Review: After Ben

After Ben by Con Riley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I want more. More stars to begin with. More Theo, more Morgan, more lazy mornings in bed kissing...I just want it all.
Is not that it fall short by any means, is just that I grew so attach to this characters that is ridiculous.
I should start for the beginning, no?
Anyway, we meet Theo one of the sweetest guys I ever meet, who lost his partner for 15 years - Ben. The great thing about this book is that we don't get to directly meet Ben, but you see him through Theo's eyes, the eyes of love, and you totally fall for him.
Theo is at that point of the grieving process were you don't know if you should move on or not, his body is ready but his mind and heart are not.
In his real life he has Peter, a very cute paramedic and gym buddy who is the first one to test Theo, and kind of bring him back to the world of the living.
But Theo has a very active on line life, and here I want to comment on how much this comes close to our everyday life if you think about it, anyway Morgan is the one that challenges him on line. The thing with internet is that you can be whoever you want to be and Theo decided that Morgan was another single middle age man.
Here comes one of the main conflicts of this story, Ben was 9 years older than Theo and Theo feels that is a heavy responsibility to date someone younger and maybe leave him behind.
So when all the information he has on Morgan points to the fact that the man is younger than him by several years he feels like he can't have him and experiences another type of lost.
It is great to see how the many details of the plot get together and develop to sort out years of misconceptions and misunderstandings.
But just like Theo, Morgan has a past. Here I must say that Theo is kind of slow to notice, but I guess the important thing is that he finally sees it.
And Morgan is a AMAZING character.
Is a completely different type of relationship for Theo, the life he had with Ben was based on love, trust and companionship. Where he used to lean on Ben for almost everything now he has to step up and be the one for Morgan to lean on.
Morgan has to learn all that from start as he never had that type of love.
I could be talking here all day...and I haven't even mention Evan and Joel, who are another story completely. Young love FTW!
Go read it, enjoy it, cry over it, laugh over it - love it!






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