He’d give his life to protect the president’s son. But he never expected to risk his heart.
Growing up gay in the White House hasn’t been easy for Rafael Castillo. Codenamed “Valor” by the Secret Service, Rafa feels anything but brave as he hides in the closet and tries to stay below the radar in his last year of college. His father’s presidency is almost over, and he just needs to stick to his carefully crafted plan. Once his family’s out of the spotlight, he can be honest with his conservative parents about his sexuality and his dream of being a chef.
It’s definitely not part of Rafa’s plan to get a new Secret Service agent who’s a walking wet dream, but he’s made it this long keeping his desires to himself. Besides, it’s not like Shane Kendrick would even look at him twice if it wasn’t his job.
Shane’s worked his way up through the Secret Service ranks, and while protecting the president’s shy, boring son isn’t his dream White House assignment, it’s an easy enough task since no one pays Rafa much attention. He discovers there’s a vibrant young man beneath the timid public shell, and while he knows Rafa has a crush on him, he assures himself it’s harmless. Shane’s never had room for romance in his life, and he’d certainly never cross that line with a protectee. Keeping Rafa safe at any cost is Shane’s mission.
But as Rafa gets under his skin, will they both put their hearts on the line?
This gay romance from Keira Andrews is the first part of the Valor duology. It features an age difference, Jane Austen levels of pining, forbidden love against the odds, and of course a happy ending. (less)
Review:
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been in a hockey – or – murder funk lately. I thought this might have some good murder in it, all things considered. There was a small amount of murder, but it was of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety and completely did not satisfy that craving. That said, not every book has to involve murder. I’m just saying it might have had something to do with my vague dissatisfaction with the book. So, I guess take the below with a grain of salt.
Valor On The Move had a lot of factors going for it, and pretty much all of them were distilled into the person of Rafael “Valor” Castillo. Growing up in the limelight of a parental presidency must be made of suck. We only have to look at Chelsea Clinton’s experience to see that. The Obama sisters came in for some serious attacks as well.
Anyway, the point is, I can’t imagine it would be good and Andrews does an amazing job of making the reader feel everything right alongside him. The poor guy is lonely as hell, and he’s also the very soul of empathy. He doesn’t want to make things harder for his parents, who are running a hardcore conservative presidency. So he stays in the closet, with plans to come out after the next president is inaugurated.
There are some other plans in there, which are both hardcore and kind of sad. As someone who comes from an early-generations, lower-class background myself, I can relate to a lot of the dynamics going on. Honestly, I can remember being a young, closeted person, and lonely, and I couldn’t find fault with any of the decisions Rafa made even when they made me cringe.
Shane, the “December” part of this May-December couple, was a little harder for me to wrap my head around. I guess he just didn’t feel as developed to me. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t relate to him the way I could to Rafa, but a lot of the details felt sketched in. He was a good guy, I suppose, but I couldn’t at any point say, “Shane did x because y.” Shane just kind of Shanes around in a Shane-like manner, and sometimes there’s shooting, then there’s the end.
This leads me to my biggest issue with this book. Since Shane never felt real to me, or solid, I never felt confident in the romance. I completely understood why Rafa fell for him. The poor guy was haunting the third floor of the residence like some kind of lonely, hungry ghost. Who else was he going to crush on, the vice president? But I honestly never saw any point at which Shane started to develop feelings for Rafa.
It seemed like he was just kind of hanging around, feeling sorry for someone he saw as a child, and then there’s kissing. It left me a little cold, to be honest.
Like I said, I really loved Rafa. He was relatable, I could completely understand his thoughts and feelings, and I kind of want to bake him a pie. (He’s probably better than I am at baking pie, but you understand my point.) And it’s possible I might have missed something with Shane in my desperate search for hockey or murder. But as it was, I just couldn’t buy their romance as anything but a crush taken a little too far.
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