Oceans Apart (Separate Ways #2)

Title: Oceans Apart
Authors: Laura Harner
Publisher: Hot Corner Press
Cover Art: n/a
Buy Links:Buy LinkAmazon, ARe
Genre: contamporary m/m, thriller
Length: Novel (200 pages, 60,5 k words)
Rating: 4 out of 5 rating stars

A Guest Review by Feliz

Summary Review: How do you move on from a love that hurt you deeply when the past just won’t let go of you?

***This review contains spoilers for the first book, Continental Divide***

The Blurb: It’s been two years since Lord Jamie Mainwaring and Detective Remy Remington worked and loved their way through their one and only case before going their separate ways.

Now Jamie is once again mixing agency business with pleasure as he and his partner, Agent Ryan Whiteside, are assigned to a case involving piracy in the Caribbean.

Remy and his old friend Miggy are still detectives, but they’ve gone private in Phoenix. When their biggest client sends them to supervise an unusual diamond transfer, they think their toughest challenge will be maintaining their cover as a gay couple on a barefoot-style cruise.

When murder connects the dots between the two cases, the four men must learn to work together as relationships and loyalties are tested amid misunderstandings and memories on the high seas.

The Review:

In the first book, disgraced English lord Jamie Mainwaring and American cop “Remy” Remington met and fell in love over a child prostitution case, but in the end, Remy left Jamie since he didn’t feel ready for a relationship. Now it’s two years later and both men have moved on, professionally as well as privately. Jamie, now with an Interpol special ops group, is in a committed relationship with one of his colleagues, Ryan. Remy has his own private security firm together with his (straight) best friend Miggy; in addition, they took in one of the former rentboys from book one, Toby, who thinks of them as his fathers.
Things are as good as can be for both Jamie and Remy respectively (aside from the fact that they’re both still secretly pining for each other) until their paths cross unexpectedly on a small cruise ship in the Caribbean–Remy and Miggy are there as bodyguards for a diamond merchant who is traveling with 15 mio$ worth in gemstones that he plans to sell to a secret buyer during the cruise; Jamie and Ryan are there because someone tipped Interpol off on a possible pirate attack on said diamond trade.

Emotions boil high once Remy and Jamie meet again. But not only for the two of them. Ryan has been fighting Remy’s ghost for more than a year, and seeing his rival in the flesh only heightens his determination to keep Jamie for himself. Miggy already shares a life with Remy–for all intents and purposes, they are as good as married, albeit minus the sex. However, since they’re masking as a gay couple during this all-gay cruise, Miggy comes to look at Remy with new eyes and to his own astonishment realizes that he might not be as straight as he always thought…

The background plot which consisted of a complicated, far-fetched mystery, a villain out of the box, and a plethora of red herrings was quite banal, its only saving grace the Caribbean setting. However, for all the issues I had with it, it was fast paced–I loved the action scenes–and like with the first book, I came to set realism aside and just went with the fictional flow. And believe me, it was a ride to enjoy.

The romance part of the book, on the other hand… the emotions were so real and palpable, they practically jumped off the pages. I could relate to any of the four men involved. Remy and Jamie, although still smarting from past betrayal and mutual hurt, realizing that the blind trust and mutual silent understandig that used to make them such a good team was still there. Miggy, struggling with the new reality of developing a sexual interest in his best friend, in addition to seeing how much unsolved emotionional baggage  was still left between Remy and Jamie. And Ryan’s insecurity, his possessivenes toward Jamie and his jealousy of Remy. Beautifully done, full of cliches and incredulities and yet so powerfully written, it sucked me in and didn’t let go of me to the final page. 

This book is certainly not a standalone; as far as I’m concerned, it only makes sense in the context of the series, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed it quite as much as I did hadn’t I read it with its prequel and sequel back to back. I really love this series for the unusual path it takes with the supposedly intended couple, Remy and Jamie, but opinions might differ greatly on that question.

Highly recommended as part of the series.