The Way She Reads: Him Improvement by Tanya Chris

Book Title: Him Improvement

Author: Tanya Chris

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Cover Artist: Alexandria Corza

Release Date: September 3, 2019

Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romance

Trope/s: enemies to lovers, opposites attract, millionaire, age gap

Themes: gentrification, compromise

Heat Rating: 4 flames

Length: 60 000 words/ 161 pages

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Blurb

The course of true love runs through every neighborhood….

Only one thing stands between Gregory MacPherson II and his dream revitalization project for the gritty neighborhood of Ball’s End: a rinky-dink, run-down used bookstore called Hailey’s Comic. But when master negotiator Mac shows up to make a deal with the owner, he comes face-to-face with quirky, colorful Hailey—unexpectedly good-humored about Mac’s attempted eviction and, also unexpectedly, a hot guy.

Hailey won’t give up his lease, no matter how much money Mac offers. When it comes to consummating their mutual attraction, though, he’s a lot more flexible. Soon Mac has as hard a time prying himself out of Hailey’s bed as he does prying Hailey out of the building. But Hailey doubts Mac’s plans serve Ball’s End’s best interests, and he insists Mac give him a chance to prove his case. If they’re going to build a happy ever after, one of them will have to be remade….

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Excerpt

Chapter One

GREGORY MacPherson II didn’t have the time or the patience to make a personal trip to a bookstore, but here he was. Alone.

No patrons roamed the narrow aisles formed by overstuffed bookshelves. No clerk waited at the vintagecash register sitting on top of a linoleum-covered counter barely capable of holding its weight. No one rushed to greet him from behind the tawdry multicolored curtain hanging at the back of the store.

From where he stood only a few feet inside the doorway, leery of allowing anything in the dusty hodgepodge to brush against his suit, he could see straight down the center aisle all the way to the back of the store. It was a thirty- foot-by-sixty-foot shoebox, longer than it was wide, oneof four retail spaces on the ground floor of the six-story brick building and the only one still open. Which was why Gregory MacPherson II, commonly referred to as Mac, had personally dragged himself down here.

How the place could stay in business without any workers, never mind customers, was a mystery he didn’t intend to solve. He was there to shut the place down, not rescue it, though in the few short minutes he’d been exposed to Hailey’s Comic, he could already list a half-dozen ways to improve its profitability.

That sign out front, for instance. It was a purple whirlwind of planets, well done if you were going for an acid-trip vibe, but the name implied there’d be comics, and the sign implied there’d be comets. Or drugs. And from what he could see, there were neither. If an establishment wanted to bring in customers, it needed to make clear theservices it provided and establish confidence that it wouldprovide them well.

Then there was the matter of actually waiting on the customers you did bring in. A bell had tinkled as he’d entered, but apparently only for its own enjoyment.

“Hello?” He raised his voice to a level that couldn’t be ignored and had a brief moment to wonder if he really was completely alone before a head and a hand appeared around the edge of the curtain.

“Mercy, you scared me,” the head said. It belonged to a young man and had a mop of brown hair piled on top of it, a few shades lighter than Mac’s own reddish brown.“Sorry, I didn’t hear the bell. Give me a minute. I’m sort of in flagrante delicto.” The head disappeared.

“In flagrante delicto doesn’t mean naked, you know,” Mac told the air where the head had been. “It means you were caught doing something you shouldn’t have been.Something sexual.”

“Now, now. It’s never wrong to masturbate. There.” The head reappeared, this time attached to a body that gave Mac a startlingly clear vision of how it would look masturbating. The man was stringy, taller than Mac’s six- foot frame, but lean and underdeveloped—the body of aperson who spent a lot of time reading. Or jerking off.

“What can I help you with?” He was in his mid-twenties, so perhaps ten years younger than Mac, dressed in jeans laddered with intentional rips, each the same two inches wide, running down his thighs like claw marks. His face was clean-shaven, fresh with his youth, and Mac wondered how his skin would react to having Mac’s tightly trimmed beard rubbed all over it.

“You’re free to browse around, even if I’m not out here.”

Mac added lax security to the mental list he was pointlessly compiling. “I need to speak to the owner.”

Hailey Green, owner of Hailey’s Comic, was the only thing standing in the way of his plans to revitalize this misbegotten section of Ballhaven, which plan started with this very brick building and would ultimately lead to Ball’s End—as everyone called it; he’d have to do something about the branding—becoming the newest hot spot for millennials to eat, drink, shop, and live. Urban revitalization was Mac’s business, and Hailey Green was Mac’s problem.

“Still me,” the man said, tilting his head to the side asif to take in Mac’s appearance more carefully.

Mac hadn’t changed clothes before driving down to Ball’s End, though he could’ve guessed the place would bedirty. He’d been reading a report on the effort to clear 502 Main Street of its tenants and had made an abrupt decisionto come down and take care of ridding the building of its final holdout himself.

Review

Him Improvement is a most charming story from start to finish. Right from the moment Mac (or Greg, as Hailey calls him) and Hailey fall into insta-lust—only moments before Mac falls into insta-love—this is a story about two men who couldn’t be more different finding a way to be together that works for both of them.

The one thing that is perfectly clear from that first encounter is that sexually, Hailey and Mac couldn’t be more compatible. It’s just in every other aspect of their lives and personalities that they are opposites. And I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of Mac’s quest to initially try and pretend to be and subsequently turn himself into the man he thinks Hailey needs and deserves.

Of course, what Mac wants and what Mac can actually pull off turn out to be two very different things. After all, as a developer he has his company and investors to take into account. And while Hailey’s ideas and ideals may well be admirable, they aren’t always practical, and almost never profitable. I have to admit that I love the solution the story eventually came up with even if I have my doubts as to how realistic it was. I totally buy that Mac was ‘converted’ by that stage of the story. I had a bit more trouble getting my head around his best friend and lawyer also making the switch.

I would have loved it if I had also been able to read from Hailey’s perspective because I constantly found myself wondering why he was interested in someone like Mac – apart from a strong physical attraction. I get the opposites attract lure, but I’m not sure why anyone would be so benevolent towards anybody who is out to rob them of their livelihood and doesn’t understand their motivation when it comes to helping others at all. As much as I don’t like conflict in my romances, I think it would have helped if Hailey had got angry at least once, because Mac certainly gave him reasons to be upset. Seen just through Mac’s eyes and described only in Mac’s words, Hailey was just too good to be true. Although, given how hard Mac falls, maybe we should forgive him those rose-tinted glasses.

Maybe the problem is that I didn’t really warm to Mac until maybe the last 15% of the story. I couldn’t escape the feeling that rather than changing as a result of seeing Hailey’s way of life and appreciating his values, Mac changed out of selfish reasons, because there was very little he wouldn’t do if it meant he could stay with Hailey and deepen their relationship. Because, no matter how I feel about developers (and I’m not a huge fan in general), you can’t deny that Mac goes from being prepared to screw over the little man to being willing to drop his friends, family, and other investors in it without experiencing significant guilt. But, at the same time it’s impossible to deny that by the end of the book, Mac is willing and trying…trying to understand Hailey and what motivates him, and trying to do better.

Having said all that, if you read this book as a modern, not-Christmassy, play on A Christmas Carol, as the book itself does once or twice, Him Improvement was a gentle, sexy, and mostly angst-free read with a fairy-tale feel, which is pretty much how I prefer my romances.

Him Improvement is definitely not a book for those who thrive on angst. If, on the other hand, you enjoy stories in which love literally overcomes all, you’re going to adore this book.

Which leaves me with just one question: Will Declan get his own book and man?

About the Author

Tanya Chris writes feminist-friendly romance in a variety of sub-genres and pairings--most especially M/M. Born on the West Coast and raised on the East Coast, she's fact-based but thirsty for justice, and her books often include an examination of a current social issue, even when they're set in the past. As a lifelong genre-hopping reader herself, she admires character-driven work with a message, regardless of the form it takes.

Tanya is an avid rock climber, a long-distance runner, and a participant in her local community theater where she has tackled most roles, including playwright, actor, director, producer, and stage manager. Her travels, both for climbing trips and for cultural exploration, have brought her to places as fascinating as Egypt and as beautiful as the Dolomites, though there's no place like home.

Tanya is best known to readers for having written Aftercare and to writers for the quote "Writer culture is researching what degree is needed to be a paleontologist so your shapeshifting vampire dinosaur erotica will be authentic." Her website features dozens of free stories, including the aforementioned (and highly authentic) shapeshifting vampire dinosaur erotica.

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