I went into this one with no expectations and it certainly was a positive surprise. It interested me from the first page and I loved seeing the flashbacks and the clear signs of their feelings throughout the story before they even realized it themselves. The characters, both the MC and side characters, are so complex and real and I just really want read all of their books, 'cause it seems they all have a story to tell.

However, it's quite a big book and a tad too much focus on a conflict that shouldn't really take up so much time and space as it did. At least not considering the circumstances and the setting, although it definitely did add to the suspense and angsty back-and-forth between Andy and Shane.

But the star of the book is Alex Brennan. Oh how much I love that clueless, hopeless man that always is there for his friends and family. I mean, those three families, Veldons-Johnstons-Brennans, are a perfect example of a found family (although the 'conflict' brought its perfectness down a notch) and as I'm always a sucker for a found family - theirs is no exception.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me this ARC in exchange of a honest review! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Shane and Andy has a history of attraction but since Andy is younger and Shane's best friends little brother its been a clear no for eachother. But now its harder to fight this attraction and since this is a close knit town its hard they was worried those around them aren't open to the idea of them being out.

You know what I just realized this is the perfect time to read this LGBT book since its Pride month. I loved seeing that attraction between the two. I love the whole forbidden romance kinda thing which was kinda how it was since its his best friends little brother theres kinda a line that forms that you don't really do that. It was even tougher since they Shane knew Andy while he was young and they are gay so its the worry and confusion of what people will say and do. I loved seeing the romance, and getting to know the characters. I loved that there was the back and forth between the past of how things were and how they are now. Theres plenty to enjoy about this book and highly reocmmend.

These kind of contemporary romances are my favorite. This one was super cute and I highly recommend if this one is on your radar! Run don’t walk!

The First Man is one of those extremely frustrating but wonderful love stories that makes you feel a wide range of emotions. The characters were easy to love. Half the time my heart was breaking for them and the other half I just wanted to shake them!! This was my first book by this author and I will definitely be picking up more!

I had such high hopes for this book. Unfortunately it just wasn’t for me. Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I ended up not finishing around 10%. It felt booged down with names and really disjointed, to the point I had to keep looking back at the description to figure out who the characters were. I kept trying to push and figure it out, but I became too frustrated, so at this time it's not the book for me.

This was just not for me. It had absolutely zero to do with the storyline and everything to do with the writing style. This is the second book I have tried of this authors and I just don't think its for me.

This book hit me right in the feelings!

So much angst and love and pining - it's perfect for what I consider comfort reading.

The characters are complex and flawed and just...perfect.

To be recommended!

Whew, The First Man brings it with all the feels! This was my first book with Alex Kelly and I am down with reading way more by her.

Shane and Andy are living half-lives. There are singularly and desperately both achingly attracted to each other and desperately trying to keep their... private lives, well, private for fear of losing everything if they are found out. Both are from the same super small, fairly conservative town and from pretty different socioeconomic backgrounds and upbringing. Shane's family is THE to-do family, owning the widely popular and fairly famous Whiskey distillery in the area. Andy is not. He came from self-proclaimed bad stock and he hasn't moved fairly beyond that. They have suffered in silence for nearly 20 years and repeated the same cycles of short desperate interactions and then longer periods of trying to abstain from each other in private while publically they could not be more intermingled with the daily interactions with family and friends.

So, Alexis Hall has this fabulously written book that everyone loving the whole M/M romance and maybe a little into the BDSM thing should read called For Real. Anywho, there is a line in the book where one character is the other's suffering plaything. And well, that definitely applies here. It's in a way less kinky context, but Shane is Andy's all too willing suffering plaything. He has always been desperately attracted to Andy and more than willing to gorge on the tiny crumbs that Andy provides. Andy has always felt a million levels of guilt for lusting after his best friend's little brother and his complete lack of ability to control himself around Shane. There is just so much guilt, and lust, and denial, and desperation, and utter desolation. They live in such a small town, Shane's family owns the local distillery and Andy owns a business. They could be utterly ostracized by not only the town folk but their families. And so, for nearly 20 years, these two have been living a life of half living and lies.

Now, I generally hate books with continuous concepts of deception, and I won't lie and say I wasn't majorly irritated by Andy and Shane as well. But, coming out is each individual's right and their own process and I won't put my own cis het spin on something I know very little about experientially. But as we discovered in the book, they were in essence denying themselves. Not from each other, well they were, and it was very dramatic. But what I'm saying is they were, and especially Andy, denying that part of who they were as a person. Further, I rather enjoyed the fact that their family's first reactions were to the fact that they kept it from them and not -oh, gasp, clutching pearls- "You're the gay?" (sorry, that was a throwback to an old Margaret Cho stand up- I know, I'm old.). The process of getting from this place of utter denial of themselves and who they were to, well, the end, was emotional and painful. And definitely not in the kinky BDSM way. But it needed to be done.

As a reader, you are thrust into this very emotional, tortuous journey with Andy and Shane and this slow build toward the actualization of themselves, their feeling, and even the true acknowledgment of who they were to each other and to their friends and family. The First Man was filled with all the feels.

I loved it, I was irritated, but then I swooned a little, and I just couldn't put it down. I am so on the hook for more.

*ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

This book both broke my heart and mended it together. This book was equally heart breaking and romantic. I absolutely loved the romance between the two leads and couldn't help but empathize with their emotions while going through the couple's ups and downs.

I really loved reading this book! The characters are skillfully complex and so well written, it's impossible not to be involved in their story! Sweet and profound, the story is intriguing and it captured my attention since the very beginning! So cute and funny!

Shane and Andy are so cute and Amazing!!! I loved to read this book and their relationship and their intrecacies!

The First Man is the second book in the From Connemara With Love series by Alex Kelly. While you do not have to have read the first book to enjoy this one, I find that the complex relationships and characters read better if read in order.

Shane, Do you want to know what it means to live like me? It means being forced not to look at him, not to touch him, not to be left alone in the same room as him. Not to seek him out. Not to want him. Not to love him. Do you know how it feels to spend your entire life pretending to be someone else? Do you know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t want to be loved? I’ll tell you how it feels. It feels as if you’re living in constant torment: you know which path you should follow, but you also know that, if you follow that path, you can never turn back. And I can’t do that to him. Every day I come back, because I know that he’s waiting for me. Every day I promise him that he will never have to live without me. Andy, Do you know what it means to live like me? It means being forced not to touch him, not to kiss him, not to be able to leave the room while he’s still in it. Not to breathe him in, not to lust after him. Not to love him. Do you know how it feels to spend your entire life pretending to be someone else? Do you know what it’s like to love the only person you’re not allowed to love? I’ll tell you how it works. You can’t seem to feel anything other than him; when you walk away, you know that you’re turning your back on the only thing that’s good in your life. Yet you still walk away. Every day I leave, knowing that he will be standing there, watching. Every day I ask him to promise me that I will never have to live without him.

The First Man is romance with main players that are very conflicted about themselves. I was glad to get to know Shane and Andy better- and to follow them towards their happy ever after. This was much more about their emotional understanding of themselves and each other than any external conflict. I will admit that there were moments that I just wanted to kick them and tell them to open their eyes and get over themselves or simply sit down and talk it all out. However, I am glad I stuck with it to the end. I am a fan of the town, and complicated families and friendships, and the community of Connemara. While I do want to know what happens next with them all, I am not sure my heart can take any more. The story is all emotional conflict, with very little external input, and while I am a huge fan of character driven stories I was occasionally looking for something a little more immediate or tangible to shake things up. Then I got it- that is for sure. While things have make progress with our first to couples, things are far from perfect and it feels like there is much more to tell about this group of characters. If you enjoyed the first read, you will want to pick this one up, and likely continue on.

The First Man is a good follow up to The Best Man, and an emotional read.

I absolutely loved this MM romance.

Such a great book with a solid storyline and great characters.

I eagerly look forward to reading more from this author.

A definite recommend!

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. The premise of this book made it very interesting but unfortunately, it missed the mark for me. It's painfully slow and took a long time to develop in an actual story.

The story about two people that loved each other so much that they accepted even the ugly feelings that their relationship made them feel. Sort of sadistic in way to love each other even when it hurst, but Andy and Shane were always perfect for each other, always the ones meant for each other. And althought they had to hide their feelings for almost twenty years, it became umberable to stear away their gazes when together with their friends, and when the secret is out they will find that in the end of the day many people love them and will accept them.
Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but this book made me think a lot, made me understand the pain that comes with love someone sometimes. Understand that if you don't love yourself, you will always drift away from the things you want and desire in life...and that's a sad situation. I welcomed Shane's and Andy's issues with an open heart and I felt their feelings. Beautiful, dramatic, soft and painful.

This one was painful. We have here what is technically a friends to lovers trope. The two main characters have known each other since they were kids and have been hooking up for YEARS. There’s no way to call it anything else but hooking up because Andy is so insistent on keeping his relationship with Shane a secret from all of their friends. After each hook up Andy tells Shane, nearly every single time, that what they’re doing is a mistake and it can never happen again. I have to say another time that this has been going on for years. Who can keep hearing that their relationship is a mistake for so long before they start to feel like they themselves are a mistake? I finished this one, but nothing about this came across as healthy.

“All I really want to do is throw my fists at him, or grab him by his shirt and pull him into me. I want to feel him on me one more time. Trying to meet other men doesn’t help when the only man I really want is standing a metre away from me.”

⭐️⭐️/5 stars!

This book doesn’t do a great job at letting you know what it’s about right away so I’ll go. Andy is a barkeep, he’s lived in the same town his whole life, feeling alienated by the town because of his late father’s character. Shane has lived in this same town his whole life, adored for his family’s business that keeps the town prosperous. They have loved each other for seventeen years and have never admitted it to anyone, including themselves.

I was really drawn to the book by the premise of two very people very in love but completely uncapable and unwilling to act on it. The two have so many obstacles to work through and I did think it was great to watch them go through it all.

At the end of the day, I wish the book had more to it. I wanted to be invested in these two as characters, but I feel like they had so little beyond pining for each other. I wish I had been able to see them more at ease with each other. Without many moments of tenderness, the romance felt very tense- like it didn’t have room to breathe. Admittedly, that probably fits the book really well, but it didn’t read very well.

I also had trouble keeping track of the side characters. Oddly enough, the book did sometimes feel like it was more about Alex and Ellie, the main characters of the first book. A book I haven’t read. It’s very obvious that the first book is about them because this book seemed very concerned with developing a very intense side plot for them. One that almost seemed to take center to the book at times. It kind of sucks when a straight couple takes over a queer book even in the same series. Just saying, it felt weird.

I did love the setting. It definitely felt like a suffocating town. It also really feels like a place where you have so much routine, it’s hard to change anything. The same places to eat, go to work, and go out with friends. At the same time, it’s hard to picture that in a town like that no one is going to be aware of a semi-intense seventeen year relationship, even if it is gay or have a big age gap. Then, all at once, everyone knows/always knew?

To me, there didn’t seem to be a lot of character development in the book or even romance development. While I was reading and thinking about the length of time Alex and Shane loved each other and kind of thought “why is the plot happening now?” like “what makes now different then anytime in the last decade?”. There’s no big change that really sparks a difference in the relationship, therefore the romance doesn’t have a lot of momentum to work with. It makes the whole story kind of flat instead of having a flow.

TL;DR: A solid secret relationship romance. It’s okay, but the story didn’t have much to it besides two people just deciding to be together. Which, yeah, I guess that’s what romance is, but yeah, just not a lot to love here and there definitely could have had more to it.

E-galley provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Any quotations and opinions are based off an uncorrected proof.

« The first man » raconte l'histoire de Shane et Andy, deux amis de longue date, qui partage un secret : ils s'aiment depuis leur première rencontre, mais ne se l'avouent pas.
Nous suivons donc leur quotidien, avec quelques moments décisifs de leurs passés.

Shane est le meilleur ami du frère de Andy et inversement. Faire son coming-out dans leur petite ville est compliqué. Personne ne doit savoir, pas même leurs proches, leurs amis et familles, très soudés.

J'ai été surprise par cette lecture en fait. On démarre doucement mais sûrement et je ne m'attendais pas à lire ce genre d'histoire, je ne sais pas pourquoi.
Ce fut une lecture reposante, qui m'a enveloppé dans une petite bulle, même si j'avais envie de secouer à plusieurs reprises les deux personnages principaux.

J'ai aimé suivre toute cette belle et grande famille, si aimante. Ils s'aiment et se soutiennent les uns les autres, si bien que je me demandais pourquoi Andy avait si peur... Certes, les regards dans le village, et aussi en tant que chef d'entreprise, ses angoisses étaient fondées, mais bon. Et puis ensuite, plus on avance dans le temps, plus il est difficile d'avouer aux proches. Le temps passe, et on se laisse bercer, jusqu'à ce qu'un des deux craque et veuille plus.

J'ai aimé les voir évoluer ensemble, enfin surtout mettre des mots sur leurs sentiments et émotions, petit à petit. J'ai aimé aussi avoir les deux points de vue, et surtout concernant des mêmes scènes par moments, on se rend compte que les ressentis sont tout autre.

Ce livre m'a fait passer par tout un tas d'émotions... Courir après quelque chose qui ne peut arriver, le temps qui passe mais où rien ne change, où rien ne peut changer et l'espoir. Andy représente l'univers de Shane et Shane celui de Andy. Lorsqu'ils s'en rendent compte, cela donne lieu à des passages superbes et tellement émouvants. Beaucoup de passages m'ont touchés dans ce roman, vraiment...

La fin est un peu trop déjà vue, c'est le genre de truc qui me saoule dans le sens où, il faut obligatoirement qu'il se passe un truc pour ouvrir les yeux à un des personnages et le forcer à se bouger. Mais bon...

Les personnages secondaires sont très sympathiques aussi, et mettent vraiment de l'ambiance au roman ! L'auteur nous offre leurs histoires dans les autres tomes de la série d'ailleurs, je me laisserais bien tenter ^^

Une chouette lecture donc, qui avait quelque part aussi un petit côté rafraîchissant ^^

I wasn’t sure when I first started this book whether I liked it or not, so as I usually do if I struggle with a book I put it aside for a day or two and came back to it, I’m really glad I did & persevered with this book as I really enjoyed it. It was a story of love and friendship which warmed my heart who doesn’t want to find the one. Many thanks to both netgalley and the author for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a frank & honest review.