Title: Heart
Knot Mine
Author: Lily
Velden
Genre: gay
romance, contemporary
Length: novel
Publisher:
DreamSpinner Press
Despite a
successful college teaching career, Noah Daniels has become depressed. He feels
he’s leading a monochromatic life: love has eluded him. When he’s offered a
chance to teach in London as part of an exchange program, he accepts, hoping a
change of scenery will do him good. But once he’s there, his outlook on love
and sexuality changes in ways he never expected.
Robert
Callinan is Noah’s English counterpart in the program. The men exchange not
only their jobs, but also their homes, and it is what Noah stumbles across
while staying at Robert’s house that sends him on a journey of self-discovery—both
mentally and physically. A journey that puts color back into his life… just not
in the way he expected. When the exchange program ends, Noah has to go home,
but he doesn’t know if he wants to return to the life he left behind.
Noah Daniels and Robert Callinan share a desire to do something more with their lives. Both are college teachers, Noah in America and Robert in the UK, but they are both tired of their mundane lives, searching for something different... something more. So they swap jobs, lives and houses for 6 months.
Robert is eager to learn more about his American counterpart, studying the pictures of him scattered throughout his home and pumping Noah’s brother, Mitch, for more personal information.
Noah is fascinated with idea of Robert and upon inspection of the man’s home, he finds Robert’s secret DVD stash. Noah has always felt like there was something inside him that didn’t click, like there was something he was missing. When he sees Robert on screen having lots of sex, in various positions, with various lovers, everything finally clicks. Noah is gay, and he is enamored with the man he is watching. Noah recognizes something in Robert’s eyes though in the videos, a longing for something more, something missing.
Through lots of late night conversations over the months they are sharing each other’s lives, Noah and Robert decide to meet and take their summer break together, touring the UK. It’s on this vacation that the two become lovers. Noah is young and fresh and his crush on the slightly older sexy man soon grows into something more. Robert is slightly jaded and not quite ready to admit that Noah has wrapped himself around his heart, like a knot.
I absolutely LOVE Lily Velden. I have read all her books and I love the way she is very detailed and descriptive without being overly descriptive. You are captured by her characters and she has a way of making you ‘feel’ like you are right there with them, no matter the circumstance. They are always three dimensional, realistic and flawed in some way. That makes them human which is what makes her books so fantastic.
As you travel down the road of self discovery with Noah you will laugh, you will cry and your heart will break for him. He goes through so much and his world is turned upside down in a very short time. Robert could have easily been an unlikable character, but Velden wrote him in such a way that the reader was captivated by his charm and understanding of his hesitancy.
Sexy, passionate, endearing and romantic... even if there is a little heart break in there as well. For those folks out there that refuse to read a book without a happy ending, I’ll tell you that you will get a happy ending, just not exactly how it is delivered. This is definitely a must read, it will have a permanent slot on my kindle so I can re-read it whenever and wherever and all the time!
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Lily Velden lives on the east coast of Australia, her family having
emigrated from Holland when she was a child.
She’s both a left and right brain person, holding qualifications in both
Finance and Fine Arts. She tells her friends that her way with numbers will
make her a profitable artist and writer… one day.
Lily has always had a love of language and a beautifully crafted
sentence, and admits to having a fetish for collecting quotes, poems, and song
lyrics. What she won’t admit to is how many notebooks she’s filled with those
quotes… Her fascination carries on into her artworks where she often
incorporates text. When a shoulder injury slowed down her art practice she
decided to explore her love of the written word more fully and began
writing. “I’ll paint my pictures with words.”
Not that she’s abandoned artmaking in its entirety—Lily collaborates on
the designs for all her book covers.
There are many things Lily loves, here are just a few of the PG rated
ones: a good laugh (all the better if caused by a naughty joke), the smell of
freshly baked goods and mown grass, a smile from a stranger, rainbows after the
rain, and witnessing a promise kept.
Lily Velden can be found at:
Tumblr: http://lilyvelden.tumblr.com/
HEART KNOT MINE
LILY
VELDEN
EXCERPT: LIFE CHANGING MOMENT
After
placing my glass of wine on the bedside table, I strode to the sideboard, and
upon opening the first set of doors, one glance informed me the DVDs were
arranged alphabetically. I ran my gaze over the titles and removed one or two
possibilities before moving to the second set of doors and doing the same.
The
final set of doors stopped me in my tracks. There, on the bottom shelf, was an
old-fashioned lockable box. As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d finally found the
home of my mystery key.
Considering
where he kept the box, and its size and shape, I surmised it housed his porn
collection. The fact he kept it under lock and key intrigued me. Was it to keep
it safe from the prying eyes of his cleaning lady, who I had yet to meet? Or
was it because it was one hell of a deviant collection? My curiosity got the
better of me, and I quickly retrieved the keys. Surely, had it been off-limits,
he’d have removed the key from the ring?
All
the labels were handwritten. Labels I didn’t read. Labels I only glanced at.
With
the wisdom of hindsight, that observation should have told me they were home
movies.
But
it didn’t.
I
didn’t hesitate for so much as one moment. Not one.
I
pulled the first one from the box and slotted it in the player. Taking a step
backward, I pointed the remote and hit play.
And
then life as I knew it changed forever.
One
minute my life was headed in one direction, the next it headed in another,
totally new one.
Robert
Callinan was standing exactly where I was.
The
difference being I was fully dressed in sweats and a tee.
He
wasn’t.
And
I was alone.
He
wasn’t.
Kneeling
before him was a blond youth of maybe twenty-one, gripping Robert’s buttocks
with his hands as he bobbed his head back and forth against Robert’s groin.
I
should have turned away.
I
should have hit the stop button.
I
should have done something.
Instead,
I stood, cemented to the spot, not breathing.
I
couldn’t tear my gaze from the screen.
It
wasn’t the shock of seeing man-on-man action, though I’d never seen that
before.
It
was Robert’s face.
The
cords in his neck. His long arched neck.
His
Adam’s apple, pointed skywards.
His
closed eyes and his softly parted lips.
And
the sounds.
It
was the sounds coming from those barely parted lips.
The
sighs and gasps and moaning exhalations.
They
played harmony to the wet sucking sounds emanating from the blond.
I
remained frozen, my gaze riveted on Robert’s face and neck. I swallowed, trying
to suck air into my starving lungs, and whimpered at my inability to drag my
stare away. But his face… the naked expression of ecstasy… I’d never seen
anything like it before. It was nothing like the bit of porn I’d watched over
the years.
It
was more. So much more.
And
though my gaze was glued to his fluttering eyelids, I still somehow saw the way
he curved his body to meet the guy’s sucking mouth, the way he curled his
fingers in the youth’s hair.
I
wanted to move. I wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to drown out the sounds of
their pleasure. I wanted my heart to slow down and my stomach to relax. I
wanted my lungs to expand; I wanted them to contract.
But
most of all I wanted my dick to soften.
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