3⭐️
Tropes: workplace romance, grumpy and the sunshine one

Cole McCade’s Just Like That felt like a fast read that also doesn’t pull its punches: it’s steamy, emotional, and engrossing and I really enjoyed parts of it even if it’s a little uneven for me.

Summer Hemlock has returned to Albin Academy, the place where he spent his insecure and highly anxious teen years, as a TA to Professor Fox Iseya. A widower with the well-deserved reputation of an ice man, Fox is not the warm and fuzzy type but he’s unexpectedly nurturing with Summer at Summer’s most anxious moments. But Fox doesn’t want any kind of relationship with Summer, even as he’s physically drawn to him—he’s cut himself off from life emotionally and just going through the motions.

I have a lot of feelings about this book. There’s a lot about it that I really appreciate. How the stern, grumpy, unapproachable Fox becomes soft with Summer when Summer needs him, and how occasionally Fox has to confront his own fears that leave him emotionally fragile and then Summer is the comforting one. The moments of emotional insight. How Summer shows up for people, including Fox, himself, and his students, even when he’s frightened. The sweet ending.

But sometimes the book feels inconsistent when it comes to execution. Neither character seems to spend a lot of time deliberating some practical things regarding their relationship, and that seems somewhat strange to me: their very significant age gap, their mentor/TA relationship, and the fact that they’re repeatedly intimate on school grounds, in a few different public places, and that made the story feel somewhat less real to me. Second, though I responded well to the writing and mostly felt emotionally invested, there are also moments it comes across as purple prose. And there’s one scene that feels a little too dramatic toward the end.

Though there are a few bumpy spots in this read for me the story’s heartwarming and I loved being introduced to an author I’d like to read more of.

Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for my complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Just Like That was an okay read but it didn't exceed my expectations.
I really liked the setting, boarding schools are fascinating to me but overall I wasn't feeling either main character.

I didn't engage with the plot and the premise of 'one kiss per day' was really cheese.

It's one of those 'It's not the book, it's me'

If you’re a long time fan of Cole McCade then I’m sure you’ll love this story too. I kept feeling echoes of Over and Over Again. Summer left his hometown to find himself, and when he couldn’t, he came back to try the same. Only he finds the man that he’s always, frozen in place, just as alluring as always as if he’s waiting for Summer to come back to breathe life into him. Summer is an anxious ball of nerves but he finds that he can be brave for Fox Iseya. The important question becomes: can Fox be brave for Summer?

This is a sedate book and I liked that. There’s not much action and strife, just Summer and Fox dancing around each other until the inevitable explosion of passion. I liked that the conflict was all internal and the story only focuses on the relationship which in my mind made this a truer romance novel than most.

I highly recommend this beautiful may/december romance story to fans of that trope or to those looking for minority representation in the story because the main character is biracial.

I have a level of discomfort with m/m romance written by cis women for cis women readers, even if it’s a book I liked and an author I liked. That discomfort is always there. Cole McCade describes himself as, “Tall, bi/queer, introverted author of a brown-ish persuasion made up of various flavors of Black, Asian, and Native American.” I didn’t feel uncomfortable reading and enjoying Just Like That. I would also like to point out that Carina Adores is a new Harlequin line that features LGBTQ+ stories and authors. I hope it’s successful and brings us many new authors.

Just Like That is a beautiful book, filled with softness, gorgeous writing, grief and yearning. I cannot speak to the queer male rep or the biracial rep, but I can say McCade captured aspects of my experiences of living with anxiety and depression with acute accuracy. Summer has an anxiety disorder and has developed coping mechanisms. He knows himself in that way that people who accept their brain issues do. McCade captured that tension between fragility and strength in the way Summer takes on the challenge of returning to his hometown and to Albin Academy as a Teaching Assistant.

While a student at Albin Academy, Summer had a crush on his Psychology teacher, Fox Iseya. When he returns as an adult to train as Fox’s replacement, he and Fox start a relationship that pushes them both out of their comfort zones. Fox’s grief for his long dead wife has morphed into a frozen, numb depression. As their friendship and romance bloom, he starts to thaw, but he has been numb so long that returning to life feels like a threat. There’s a kind of depression that doesn’t get talked about a lot and I don’t know that every person who lives with depression experiences it – the kind where you want to disappear. It’s not the same as feeling suicidal, it isn’t a desire to die, just to fade away. And yet, Fox still cares about his students, he is a source of stability for Summer, and he shows up when he needs to. Again, McCade presents a complex picture of a person living with depression.

When I read romance and I know there will be at least a Happy For Now ending, I can dive more deeply into feelings that could be traumatic for me if I weren’t promised a soft landing. McCade gets into some heavy topics and touchy subjects but centers the reader in the softness between Summer and Fox. Just Like That gave me some space to think about the ways I’ve been struggling to cope with this past year.

I received an arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

CW: May-December romance, Mentor/mentee relationship, workplace romance, panic attack, anxiety, depression, grief, off page death by drowning, bullying, indifferent parents.

This book was great!! Summer was such a sweetheart and Fox Iseya was a grump with some baggage. Together, they were perfect.

Summer comes back to his former boarding school where he was an anxious, bullied kid. Part of the reason he’s back is his mother lives nearby and the other part is that he had a huge crush on a former professor who he will now be a TA for.

The banter between these two was everything I love about grump/sunshine romances. This book has the feels and my heart was breaking for Fox.

If you love emotional M/M romances with an HEA, please read this. I promise you won’t regret it!

well the summary tempted me enormously and I wanted to discover this author of which I had not read any novel until then. I read this novel very quickly and I cannot say that I did not like ... But I cannot say that I liked either .. I am rather mixed by this reading, also I will start with the negative points to finish with the positive.
I did not like at all the way the author will treat the fact that Fox will apprehend his relation with Summer. In fact, he does not apprehend it. But then not at all. We are dealing with a man of whom we know nothing about sexuality, widower of a wife who died 20 years earlier, of an undetermined age but who is going to retire from his teaching career, (a priori the same age as Summer's mother, but no indication is given of Fox's age at any point in the novel, when it is known that Summer is between 24 and 26 years old) A man who has had no relationship since death of his wife and who, when Summer kisses him for the first time is not at all bothered by the fact that Summer is a guy. Add to that the fact that he is half Japanese, that he grew up in Japan until his 16 years and that several times in the novel is mentioned the fact that he has an almost stronger Japanese culture than his American culture ... I think it's a lot. At no time is there going to be any question about whether Summer is a boy, or younger, or his former pupil. No, his only limit is going to be the fact that he no longer wants to suffer and therefore does not want to fall back lover. And let's not talk about the first sex scene between the two ... where Fox does not ask any questions and knows immediately how to do (preparation all that ... however they do not caress and do no fellatio either before sleeping together ... and still no doubt for Fox ...)

Then maybe it was a bias on a straight person, maybe I expected to see the usual treatment of "is he gay? Am I gay?" quite common in genre novels, but personally it bothered me.

In fact, that's it for the negatives. There is only one, but a big one that makes this novel will be only three hearts for me.

For the positive, the author's pen is very pleasant. It is both poetic and very down to earth, very real, very grounded in reality. I liked the characters (apart from the point mentioned above) and I liked that it was Summer who was at the origin of their relationship and who was the most "active" when pursuing their story.

I found that the pace of the story was interesting as well as the journey that the two characters will make with each other, whether at the level of their relationship but also on a personal level. The romance is beautiful, the themes tackled are just and touching and the whole is very poetic and very pleasant to read.

I am definitely curious about this author whom I will hasten to read again.

A great start to this series.

Just Like That is the first book I've read by Cole McCade which is a shame considering I have several other books by him in my digital library. I say that because this was a really great book and a great introduction to his writing. Now I have to find the time to read his other books that I own. Reading them won't be a hardship; finding the time is another matter. 😊

This is a great age-gap story. One of the things that makes a great age-gap story for me is that the age difference isn't beat to death in the book. I think it's maybe mentioned once or twice but the older man, Fox, doesn't go around saying I'm too old for you, we shouldn't do this, etc. which happens in so many books.

The choice of names for the characters in this story was interesting. I don't believe I've ever known a male character with the name Summer. His last name is also unusual – Hemlock. The older character also has an interesting name, Fox Iseya. He is half Japanese so Iseya makes sense but Fox for a first name seems unusual. This really doesn't have anything to do with the book itself, it was just something that I found interesting.

I loved how the story unfolded; how Summer never gave up trying to coax Fox out of the shell he had built around himself after his wife died. Each of the characters has things that they fear and those fears are confronted during the story.

The writing was richly descriptive and flowed nicely, keeping my attention from beginning to end. I felt really bad for Fox and how he just closed himself off after his wife died. For someone who presented such a strong and overbearing personality with his students it was almost difficult to see him break – but it was necessary for his character to face the things he feared.

This is the first book in the Albin Academy series and I'm looking forward to reading more. Sometimes it's fairly easy to guess who the next book in the series might be about but I really have no idea this time, which makes me even more eager to read book two, Just Like This, which should release in December 2020.

A review copy was provided by the publisher via NetGalley but this did not influence my opinion or rating of the book.

***Reviewed for Xtreme-Delusions dot com***

It took a little while to settle into the style of writing, but once I was attuned to the rhythms of the language and the interior monologues of the dual narrators, I immersed.

The blurb says that Summer comes home to help his mother, but I didn't get a strong sense of this. Mum actually seems quite sorted, and in fact, provides more advice and help to her son than the other way around, so that also initially unsettled me.

I haven't read any of this author's previous work, but I did enjoy the ethnic diversity of this story, and particularly appreciated Summer's development of self worth and identity. He is just figuring out his career path and helping to counsel young men as they face bullies and other issues was a highlight.

The sex scenes were involving and didn't become repetitive or same-same, but I was a little concerned how public some of their encounters were. Teachers have a lot to uphold, and some realism/discretion here would have been appreciated.

Fox's character is enigmatic and troubled. His barrier to accepting Summer as a potential life partner are tropey, but understandable. But perhaps, it did get a little too drama-filled at the climax. But to be contrary, I did love the epilogue and now realise there will be more, I may be back!

Thanks to Netgalley and Carina Press for advanced copy. This book will be out on June 30.

I'm so very happy I picked this one up! Cole McCade's writing has a different feel to it that I found very intriguing. The way the characters think and come together is touching. And there is something very endearing about Summer. He is a juxtaposition of shyness and bravery that I absolutely loved. The whole thing was just a wonderful read and I would definitely recommend it!

Just Like That was my first Netgalley read, but sadly, not a great one. The premise of the story is very much to my liking — two guys falling in love, plus a little drama? I’m here for that! However, there were countless facts about this novel I didn’t appreciate: stereotypical character descriptions and hollow character-shells didn’t help to enchant me for the protagonists. Add to that overused phrases and way too many adjectives and we have a story that neither appeals to me in its writing nor in the plot and characters department. What I especially disliked was the beginning of the book: the younger man presents a king of challenge to the older man that is so childish and also feels so wrong on many, many levels that from the very start I had a hard time getting into the novel. But I persevered; for a story that soon turned out to be very mediocre and foreseeable.

ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I need to preface this review by stating that I jumped on this book simply because Cole McCade wrote it. The writing style which works so well for Criminal Intentions does not work for these characters. The prose is beautiful, but the story did not work for me.

Summer Hemlock returns to his former prep high school as a TA for AP Psychology. He accepted the job because he didn’t know what else to do with his life, and he was offered the job because no one else applied. The job is working with a former teacher whom he had a massive crush on. So many things irritated me about this set up. First, teachers in high school are not known as “professor,” and they do not have TAs. Second, private prep schools have hundreds of applicants. Third, you simply do not become a teacher; there is a certification process.

His mentor teacher, Fox Iseya, is retiring at the end of the school year and helping to train his replacement, Summer. Their relationship starts as tenuous, almost a goal for each of them to achieve for different reasons.

Overall, I’ll stick to the grittier Cole McCade and skip the fluffier version.

When I read the blurb and subsequently requested for this ARC, I assumed I knew exactly what I was about to read; i.e. a simple novel about a former student who returns to school and wins over his former professor. I honestly do not know why I thought that when Cole McCade's books are as far from "simple" as can ever be.

This was a book chock full of brilliantly flowing language used to weave a nuanced tale about overcoming grief, the rebirth of something thought to have been lost, and the discovery that love can indeed exist in the most unlikely circumstances and between the most unlikely people if one just reached for it. I thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience.

My only critique(if I can even call it that) was the pacing. I felt the pacing dragged the story a bit and could've been sped up more to make the story much more engaging that it already was.

Aside that, as I've indicated above, I thoroughly enjoyed myself reading about these two unconventional heroes and how they (to borrow Rihanna's words) "Found love in a hopeless place". I will be certainly be continuing with this series.

This is the story you want if you crave the cinniest of cinnamon rolls trying to unlock the iron-clad defenses of a man so in pain he's nearly a black hole. It's less a reality-based story and more a complex illustration of the fine art of magnetic attraction versus polar opposites. They should not be attracted. But they SEE each other. The story is in how long it takes the one in pain to grapple with that pain. And the epilogue is lovely.

And Summer's mom is ADORABLE.

Fancy a hit of sub/dom-light romance blending emotionally withholding Daddy-figures and some borderline cultural cliches thrown in? Grab hold of your speedos and dive into Cole McCade’s new book Just Like That.

Summer Hemlock returns home (to Omen, Massachusetts) to take up the position of Teachers Assistant at his old boarding school, Albin Academy, directly under the eye of his former controlling teacher, Professor Fox Iseya. Summer’s hot for teacher and must break out of his shy exterior if he wants to get him.

If the names and set up sound cartoonish, well, it’s because they are. <em>Just Like That</em> is a silly, sexy romp filled with absurd scenarios that make no sense in the real world, but work in this bizarre space McCade creates.

The “completely, sweetly submissive” Summer and Fox get entangled in a ‘kissing game’ where Summer must earn Fox’s signs of affection in secret. When Fox catches sight of  Summer doing laps in the school’s pool at night in his speedos, things get a lot steamier (and hilariously, enjoyably over-written - we’re not here for subtlety).

The taciturn Fox flips from stoically cold (and grieving for the death of his wife years before) to domineering and sexy at the flip of a switch, while Summer flits between infectiously flirty and crippled with juvenile romantic angst. There’s a lot of schooling going on, but none of it is academic.

Can Summer scale Fox’s emotional walls to find true love to go with his possessive, dominating sexual energy? Well, publishing imprint Carina Adores (yes, that would make a great drag name), is all about serving up LGBTQ+ romances where characters find their “happily-ever-afters” so you can be guaranteed of at least one happy ending here.

McCade is a prolific author of genre-infused LGBTQ+ romantic fiction (this is book one in an ongoing Albin Academy series) and his style won’t be for everyone. Imagine the gay soap-opera Dante’s Cove being set in a boarding school and you’re not far off. There are definitely yaoi influences here and to be honest, the use of Fox’s Japanese heritage felt cliched and boarded on “orientalism”. But then, everything here is cliched, so maybe it just blends into the mix.&nbsp;

While the whole thing is as two dimensional as it could be, Just Like That is a throw away book you can crush in a weekend for some fun. If you like your guilty pleasures (and the idea of positive LGBTQ+ romance fiction) you might want to check this out.

Just Like That (Albin Academy #1) by Cole McCade is published by Carina Adores (a digital-first LGBTQ+ imprint of Harlequin Press) in e-book form on June 30, 2020.

Advance review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a hard one to review for me. I really liked Fox. I felt like his grief and his journey through that was very well done, but that was the most enjoyable thing about it for me. I felt like the relationship was extremely fast and there really wasn't as much initial resistance as I would have expected. The challenge thing seemed weird and then adding the kiss thing and how easily it was accepted... I don't know. Summer being a completely different person alone and in front of others also seemed kind of strange, but not overly unrealistic, I guess. Just combined with the rest it was a little strange for me.

I'm giving this book 4 Wonderful stars!!

Summer Hemlock has returned home to take on a teaching assistant role with psychology professor Fox Iseya at the school where Summer was once a student. While I'm not the biggest fan of huge age gap romance, this one delivered and I liked it well enough.
First, I love these names given to the MCs, it totally fits their personalities and overall demeanor. Summer has loved Fox since he was a boy and now that he's returned he's determined to let Fox see how much he still does. But Fox has some scars and tragedy of his own that he has to overcome first in order to fully accept what Summer has to offer. These two shuffle their way through awkward encounters and steamy love-making, and regardless of the age-gap, I was happy to see them find their happy place with each other.
While the book's warning about suicidal ideation as well as the bullying is mentioned (and very much appreciated), it doesn't overwhelm the book with heavy angst. It does, however, helps to highlight how people react when they've experienced life-changing events.
I absolutely recommend this book, it was a great story with a very happy ending and included lots of self-growth.

Heat Factor: Pretty sure my couch is just a pile of ashes now
Character Chemistry: Holy forking shirtballs! Yes!
Plot: Not-put-together man needs to figure himself out, too-put-together man needs to address his emotions.
Overall: Cole McCade can rip my guts out and give me a massive book hangover anytime.

Just Like That tied me up in knots in fabulous ways, and I loved it. But I’m also pretty sure that my Smut Report counterparts would not have enjoyed this book. Because the provided synopsis covers plot essentials, I’ll focus on the aspects of the book that might help provide better insight as to whether or not this book is going to be a good fit.

This is an age gap, office romance between an anxious 25-year-old adrift in the world and a late-forties widower who has frozen out the world. The story is character-driven and focuses on the emotional journeys of these two men. What this means is that the prose is designed to be emotionally evocative. So, if straight-forward, plain-speaking prose is your jam, you might find this too flowery. I will say I’m a pretty plain-speaking sort of person, but I did enjoy the prose because it was able to ensorcel me into feeling invested in these characters and their emotions.

As I read the first chapters, I thought that this would be how I’d like to tell a story. McCade has created these characters in a specific mold (shy, anxious, empathetic young man and hard, icy, emotionless middle-aged man, both with significant room for emotional growth) but has also created a space where these characters are going to throw “normal” out the window and we can imagine what would happen if they exist within the parameters of their emotional baggage but also kind of do whatever they want. And that’s pretty freeing.

I made the mistake of reading some reviews before writing my own, which I typically try to avoid (oh well), and I noticed that the critical reviews tend to focus on a lack of “realism,” and while I do not, at this present, think “realism” is a particularly good word to choose, I do agree that readers who are not willing to be swept along on this ride will likely not enjoy this book. Even I was like, “WUT?” when Summer (25) kissed Fox (twice his age) in response to a challenging question ON THE DAY THEY WERE REINTRODUCED AS COLLEAGUES. AND FOX IS BASICALLY SUMMER’S SUPERVISOR. But that was a choice the author made, so sit or get off the pot (sitting in this metaphor being to continue reading…). If we’re going to embrace the idea that romance explores fantasies and wish fulfillment, and that in fiction we can imagine whatever we want, it honestly shouldn’t matter if it’s “realistic” for these two men to snog each other’s brains out on the desk in their (unlocked) classroom.

Speaking of which, these two play a kissing game for awhile before Fox finally caves and acknowledges that he’s really interested in more than playing games, and that is spicy stuff (as is the sex, all of which is frequent), but it’s also often public. If you would be horribly uncomfortable with the idea of, say, having sex in a car parked in some public-ish place, Summer and Fox’s antics might not work for you. For me, while all the other emotional work was going on, I saw the sexual activity as a means of the protagonists expressing some of those feelings without actually having to outwardly commit to those feelings.

Speaking of those feelings… Summer is totally hot for teacher. He had a crush on Fox when he was a student, but when he returns to school as an adult, he does kiss Fox in that “WUT?” way, but then he learns that Fox is the way he is because his wife died in a really tragic and unexpected way twenty years ago, and he is honestly not coping with the grief well at all. So as the story progresses, we see that, while Summer may have had this crush as a teen, he now sees Fox for himself, and his desire to be with Fox is less about the immature wish to be the special person to crack Fox’s icy shell and more about wanting to be the one who shows up for and accepts the beautiful, imperfect man Fox is.

While, at the beginning of the story, it seems that Summer is the hot mess, he soon finds that he has the support to grow into himself. Meanwhile, Fox appears to be extremely put together at the beginning of the story, but in the end, he is a wreck. Which brings me to:

Me: Well, it took until 60% of the book this time, but once again we’ve arrived at “No, sir, it is NOT better to have loved and lost because I couldn’t ever possibly go through that again.”
Holly: Ugh.
Me: I mean, he is a widower, so it’s not totally stupid… On the other hand, he’s been a widower for 20 years.
Ingrid: May I point out that it sounds like this fellow could benefit greatly from a grief counselor?
Me: The premise is that therapy is hard for him because he’s a psych professor, so he knows when someone is trying to get him to do things. So he has seen a therapist, but he’s very stubborn about it.
Ingrid: Okay, I actually like that dynamic. It’s very relatable and explains a gap.
Me: This author is very attuned to emotions and feelings.

The result of all of this is that McCade creates a space where Summer and Fox have different strengths and weaknesses, so they are able to support each other in different ways. Fox is steady, so he can provide a safe space for Summer to be himself and subsequently gain the confidence to be the person he wants to be. For his part, Summer is scary enough but implacable enough that Fox is able to learn how to let go of all the control that’s been keeping him from having any meaningful relationships for twenty years (it’s so bad he doesn’t even really have friends anymore).

And it. is. glorious.

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

This review is also available at The Smut Report.

CW: anxiety and on page panic attacks, depression, talk of suicidal ideation, bullying, loss of spouse and parent in the past.
There are other content warnings which are mentioned in the beginning of the book.

I know I don’t read enough ownvoices gay romance stories even though I like the genre a lot, but I’m always looking out for more. And Cole McCade is definitely one author I look forward to even though I did abandon his Criminal Intentions aerial after reading nine or ten episodes because it was too dark for my taste. But this is a new romance series and I was so excited when I got the ARC.

While this series is definitely not dark, it’s also not like the romcoms I’m used to reading. Both the characters of Fox and Summer are the products of their pasts and traumas, and their depictions felt so real and visceral. Summer suffers from anxiety and panic attacks but he is also brave enough to give voice to his desires when challenged and I admired him so much for being compassionate and relentlessly trying to get out of his comfort zone.

Fox on the other hand has closed himself off for years because he couldn’t process the grief of losing his wife. He is a professor everyone is quite scared of because he is a very tough taskmaster, but underneath he is so soft and just needs someone to show him that deserves to live and love again.

Cole has a way with words and the writing really is exquisite at places, tugging at your heartstrings so much that you can feel all the pain and the joy that the characters are experiencing. Even though I did feel that the falling in love part happened a bit fast, it was still very believable and I was rooting for them all the way. I wasn’t sure I would like the setting of the boarding school before I started reading the book, and I’m still not entirely impressed with it because the concept of rich kids being bullies and traumatizing each other is not my kind of narrative, but I liked the direction the author took that particular subplot in. There were not many other side characters except Summer’s mom who only made a couple of appearances, but was delightful.

Overall, this was a very emotional love story with great depth in the characters and I thoroughly loved my reading experience. And I’m quite excited to see where the series goes next.

I love Cole McCade's stories (I'm especially a big fan of his Criminal Intentions series), so I was really excited for this - and I did enjoy it! It's so easy to fall in love with McCade's characters, and the character dynamics he writes. I loved the relationship at the centre of Just Like That - I adored both Summer and Fox as individual characters (especially Fox, HELLO), and them together, especially their dynamic in the second half. There was definitely the possibility of making their relationship sort of,, taboo considering their considerable age gap and history but I like that McCade didn't go down that route.

Their relationship progressed very quickly, which is probably why this isn't a higher rated read for me, because I prefer slower burn romances, with more unresolved tension for longer (apparently I enjoy Suffering) so I think I would have loved this more (especially the first half) if it was a slowerburn. However, Summer and Fox's chemistry was so damn good.
This is definitely a story about recovering from grief and the loss of a loved one, and struggling with an anxiety disorder (Cole McCade is great at casually including mental health narratives in his stories - as well as lots of other diversity!!), which I liked - and being kind to yourself, in allowing yourself a second chance at love.

The writing is very... flowery. I know a lot of people loved this, and I did like it at times (it definitely made for great sex scenes), but it was a lot, especially in any scenes where the main characters interacted and Felt Things for each other. The setting of Albin Academy was so good; I wish we got more of the atmosphere of it, because it lowkey had some dark academia vibes which I am ALL FOR.

I'm definitely going to be reading the rest of this series. I want to return to Albin Academy and the characters there (please sir I want a book about Dr Liu or the assistant principal).

Despite having quite an extensive back list, Cole McCade is a new-to-me author. However, I knew I absolutely had to get my hands on this story the moment I read the blurb. There was just something about it that cried out to my readerly heart and demanded my immediate and undivided attention. And I must say, Just Like That followed through quite nicely with its promise.

First and foremost, I fell for Summer Hemlock almost immediately. He’s one of those characters that jumps off the page and straight into your heart. I adored how the author portrayed him as a down-to-earth, genuine, anxiety-riddled mess. His character was just so real. As someone who suffers from anxiety myself, I can confirm his reactions were spot on and so incredibly relatable that I couldn’t imagine not falling for him. And when the gruff, stern Fox Iseya made his first real move to calm and soothe Summer during one of his panic attacks? I was done. Both characters had me by the heartstrings from there on out.

This is one of those stories that feels predictable on the surface—and I’m not knocking predictability… tropes are tropes for a reason—but before I knew it, everything I expected to happen… wasn’t. Sure, the overall story has a satisfying overall romance arc, but the little twists, bumps, and tiny celebrations that keep a story moving forward toward its final end point found a way to surprise me more often than not. Which, I loved. I’m a trope-aholic, so you’ll rarely catch me complaining about a romance author following the tried and true stepping stones set forth by the story tellers of yore, but when an author finds a way to fulfill my expectations while still keeping things fresh… Well, that makes me a happy little reader.

There were only a few nit-picky things that kept me from giving this story a full five-star review, but I won’t go into the ones that are mostly personal taste related. I still think the story was phenomenal despite those aspects and they are legitimately just things I have preferences one way or the other over and it takes a whole heck of a lotta different opinions and tastes to make the world spin. However, there’s one thing I will point out because it’s one of those things I can’t be silent about. And that’s… safe sex or, in this case, the lack thereof. A man my best friend had one night of unprotected sex with transmitted HIV to him from that single encounter. That was the first and last time he ever did that, but because it forever changed his life, reading sex scenes where safe sex isn’t addressed can be triggering and emotionally upsetting to him, which is the main reason I can’t be silent when I run across this particular faux pas in books. Even in fiction, the portrayal of unsafe sex can have consequences on real readers.

Okay, off my soap box. I swear, I am in no way, shape, or form coming down on the author or belittling the book or my readerly enjoyment. It’s simply something I can’t personally ignore. It came down to deciding whether to decline to review a book I otherwise loved or bend one of my rules a bit and insert a partially unflattering note into the review.

Still, I loved this story, so very much. I’d recommend it to any lover of romance, although I would provide a personal CW for unsafe sex. Just because I’m me. :) So, go forth and enjoy this wonderful book. I know I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the next in the series!