Served Hot

Served Hot (2015) Annabeth Albert (Portland Heat)

Robert Edwards (Robbie to his friends) runs a coffee cart in the atrium of the Old EMerson building in Portland, and every day, his favorite customer, David, comes by at 11:50 for a vanilla latte.

Robbie has a huge crush on David, but isn’t sure if David is into him–or even into guys. And even if he is, Robbie doesn’t want another closeted boy-friend.

David, however, has issues to deal with.

“You feel what you need to feel.” What did I know about grief? I would be pissed, but I wasn’t David. And if David’s sadness made me feel smaller, I didn’t think it was intentional. I’d just have to work past it. Same as him. I wanted to trust in us both.

The story is all from Robbie’s POV, and we learn only very slowly about David’s past, and why he’s so reticent. (He has a lot of reasons, and they’re all quite good.) It also unfolds over the better part of a year, with David slowly sharing himself with Robbie.

Robbie and David with both very sweet, and both had communication issues, Robbie’s natural, and David’s stemming from his past, so it makes sense that things would happen slowly.

However, at times the story felt a bit disjointed, jumping about in time. I never quite felt the worry of whether things would work out–obviously they were going to, because it’s a romance–so the story needs to draw me completely in to make me feel the tension that Robbie felt, and this never quite did that.

I did have a major issue with the way the ebook was formatted at one point, which caused me to think the book was missing a chunk. In fact, even if it had been a little more clear these were two separate scenes, I probably still would have had issues, because the switch is so abrupt.

After the greetings, we headed into the house, (woman) leading the way. “So tell me, Robby,” she said over her shoulder, “how do you feel about venison?”

“I’m sorry,” David whispered next to me.

“It’ll be fine,” I whispered back, leaning toward him a little. “But I’ll let you make it up to me later, if it makes you feel any better.”    

“You sure I’ll like this?”

“Of course I am,” I lied.

“Well, I suppose I do owe you.”

“You do.” I grinned up at him, all teeth and sass. It was good to be home.

That’s just really abrupt, and since the first scene was very short, it was extremely confusing.

To be clear, it wasn’t a bad story, and I wanted both Robbie and David to be happy, but I was never deeply invested in what happened to them.

On the plus side, I borrowed this from the library, so I’m not mad at it for being a bit weak, so I’m going to borrow the next book in the series, to see if the writing becomes a little stronger.

Publisher: Lyrical Press
Rating: 5.5/10

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