A Family Found

Title: A Family Found
Author: Nicole Dennis
Cover Artist: Reese Dante
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Amazon:
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: Novel/258 PDF pages/49.1K Words
Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Review Summary: I would have enjoyed this book if the prose and dialogue were not excessive and there weren’t so many holes in the plot.

THE BLURB

A promising baseball star, Dimitri Michelakakis, left it all behind when his troubled sister called, begging him to raise her baby boy. Now a chef and a single father, he runs the successful catering arm of local bistro, Terra Verde. Dimitri never suspected that one of his catering jobs would lead him to a new love.

Since receiving a note about his son’s birth, millionaire Mason Harrison has done everything he can to find the baby and the man who raised him as his own. Could finding his son mean finding the family Mason has always longed for?

THE REVIEW

This month I have been reading new to me authors and different types of books that I don’t normally because I wanted a change, so over the past couple of weeks I have read three romances that include children.

This is the story of Dimitrios Michelakakis, his lover Mason Harrison, their son Theo and how they found each other and became a family. Since the book was 258 pages I was hoping that there would be some unique twists that would lift it from the mundane, the characters would be three dimensional, the plot would be credible and that overall it would be well written. However, A Family Found had quite a few problems, starting with the writing and the characterizations which probably sum up why I found it difficult to enjoy the book since those two elements are as important to me as a well plotted story.

Dimitri had adopted his nephew Theo as his son since his sister, Mariana, a drug addict, had given him up at birth and died of a heroin overdose shortly after. The boy was now 6 years old and Dimitri had abandoned a promising baseball career to become a full time dad to his nephew, which he never regretted. He had moved from Atlanta to Hamilton River to escape the judgmental neighbours who knew about Mariana and did not approve of his “lifestyle.” He worked at Terra Verde Bistro owned by his friend Cameron Graham and his husband, and he met Mason when he was asked to prepare a taste test for a big party he was planning.

Dimitri soon found out that Mason had his own agenda and the tasting was a ruse to meet him and Theo. It seemed he had received a letter from Mariana in which she confessed that he was Theo’s biological father, the result of a one night stand seven years ago. When Dimitri found out that he had been tricked the situation between him and Mason was rocky for a short while as he could easily lose his son to his biological father despite Mason’s reassurances, but Mason had a unique solution to the situation.

This is the first book I’ve read by Nicole Dennis and I’m not sure I’ll be reading another book by this author any time soon since I found several aspects of the story to be frustrating. If I weren’t reading this for review it probably would have been DNF. These are a few examples of the issues I had, starting with Mason’s description of Dimitri:

 “caramel dark hair, emerald eyes, Mediterranean gold complexion”

Which guy speaks like that?

My other concern was the feminine portrayal of Dimitri’s character. He was referred to in the book the way one would describe a woman – “slight” “small” “slender” etc. while Mason was “strong” “big” etc. just like a het couple. Of course there are small built men but did the author forget that these were two guys?

Dimitri is a chef so I expected that the book would have a few menus but I wasn’t prepared for the detailed level of information on food prep. Here’s an example:

With ease, Dimitri peeled and chopped the eggs, minced the shallot, chopped the chives and dill, and added everything to a medium bowl. He drained and measured in the capers. After a quick mix with a spoon, he measured and dropped in the mayonnaise. He then rolled, sliced, and squeezed in fresh juice from the plump lemons. After a taste, he added paprika, coriander, salt, and pepper to balance out the various flavors.   he leaned over to check rising dough, another filled with hard-boiled eggs, jars of capers and mayonnaise, packets of fresh fragrant chives and dill, and a bag of bright yellow lemons and carried everything to the workspace. From the pantry, he picked out a large shallot from the basket.

Dimitri opened the fridge and checked the curing salmon that’d been sitting for forty-eight hours, the first twenty-four in a salt and coriander mixture and the last twenty-four in an olive oil, vodka, and dill marinade. He pulled it out and set it on the counter. While there, he grabbed the ingredients to make the tartare, a glorified egg salad. He picked the large covered bowl of premade non rising dough, another filled with hard-boiled eggs, jars of capers and mayonnaise, packets of fresh fragrant chives and dill, and a bag of bright yellow lemons and carried everything to the workspace.

If you want to immerse yourself in the rest of the cooking lesson you’re on your own 🙂

Do you know any guys who consider a shampoo “seductive?” Dimitri really loves his:

He thanked any gods for whoever created two-in-one for hair and body washes. His latest favorites were from the Axe brands. He discovered a delicious combination of spice and citrus from the Heat line called Igniting Citrus for his hair that he found so seductive. He used it with the dragon fruit-scented Fever shower gel, coordinating the masculine, fruity scents.

It is not my practice to include a lot of quotes in a review, but I wanted you to understand my irritation about the level of detail in this book. All of the descriptions were given the same excessive treatment including Dimitri’s tattoos, Mason’s wine cellar, the decor of his house, etc. but I won’t bore you any further.

I like stories with cute kids but Theo was given so much face time in the book I felt it was to the detriment of what was supposed to be a romance between Dimitri and Mason. Also, my other problem was that one of the most important questions in the book, why it took Mason so long to claim his son, was not fully answered. It would seem that with his wealth, investigating Mariana’s claim that he was Theo’s father and finding Dimitri would have taken very little time with the help of the private investigators he had hired, so why did it take 6 years despite his statement that he longed to be a father?

There are many Greek words in the book used by Theo and Dimitri, and maybe it’s just me but I thought that was overdone too.

I liked Dimitri and Mason but I would have liked them a lot more if the unnecessary and extraneous detail were eliminated. A Family Found could easily have been 10K – 15K pages shorter without losing anything of substance, and it made me wonder about the role of the editor(s) when I read a book like this which was bloated with lengthy prose and dialogue – obvious areas where judicious edits could have been made to reduce the padding. “Less is more” was definitely not a consideration here. There were many holes in the plot which made it more difficult for me to recommend this book.

If you’re into cooking, kids and dogs you might like this book.