I saw this book mentioned on Facebook. I’d never heard of the author, but based on the blurb and enthusiastic recommendations, I decided to try it. I’m happy to give it my rave review as well!
The romance is set in Oslo and it’s between a professor of poetry, Axel, who lost his wife a year ago and is struggling to get through every day with this four children, and a male midwife/nurse, Jens, who is single. When Axel runs across a photo of Jens on a blog post, he realizes it’s a guy he knew in college. They’d been the closest of best friends until a kiss caused awkwardness between them. The widower, Axel, decides he must reconnect with his old friend. It turns out Jens has been in love with Axel all these years. And Axel very quickly has to convince Jens he’s not going to mess with his head again, that he wants to try for a real relationship
There’s a lot to enjoy in this story. I loved the Scandinavian setting. I loved that Axel and Jens are basically soul mates who met when the time was not right, and later find each other again. Axel and his children are sort of a mess after the death of his wife, so there’s a hurt/comfort element of the story too as Jens comes in and has to tread carefully, and yet he ultimately brings so much healing to this family. And I loved the family aspect of it, all four kids. The author doesn’t shy away for including the kids in the story, often and loudly, and very messily too. I can’t recall reading a m-m romance before that had so much family time in it. It felt very realistic, and I really liked that. To me, there was still plenty of romance to balance out the family scenes.
This appears to be Sophia Soames’ first book, and I hope to read more from her in the future.