Davis's Magic by Lisa Clarke

 When a chance encounter after a night of celebration brings Davis Anderson unexpectedly crashing into Jamie Greene's life, Davis knows the universe has delivered the man of his dreams. Unfortunately, love is the last thing Jamie is looking for. The attraction between the two men is nothing short of magical, but for Jamie, the timing couldn’t be worse. Consumed by grief over the death of his mother, Jamie pushes Davis away, for Davis's own good—or so Jamie insists. For Davis, walking away from Jamie isn’t an option. He must find a way to soothe Jamie’s pain and earn his trust. Even as misunderstandings threaten their tentative connection, they’re determined to hold on to each other—and hope the magic between them will be enough.

Let me start by saying, this is a very simplistic book. Too simplistic for my taste. Jamie is depressed, not wanting to deal with people, and the author doesn’t give me a good-enough reason to feel bad for him. His mom died four months ago – Four months ago. Why hasn’t he recovered in that time? For me, I kept waiting for something else, something that would have proven why he was behaving like he was. If there was a reason his mother’s death really took him down so far, I needed more information, a more intense attachment to his needs.

Then we have Davis – Acts like a twink, doesn’t think before he acts, and pushes straight ahead even when the signs ahead scream “danger, danger!” Neither character acted ‘smart’ in my opinion. Jamie’s personality flipped back and forth between sullen and ‘I like him, oh, I shouldn’t’ so much I yawned, actually.

This is a short book, but it still took me almost two weeks to get through it. There wasn’t anything that made me want to turn the page.

Now, all that said, let me say I think if the author took it, reworked it, and really filled in all the gaping holes, it could be a really good book. The potential is there – it’s the one thing that did keep me coming back to it time and time again instead of just giving up. But the potential was never fulfilled. The past was ghosted over, with no real emotion attached to it, and I felt in the end that Jamie would continue to hurt Davis over and over again, not because he wanted to, but because to me – whatever his original problem was was not resolved. And he was too attached to feeling bad.

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