Title: Racing Into Love
Author: Noah Steele
Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: MM/Gay
Publisher: Self
Pages: 314
Reviewer: Pat
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
Aiden Reed is stuck in a major boy rut.
Every date ends in something worse than disaster—boredom.
That is, until star racer Derrek Luna crashes the end of a terrible date at Aiden’s cozy bookstore. Derrek’s confident charm and killer good looks throw Aiden’s quiet, cautious world into chaos when he says he wants a shot at Aiden’s heart.
Derrek is sure Aiden is different. He’s sure Aiden won’t just vanish without a word. Not like the others did. But the closer Derrek gets to the man who charmed him without a word from across a crowded room, the more his life on the track threatens to keep them apart.
Aiden is ready to take the risk—he thinks.
What if Aiden’s panic attacks scare Derrek away?
What if Derrek’s ghosts come back to haunt him?
…what if it doesn’t matter because they’re already in love?
Racing into Love is a gay instalove romantic drama ready and waiting to take you from zero to sixty with every turn of the page.
The Review
Readers who speed through romances that go from zero to sixty in the first few chapters will love Noah Steele’s Racing into Love. Sure, there is a huge road block in the way of reluctant bookstore owner Aiden Reed’s instant attraction to race car driver Derrick Luna, but it proves to be the glue keeping them on track rather than a brick wall.
After working there for a few years, Aiden inherits Bay Window Books from the previous owner and now is more concerned with his own love life than his best friend, employees, or customers. The problem isn’t the men he’s dating but Aiden himself, who is bored, bored, bored within minutes of meeting a new guy.
Like many of Aiden’s blind dates, famous race car driver Derrek is unaccountably smitten by Aiden, but he decides to take a different course to winning his heart. Derrick plays hard to get while stalking the self-involved Aiden, whose best friend and roommate Oliver watches in dismay.
How can Aiden, who was in the car as a child when his mother was blindsided and killed, stand to be around someone whose life revolves around cars, Oliver wants to know. Aiden doesn’t have a good answer to that even after Derrek takes him to the track and Aiden suffers a full blown panic attack.
He’s reluctant to admit that speedbumps like Derrek’s profession and the fact that he’s a star performer might destroy their chemistry and growing love. Derrek, on his part, is full speed ahead, confident that they will be able to overcome any problems in their path. And Oliver is left in the dust as if he’s the sole onlooker at his friend’s potential pileup.
Author Steele puts a different spin on an instalove story in this run around the dating and courtship track. But too many minor mishaps make the story read more like a fairy tale than a major sporting event. A good continuity editor would have helped pull the pieces together in order to give readers a satisfying race to the finishing line.
Still, it’s an enjoyable first book from a promising author, one I hope to see more from.
The Reviewer
Pat is a writer and reviewer of contemporary MM fiction who currently lives in Sacramento, California.
