Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
“You think you can do the jiggy with my baby brother, without wooing him for approximately three years first? Hah! I hope you weren’t too attached to your toenails.”
Fifty is a simple man. He doesn’t know much, but he knows this: to stay well clear of Otto Eggebraaten. The nineteen-year-old is cute, blond, and trouble. His overprotective big brother, Eggy, hounds Otto’s every move.
Outwardly, Fifty’s life is good. He surfs, teaches other folks to surf, drinks beer, and hangs with his friends. But with his thirtieth birthday on the horizon, he’s hoarding a secret he’s too ashamed to confide in anyone, even his best friend, Eggy. When Otto accidentally discovers it, Fifty finds his ordered, and lonely existence unravelling in a way he never expected.
Dipped In Sunshine is an age gap, best friend’s brother romance, featuring a cinnamon roll demisexual surfer and a determined blond fluffball. It can be read as a standalone.
The Review
TEXT
The Reviewer
Well, this is an appropriately-titled book. Otto Eggebratten, nineteen, bounces onto the page like a little blond ray of sunshine, and pretty much doesn’t let up.
While essentially a pure romance, unapologetic and visceral, there is a lot of emotional texture to this not-very-long novel. There’s a good bit of geographical texture, too, since the action takes place in a surfing resort on the Spanish coast (who knew?), with main characters who are Spanish, English and Norwegian. The very idea of English and Norwegian surfer dudes sort of made my head spin, but Fearne Hill’s sun-drenched pen makes it all seem nearly inevitable.
Christian Grey (aka Fifty, which is a joke even I didn’t get), is in fact twenty-nine. That seems very young to this elderly reviewer, but Fifty is feeling old. His best friend, strapping redhead Eggy (Ragnar Eggebratten) and he have a well-established surf shop adjacent to a resort hotel in Corralejo (a real place). Eggy also has a settled boyfriend, Clem. They have worked hard, and their business is successful.
The arrival of Eggy’s epileptic kid brother—who has run away from the family’s intolerant paterfamilias—throws Fifty’s quiet little world off its axis, but in a mostly good way. Otto is hyperactive and indiscreet, but he is also smart, big-hearted, and wise for his years.
What Otto sees is that Fifty is sad. Since the whole book is from Fifty’s perspective, the reader only begins to figure this out as Fifty lets slip truths about his past that shed light on his own emotional damage, and on his longtime friendship with Eggy. Fifty’s growing awareness of Otto’s perceptiveness is just part of a larger dawning realization that threatens to further decompose Fifty’s carefully encapsulated life.
The nature of the story sort of requires a good bit of sexual activity, and here is an instance where the author knows how to perfectly balance emotion and intimacy. I’ve bought the previous book in this series, because I want the rest of the story.
Five stars.
The Paranormal Romance Guild was established in 2009 by 8 Indie Authors and one Reviewer to be a constant help for authors. You can be a free author member, submitting your work for review OR become a Premium Author Member for a small yearly fee and enjoy many extra services including Free Beta Reads, Author Giveaways and many others. Your reviews are posted on our 3 FB Sites, Amazon, Goodreads, Twitter and Instagram. WE REVIEW ALL GENRES LGBTQ+ welcome.
Check out our website: https://www.paranormalromanceguild.com/
