they’ve been more like ships passing in the night than anything else. But now, they are both drawn back to the same college they’d attended when they were younger. Finally anchored in the same harbor, they’re able to explore what there really could be between them. Though we do have some flashbacks to that 15-year-long correspondence between Leslie and Joe, the main scope of the novel is the year they will be at the college again together.

Many romance novels I’ve read make the mistake of treating the careers or responsibilities of their characters like window-dressing. That’s very much not the case here. Joe is an incredible dancer that has earned his spot on a critically-acclaimed show. Leslie is a retired NFL quarterback turned football coach that really cares about his players. And they both are having to deal with how physical a toll there can be from being top performers in those sports.

Starting from that and radiating out, that focus makes the world built in Everything’s Better With You feel real as well as all those who inhabit it. The supporting characters are happily multi-dimensional just like the two they support. I would happily read a novel centered on Leslie’s mom for example, or some of the students that fill out the pair’s teams.

The author’s willingness to include some hefty topics in a romance is what really cemented the high rating for me. As mentioned above, the physical demands required to be a high performer, in either dance or football, gets a spotlight. Some of the psychological tolls do too. Don’t expect all fluff going in, though I do promise this is mostly a very feel-good book.

Everything’s Better With You is available to buy on Amazon.

Verdict:

RAVEABLE