‘French Kiss (Flying Into Love Book 1)’ by C.F. White #Audiobook #LGBT #Review #MM

Erryn reviews ‘French Kiss (Flying Into Love Book 1’ by C.F. White. The ebook was published May 30, 2022 and was 226 pages.The audiobook version of this story was narrated by Piers Ryman, released June 16, 2022 and is 6 hrs and 21 mins long. A copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.

Why I read this book: I’m in love with this author and narrator duo.

Can a French kiss persuade an uptight Englishman to leave his city behind and start a new life in rural France?

Clean-cut London businessman Dale Calverley doesn’t do relationships.

Rugged French handyman Valentin Aubrey doesn’t do city men.

When Dale hires Valentin to help him fix up his inherited farmhouse estate in rural France and sell to the highest bidder, sparks fly.

Complete opposites, can they really expect their insta-lust to last beyond the storm that forces them together?

But how can Dale walk away from a man so alluringly rogue as Valentin Aubrey?

And how can Valentin expect a man so money-orientated to throw away his career and stay in the wilderness with him?

French Kiss (Flying into Love, Book 1) is a contemporary, opposites attract, age-gap, forced proximity MM romance featuring an uptight English businessman with a preference for nameless hookups and a rugged half-French handyman with a checkered past.

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My review:

I have to start by complimenting Piers Ryman. As someone fluent in both English and French, it’s frustrating when narrators butcher either language. I know they do their best, but sometimes their French is incomprehensible. Ryman wasn’t like that at all – I understood all the French clearly, so I have to say well done.

Now to the story. I do love opposites attract and, wow, these two men couldn’t be more different. Dale is all suave sophisticated London while Valentin is rural France with no phone or internet. I live more like Dale, but I very much want to live like Valentin – so I related to both men.

Dale inherited a property in rural France when his estranged father passed away. His father wrote sweeping romance novels and Dale never quite related to them. His parents had a grand passionate affair and Dale’s never been privy to that kind of love. He doesn’t understand it, and he certainly can’t understand why his father holed himself away in this hovel without access to the world.

Valentin understands Dale’s father completely. He lived a hard scrabble life in the city and he hates it. Truly detests everything Dale represents. So how can the two men possibly get along? Well, sexual chemistry helps. So does open dialogue. You know – talking about feelings? They’re not always great about it, but when they get it right, truth spills out.

Now, I honestly didn’t know how the men would get their happy ending. Both were firmly entrenched – it was obvious Valentin would be miserable in the city, just like it was obvious Dale couldn’t function in the middle of nowhere.

But find a solution they did and I got my patented CF White happy ending. Now, I noticed this was book 1 in a series. Normally CF’s books center around one couple for three (or more) books. But these guys have truly settled everything. I snuck a peek, and the other books have other couples. Can’t wait to read those.

My rating:

10/10 Pots of Gold – Compares to 5/5 Stars

Website | Twitter: @CFWhiteUK| Goodreads

Brought up in the relatively small town in Hertfordshire, I managed to do what most other residents of the town try and fail. Leave.

Going off to study at a West London University, I realised there was a whole city out there just waiting to be discovered, so much like Dick Whittington before, I never made it back home and still endlessly searches for the streets paved with gold; slowly coming to the realisation that it is mostly paved with chewing gum. And the odd bit of graffiti. And those little circles of yellow spray paint where the council point out the pot holes to someone who is supposedly meant to fix them instead of stare at them endlessly whilst holding a polystyrene foam cup of watered down coffee.

Eventually I moved from West to East along that vast District Line, and settled for pie and mash, cockles and winkles, and a bit of Knees Up Mother Brown to live in the East End of London; securing a job, creating a life, a home, a family.

Having worked in Higher Education for the most proportion of my adult life, a life-altering experience brought pen back to paper, having written stories as a child but never having the confidence to show them to the world. Now embarking on this writing malarkey, I cannot stop. So strap in, it’s a bumpy ride from here on in.