Definitely worth listening to!

I've been in for a positive surprise with this! I didn't expect this to be so respectful towards survivors of sexual assault, nor towards religious groups that condemn homosexuality.

And yet.

While I could've done without the semi-graphic description of Jaime's childhood trauma (sexual abuse by an older, male relative), and bearing in mind that I am not a survivor of sexual abuse/assault myself, I thought the way the author handled the way Jaime's slowly coming to grips with his past, and carefully testing his boundaries while learning to trust others and himself (!!) was well done.

In Levi's case there's a lot of bigotry and bias he has to deal with, as well as internalised homophobia and self-hatred (even though he's not aware of it). The way he learns to accept his family and himself, and be accepted by them in return is seriously well done, while the whole subject of being religious while homosexual is tackled - in my opinion - respectfully. Levi's approach to religion is much like my own, and it was refreshing to have a homosexual character who's (kind of) religious and not tearing themselves up over it. Levi already made his peace with his sexuality and his religion - it's everyone else that still needs to catch up.

Both characters, and various of the minor characters, develop and progress over the span of the story, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. This book left me satisfied with the narrative and the characters, which has rarely happened in recent explorations of gay romance novels.

The steadfast absence of ridiculous euphemisms, and over the overall quality of the writing is yet another bonus weighing in favour of this story.

I deducted one star because of a handful of (more or less brief) moments where I felt the author could've done a better job with how certain themes are represented.

One slightly spoilery warning at the end of this review:

In one scene, Levi and Jaime sleep in the same bed (at this stage they're friends), and Levi masturbates while watching a Jaime sleep - which is all kinds of icky all by itself in regards to consent, but especially horrifying when you consider Jaime's childhood trauma. This is one of the reasons why this story couldn't have earned five stars.