Release Day Review: Brushed With Love by Fearne Hill

28 February of 2022 by ButtonsMom2003

Brushed With Love By Fearne Hill

Genre: Contemporary Romance, GLBTQ, MM, Bi-Sexual

Tropes: Opposites attract, fake boyfriend, dyslexia

Released: February 28, 2022

Publisher: Self-Published

Series: Surfing the Waves, Book 1

Length: 269 pages

Synopsis

Clement Constantine Church is a hot mess. With deadlines to meet.
Whereas the striking Viking redecorating his seaside cottage is simply hot.

As a precocious teen, Clem wrote a best seller. Now he writes for other people. Too busy contemplating his bleak career and panicking about pretty much everything, he doesn’t notice that the gorgeous surfer slapping paint across his bedroom walls has a top-notch flirting game. Nor that the body hidden underneath his white overalls should come with its own government health warning.

Anyhow, apparently the Viking is straight.

After one too many unwise hookups, Ragnar Aleksander Sigurdson Eggebraaten needs to lay low and avoid romantic entanglements. Which means there is zero chance he’d ever fall for a lonely writer. Not even if they pretend to be fake boyfriends during a weekend trip to London. Not even if there was only one bed. And especially not if he’s planning on leaving England at the end of summer to fulfil his dream of setting up a surf school.

Can surfer Vikings fall unexpectedly in love? Are failed writers allowed to write their own happily ever afters?

Brushed With Love is a warm and funny romance set in the UK. Trigger warnings include cosmic lizards, feisty octogenarians, and a spoiled Shih Tzu.

Review

Reviewed by ButtonsMom2003

Another great book from Fearne Hill!

I’m fairly new to Fearne Hill’s books. Her Rossingley series is the first that I read and I loved each and every book. Brushed With Love is different in feel but the story still has all of the emotion and compelling characters that I loved about Rossingley and I loved it, too.

I always enjoy a book where one of the main characters is profoundly changed by love. Ragnar Aleksander Sigurdson Eggebraaten (Eggy) is pretty much a man-whore at the beginning of the story. He’s bi-sexual so he doesn’t discriminate – he enjoys both men and women but he has never had a serious relationship. Enter Clem, a best-selling author who can’t seem to find his muse to write another book of his own, so he ghost-writes for other celebrities. Eggy and Clem meet when Eggy’s job has him assigned to paint the interior of Clem’s house.

Eggy has a background that isn’t revealed to us until pretty far into the story but there are a few hints along the way. He also has a best friend, Fifty – whose real name is Christian Grey, hence the nickname, Fifty – and they are about to realize their dream of starting their own business in the Canary Islands; it isn’t a great time for Eggy to fall in love for the first time.

I just loved the depth of emotion that this book has without being overly angsty. In fact, there were more than a couple of LOL moments in the story. But, Eggy and Clem have to overcome a pretty big hurdle before they get their HEA and I loved how it all played out.

The ending doesn’t have a cliffhanger but the epilogue, nine months later, sets up the next book, Dipped in Sunshine coming in May 2022. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s Fifty’s story along with another character that I won’t name because it might be a spoiler. 😊