An adorable, poignant story, just all the feelings you come to expect from an Anyta Sunday tale.

Jack and Ben - not the slow burn we usually get from this author, I’d say it’s more like a steady bake (if that’s a thing . . . I’m making it a thing). They constantly orbit each other through this book. Their chemistry, banter, need to be with each other is so strong you can see it come off the page. Individually, they are just great, good, goofy guys, and you can’t help but cheer for them.

Milo, the other main character, he was well written. It’ s almost frightening how believable of a character he is. His relationship with his brother, it’s powerful, both extraordinary and utterly ordinary.

The glimpses of Luke & Sam from book 1 were lovely. I liked how sparingly secondary and background characters were used here - typically I’m a huge fan of well-used, highly featured, lovable, secondary characters but that wouldn’t have worked here - instead the passing mentions, meetings and brief interactions with these characters added depth and intrigue while still keeping the sole focus on Jack, Ben, and Milo.

The pacing was perfect. The weaving together of fun and angst was on point.

Just a lovely, cozy read.

This was a sweet book with a love story between Ben and Jake. I do feel like it was disjointed at times and I felt like sometimes parts were skipped altogether. But the premise itself was good and I did enjoy the story. Thank you to netgalley for the arc.

I loved everything about this book. The characters were realistic, the romance was slow and believable (and steamy!), and I couldn't put down the book for one second. I loved the little quirks of each character - the fanta obsession was hilarious, and the bird watching was so sweet and added so much to the brotherly connection and eventually to the whole family aspect of the book.
This was my first read of an Anyta Sunday novel and I'm an instant fan. I look forward to reading more by this author!

I am so in love with these three! Yes, three. Jack, Ben, and his little bro Milo. Ben is hot for teacher, who is an older guy and things get all kinds of complicated. Not to mention adding a layer of trying to parent a teenager and Ben is trying to figure his own life out. This story has all the things- moments that made my cry, moments that made me smile or swoon even, and so much delicious heat. Yes, it's a slow burn but I felt like I would slowly burn from their thoughts and words leading to the actual physical connections. Half of the book was forplay and teasing, while making us fall in love with them and wanting Ben and Jack to figure it out and be a family. LOVED it. And loved seeing characters from book one, and MAYBE a tease for a future couple?

This latest book by Anyta pulled me in right from the get go, as 24 y.o. Ben was raising his 11 y.o. brother, Milo, doing the best that he could, but still feeling as if he were drowning under the responsibility at such a young age.

Then Ben met Milo's 39 y.o. woodshop teacher, Jack, who had also been flipping houses as a side gig for at least the last 8 years, while impatiently waiting for his dream villa to come up for sale.

From their very first meeting, it was amazing to feel the chemistry between Ben and Jack, and to see how Jack helped build up Ben's self-confidence that he wasn't doing as badly raising Milo as he'd thought.

A lot of the drama, and Milo's rebellion, arose from the fact that Ben couldn't bear to step foot in their family home after their parent's death, so he planned to sell it and move Milo somewhere without so many painful memories.

Then Jack agreed to move into the main house and renovate it, while the boys lived in the small cottage in back of the property, which changed everything bit by bit.

It broke my heart to see Milo sneaking into his old bedroom to sleep and feel a connection to his deceased parents, but that helped necessitate Ben going into the house and begin confronting his panic attacks. A task made easier by Jack's distracting presence.

I immediately loved both MC's and the slow burn was suuuper slow in this story, allowing a very organic development of their feelings. The first kiss didn't even happen until around 80% in, but the book never felt like it dragged.

I adored Ben's snarky, funny, smart-mouthed little brother. His pre-teen antics really made me laugh, along with Ben's rather unconventional parenting style.

Ben initial bribing and negotiating with Milo to get the kid to behave truly set my teeth on edge, but when Ben started flinging lemons off a nearby tree, OMG, that had me laughing so hard. It was pretty epic.

Fortunately, Jack's somewhat-stern, structured presence made a huge impact on Milo's behavior, and provided Ben with some much-needed support in learning how to better parent his little brother, while maintaining his sanity.

In regards to relationship obstacles, those came in the form of the school (and one nosy-ass, busy body teacher) looking down on a 39 y.o. teacher getting involved with the 24 y.o. primary caregiver of one of his students. Such a relationship wasn't explicitly forbidden, per se, but was very much frowned upon, and could cause major problems for Jack.

But the heart wanted what the heart wanted, so Jack eventually did give in to Ben's steady attempts at flirting, consequences be damned, much to his own chagrin.

This was such a sweet and fluffy story, which Anyta does so well. And Jack's "Ben is the best because" talk to Milo was kind of *everything*. Total swoon material, folks.

The overall steam level was low'ish, mainly because nothing physical happened between them until very late in the story, but I felt that the level of feels was pretty high, so I didn't feel that anything was lacking.

Also, to my great surprise, the 15 year age gap wasn't an issue for me, even though I'm generally not a fan of that trope. Like, at all.

The story was written in present tense (not my favorite), dual POV, and ends with a full-on HEA, with an epilogue from 6 years on, right as Milo had just graduated from high school.

I basically LOVED a whole lot of this story and would rate it at around 4.5 stars. : )

You know when you just can’t concentrate on a single book, and you find yourself flip-flopping between books in an effort to find something that’ll catch your attention? And then a slowburning contemporary romance comes along and suddenly you can’t put it down? Well, that was me with this book.

Made For You is told in dual POVs: Ben and Jack. Ben is the older brother of Milo, and his sole carer, after their parents died a year before in a car crash. He and Milo live in the guest cottage of their parents’ house, but Ben wants to sell the house and move somewhere new, while Milo does not. Jack is Milo’s woodworking teacher, who runs a side business renovating homes. One day, Milo takes it upon himself to ask Jack if he’ll do up their house for them. And then, obviously Ben and Jack fall in love.

The best part of this book is that it’s a proper slowburn. They don’t even kiss once until 80% in, and it’s beautiful. I’m always looking for books that take the time to properly develop a relationship before having the characters fall into bed (and particularly always looking for contemporary ones), but 9 times out of 10, that doesn’t happen, so this was a pleasant surprise. I think if I had any complaints at all about it, it’s that, while the romance is slow, the attraction is not. They do both want to hook up fairly early on, but they don’t for other reasons. But then it’s kind of a soft slide into “oh wait, we’re basically dating, aren’t we”, so that was nice.

The other thing I really liked was how the angst didn’t come from a relationship-based misunderstanding. They actually communicated so well (like adults, you might say). The angst came instead from Ben wanting to be a good parental figure for his brother so I definitely almost cried a few times over that. So this book is a really good example of how you can develop a relationship and have angst without having to have your couple break up over some stupid miscommunication (not that I’m bitter, but I’ve read an annoying number of books that do do that).

Tiny complaints? Only really the age gap, but I knew about that going in, so I can’t really get too bothered by it. And Anyta Sunday did a really good job of making me forget it was there (despite Jack referring to Ben and Milo as “his boys” a few times).

I would say that that this book has solved my problem of not being able to concentrate on one book, but really, it’s probably just put me in a reading slump and/or romance binge. But hey. Sometimes you just need to read a soft slowburn romance with very little misunderstanding- or relationship-based angst, and that is exactly what Made For You delivers.