Charlie Sunshine By Lily Morton, Performed by Joel Leslie
Genre: Contemporary Romance, GLBTQ, MM
Released: Audiobook-January 14, 2022; eBook-April 21, 2020
Publisher: Self-Published
Series: Close Proximity, Book 2
Length: 7hrs, 54 mins / 272 pages
Cover Design: Natasha Snow Designs
Sometimes love is a lot closer to home than you think.
Charlie Burroughs can’t keep a man. All he wants is a good relationship like the ones he sees his friends having, but none of the men he picks ever work out. Despite him trying to be the perfect boyfriend, the men are either threatened by his looks or his epilepsy or a combination of the two. It’s lucky that he has his best friend Misha to turn to. The two of them are closer than peas in a pod and fiercely loyal to each other. He can’t imagine his life without Misha in it.
Misha Lebedinsky is the complete opposite of his best friend. Being the support system for his mum and twin sisters leaves Misha with neither the time nor the inclination for a relationship. Quick and frequent hook-ups are his favourite means of communication and any other pesky emotional needs he has are met by Charlie, who he’s devoted to. He lives a life of happy compartmentalization with no intention of ever changing.
All of this changes when the two best friends move in together.
Being in close proximity means that they suddenly start to see each other in a very different light. But Charlie struggles when his drive to be the perfect partner clashes with the fact that he’s in love with a man who knows every little thing about him. And even if he can get past that, can a relationship ever work with a man who’d need a dictionary to tell him what love means?
From bestselling author Lily Morton comes a love story about a sunny librarian who has relationship written all over him and a banker who doesn’t even have it in his blurb. This is the second book in the Close Proximity series, but it can be read as a standalone.
Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003
I laughed and I cried; I loved it -all over again!
It’s been nearly two years since I read Charlie Sunshine with my eyes. I loved it so much that I was thrilled to get a review copy of the audiobook, performed by one of my favorites – Joel Leslie. There’s a good reason why Joel is on my favorite list of audiobook performers and this one is a great example of why that is. He brought this story to life all over again for me to the extent that it was like reading it for the first time all over again.There really isn’t anything I can add to the rather long review I left back in April of 2020 so I’m just going to paste a copy below if you care to read it.
Original review below:
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that made me laugh so hard that my husband wanted to know what I was reading. I had to read parts of it to him so he could laugh, too. While I have several books by Lily Morton in my digital library, Charlie Sunshine is the first one I’ve read.
The blurb is accurate and long so I’m just going to highlight some of the things that made me fall in love with this book. Charlie gets along with everyone while Misha is cynical, sarcastic and critical; they are perfect for each other and just don’t realize it. Friends-to-lovers is one of my favorite romance tropes.
Charlie is a librarian and one of the library’s patrons – an older gentleman – borrows large print copies of Mills and Boons books (Harlequin in the U.S.) and writes his phone number in them. Charlie chastises the man but just can’t bring himself to stop letting the man borrow books. Later in the chapter, an older lady is returning a stack of books she borrowed and she and Charlie have a brief exchange:
“Those all coming back?”
“They are.” She leans close. “And I have to say there was a name and telephone number in the back of one of the books.”
“Oh, yes?” I say warily.
She nods. “I had such a lovely chat with the bloke.” She pauses. “Although he kept asking to see my zits. I’m not sure what all that was about.” She sniffs disapprovingly. “I’m a little too mature for acne.”
I thought I would die laughing. Now maybe it doesn’t come across as funny here in this review but trust me, this was just the beginning. Later on in the story one of Misha’s twin sisters has gotten into trouble for handcuffing herself to a railing at her school. Misha asks her where she got the handcuffs and here is what follows:
Anya shrugs. “Mum’s room. They were under her pillow.”
My mum gasps and turns bright red. “Oh my God,” she says faintly.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus.” I sigh. The table bursts into bedlam as all three women in my family start to talk very loudly.
I hope that these two brief quotes are enough to entice you to read (or listen to) this really fantastic story. Charlie Sunshine may have been my first Lily Morton book but it won’t be my last.
Performance: ♥♥♥♥♥
Story: ♥♥♥♥♥
O Factor: Spicy
Available to borrow with Kindle Unlimited.
“You staying for a while?” my mum asks from the seat at the head of the table. Even after all these years, I feel a tiny pang of surprise. It was my dad’s chair, and I can still see him there, his dark hair wild with him pushing his hand through it and laughing loudly. He was always laughing.
I blink the thought away and focus on her question. “Of course I’m staying. You summoned me, didn’t you?”
She sighs. “That makes you sound like a bloody demon.” She looks me up and down disapprovingly. “At least take your jacket off, Misha. You look like you’re about to approve me for a mortgage.”
“You do actually know what I do, don’t you?” I say, standing up so I can hang my jacket on the back of the chair.
She waves her hand airily. “It’s something to do with money. Anything else is a bit of a mystery. Sounds a bit like a gardening job.”
“I’m a hedge fund manager, not Alan Titchmarsh,” I say snidely.
She laughs, not a bit affected by my scowl. “Aunt Ava still asks if you can go round and trim her bush.”
“Good God,” I say and then falter because there are no words for the image she just conjured in my head.
To celebrate Lily’s new release, we are giving you a chance to win your choice of any book from Lily’s backlist! Three winners will be chosen!
Lily writes contemporary romance novels, and specialises in hot love stories with a good dose of humour.
Lily lives in sunny England with her husband and two children, all of whom claim that they haven’t had a proper conversation with her since she bought her first Kindle.
She has spent her life with her head full of daydreams and decided one day to just sit down and start writing about them. In the process she discovered that she actually loved writing, because how else could she get to spend her time with hot, funny men!
She loves chocolate and Baileys and the best of all creations – chocolate Baileys! Her lifetime’s ambition is to have a bath in peace without being shouted by one of her family.
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