Second chance romance is one of my favorite tropes – right up there with friends-to-lovers – and Greek God hits on both of those so hard and so good. It’s also got slow burn and a tiny bit of forbidden romance thrown in since Jesse and Dem eventually become stepbrothers.

I love reading stories that affect me deeply and Greek God had my emotions all over the place; it brought me to tears more than once (I’m a very emotional reader 😊). Young love is a wonderful thing but it can also be very painful as Jesse and Demetrios found out. CF White’s very descriptive writing had me longing to visit the place where they fell in love. The excellent blurb tells you what you need to know about the story but it can’t completely convey the chemistry between Jesse and Dem that fairly radiates off of the pages.

The timeline of Greek God goes back and forth a bit, letting us experience the boys first meeting when they were ten and eleven, gently mixed in with present day. We get to learn how their relationship developed through the years and how they came to be torn apart. I’m not sure how angsty I would say the story is; I’m not a good judge of that because I love a good angsty story, but Jesse and Dem do get their well-deserved HEA and I’m so happy I read their book.

Note that while Greek God is the seventh book in the Flying into Love series the stories are connected only by the theme of flying somewhere so don’t hesitate to jump in any place. I highly recommend all of the books in this series.

Reviews for C F White

♥ Amazon US ♥ Amazon CA ♥ Amazon UK ♥

#CommissionsEarned

The small plane he boarded held a handful of people and they piled on like cattle. It took off and brought Jesse ever closer to the place he both hated and treasured.

Naxos. The island of heartache.

He trembled as the small plane landed and he debarked, walking over hot tarmac toward the exit. The horizon blurred before him, Aegean sun burning down as though he’d stepped into the fires of Hell.

In a way, he had.

Outside the airport, he found the right bus with the large lit up letters of Aegleia Beach along the front, his limited-to-none Greek coming in useful. Not that it mattered. Everyone spoke English. He remembered that relief from his yearly visits here as a child. There was only one phrase in Greek he could recall from memory, and that wouldn’t get him very far here.

Plus, he couldn’t bear to hear it.

Couldn’t bear thinking about it.

The packed bus drove off and Jesse shoved in his AirPods hiding from the passing glorious landscape as they trudged on closer to the small beachside resort of his final destination. Aegleia Beach was a traditional Cycladic village built around a bay, made up of whitewashed cubic houses and blue-topped tavernas stretching along an idyllic golden sandy beach next to a cosy marina. It was a sun worshipper’s dream and a holidaymaker’s prime destination. Secluded by coves and set between two hilltops, Aegleia Beach was intimate enough for those wanting a low fuss holiday away from the city of Chora, but had enough bars and restaurants not to feel boxed in.

It was the place Jesse’s mum had fallen in love with.

Then fallen in love in.

So had Jesse.

And as he vacated the bus, rattling the wheels of his cabin case over cobblestones, he drank in the familiar scattering of colourful wooden chairs dug into sand, seafood and meze served to customers as Aegean waves splashed inches from their feet.

It hadn’t changed.

Not one thing.

Except for the added apartment block above the taverna, painted in its blue and white to be part of the Kallis Enterprise.

Jesse dripped with sweat as he stopped and drew in a breath. Because there, in the distance, over the deck and on the beach, a man stood beside a table for two, notebook in hand, pencil at the ready to take down an order, a smile so sincere it melted even the most frozen of hearts. Tanned, almost black hair, tall and defined, with a body not dissimilar to the one Jesse had woken up with that morning, the man was stunning. Beautiful. A sight more tantalising than the sprawling golden sand aligning the bluest of blue seas.

Demetrios Kallis had grown up.

He’d grown all the way up.

And he’d grown up fine.

In a simple pink T-shirt thrown on over khaki shorts, flip-flops buried in the sand, Demetrios was as effortlessly gorgeous as he had been when Jesse had last laid eyes on him eight years ago.

Jesse’s heart skipped.

He hated that it still did that.

Jesse’s name was called from behind and it made Demetrios glance away from his customers, eyes darting along the veranda and landing on him. His smile fell. Not into a frown as such, more into a parting of stunned lips, and his dreamy dark eyes widened. They stayed that way for a while. Gazing at each other across the beach, stuck in memories that chipped away at Jesse’s resolve.

Until Demetrios mouthed a wary, “Hi.”

Jesse was unable to respond with anything, silent or spoken. His racing heart was enough to prove he hadn’t forgotten. He wouldn’t ever forget. No matter how hard he tried, how long it had been, how broken and bruised and against the whole falling-in-love thing he was. Because there he was, and there Demetrios was, after so many years and so much pain, tongue-tied and evoking memories of every tumultuous heartbeat, every saddened tear shed, and every taste so irrevocable as if they’d shared it together yesterday. Like two glimmers of hope lost in time, unable to touch what had once been as tangible as the grains of sand beneath Jesse’s feet, they were suspended in the moment.

Then Demetrios was gone.

Pulled from Jesse’s reach by a stunning brunette in a bikini, he was shunted back to the now. And that, right there, was why love didn’t exist.

But before Jesse could flee, a stout older man drew him into a hug, tears smearing his neck, and, in a Greek accent, sobbed and repeated, “Jesse! Oh, Jesse. Thank God you came!”

Flying into Love Series

♥ Amazon US ♥ Amazon CA ♥ Amazon UK ♥

#CommissionsEarned