Title: Fool of Main Beach (Laguna #5)
Author: Tara Lain
Publisher/GR Link: Dreamspinner Press, GR
Genre: MM Contemporary
Vice: Coming Out, Neurodiversity, actors
Rating: 5 Stars
Lock this book up: 4 keys- Tara Lain kept me locked to my kindle screen, with the fan aimed at me!
Length: Novel
Satisfaction: HEA
Cover Impressions: Gorgeous! Love the look of the whole series together.
Synopsis: Merle Justice wants to reach for the stars, but it’s tough to get respect when playing a teeny bopper vampire on TV. Then he meets a famous director anxious to give him all he thinks he wants—and maybe a bit more. Everything’s looking up until a life-threatening encounter with some homophobes on Main Beach puts Merle face-to-face with a Sasquatch-sized hero in a pink puffer coat.
Tom Henry defies description. As unsophisticated and simple as an angel, he walks through life content with who he is and asking for very little except to care for his sister, Lily, and the dogs he loves. Then he meets Merle, the embodiment of dreams he barely knows he has. Merle knows the people who hold his future in their hands might love Tom—but they’ll never understand Merle and Tom together. Tom knows it too. With lives this far apart, who’s really the fool of Main Beach?
Impressions: I love Lain's Laguna series, and the book that kicked off the series is one of my all time favorites. Her series made it to my top of 2016. With this release, Lain rivals the magic of her first release in the series.
Merle is an actor at the top his commercial success who can't find the respect he wants as an artist and an actor. When he escapes to Laguna where his friends (and our beloved cast of characters from books 1-4) he meets Tom, a handyman working on Merle's new house.
Merle is a great character. He is genuine and likable and he though he yearns for more in his field, he appreciates his fortune and the opportunities that have come his way. When Tom rescues him on the beach, I fell in love! It is so hard to describe Tom and do him any justice. Tom is both simple and at the same time he is so much more evolved than the people who typically surround Merle. Lain does an amazing job with Tom. He is not a shallow stereotype or a 2D character, he is a complex man who has to realize he deserves everything he wants and more.
I haven't wanted a couple to get their HEA as much as I wanted these guys to in a long time. I stayed up all night to finish this, and I hope to see more of Merle and Tom, and especially Tom!
Highly recommended!
