The Love Thing is a perfect office affair romance, the old style one with incomprehension, mistakes in judging characters and happily ever after.

Greg is a young and cute gay guy from New York. When his college boyfriend dumps him for an older and wealthier man, Greg is on a downfall mood and his friends Tommy offers him a way out: subrenting a room in a wonderful restored Victorian house in the Castro while the owner is spending the winter in Mexico. Tommy has no work in New York and a father who is pressuring him to go to law school, something Tommy has no intention to do, and so the other side of the country seems far enough to let the pressure go. Tommy has no idea what he wants to do in the future, but he is still young enough to take a break and decide.

After a few months of mourning over the lost boyfriend, Tommy is ready for looking around and the first day as temporary private assistant for a law firm seems to give him a lot of prospective: both David than Andrew, the two lawyers in his floor, are gay. But while David is friendly and smiling, Andrew is aloof and detached. Things gets worst when Tommy finds out to his best girl friend that Andrew is her landowner and at the same party Tommy hooks up with Harold, Andrew’s best friend. Now everything around him seems to conjure to bring Andrew and Tommy together, while Tommy would way better prefer to be with David.

As it was not enough for Tommy to be the hard fought bone between David and Andrew (even if Andrew plays it cold and doesn’t let anything transpire), a third man enters Tommy’s life, William, the owner of the house: almost fifty and very handsome, William makes pretty soon clear that also him is interested in Tommy, but more like a buddy friend with benefits than a in live partner. William is gentle and caring, always with a kind word or a willing ear for Tommy’s trouble. William has all the wisdom of his age and he is willing to share it for free. Oh, and I almost forgot, just when Tommy is trying to find his way on the love labyrinth that are David, Andrew and William, also Matthew, the treacherous ex-boyfriend from New York returns in Tommy’s life, ashes on the head, pleading forgiveness.

This Love Thing is like a table game, with David, Andrew, William and Matthew playing all the spectrum of possible boyfriends, and Tommy who has to decide what is the best card to pick up to assure himself an happily ever after. The strange thing is that, in a way or the other, all of them are good choices, they have good and bad sides, and with all of them, Tommy has almost the same share of chances to be happy. Sure some of them I would not pick up, and in the end, I restricted my choice to the two that Tommy himself chose, so probably both the author and I had the same idea regarding Mr Right.

Basically Tommy is a sweet guy, sweet as the cakes he starts to bake to make friends at work and ending to like doing it more than expected. Generous and kind with everyone, even with his nemesis, Wesley, he isn’t able to have bad vibes, and the author granted Wesley an happily ever after as he did with Tommy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439244421/?tag=elimyrevandra-20