Advance and Retreat is the fourth book in the ‘Midwest Series’. It stars Ricky Chavez, the manager of The Park hotel in the previous books, and Ian Harrington, an openly gay, Olympic hopeful swimmer. This is told in third person through Ricky and Ian’s povs.

3.5 Stars



This book can be read as a stand-alone, but I think it would be better to read it along with the other books because many of the other main characters in the previous stories show up quite a lot in this one.

The blurb does a good job of describing what happens in the book but I’ll include a little more info as needed.

I read the first two books in this series, but I wasn’t able to read the third one. However, I still had a pretty good idea of the style of writing the author used for these stories. This book didn’t hold my attention quite as well as the other two. There was too much monologue at the beginning with pages of Ian and Ricky describing their thoughts, their past experiences, how lonely/sad/unhappy they were and why they thought they were. It dragged the story down and my mind would drift. Other things felt over the top and staged, like all the tragedies that surrounded Ian. It didn’t feel realistic.

I liked the idea of Ricky getting his own story since he was an interesting character in the other books. We got to see why he loved being a drag queen and how men reacted to him. Ricky is in his early thirties and has been looking for love for a long time. Unfortunately, men love him for being Riveting Rosie, but not for being Ricky. He’s had his heart broken too many times, but then he meets Ian at one of Rosie’s shows. Ian hurts Ricky’s feelings and he has to grovel to make it up to him. Ian tells Ricky that he’s more mature than most of the guys his age, Ian is twenty-one, but I think what he means is he’s more mature in being disciplined in working out and being responsible for staying in shape and eating well. He’s mature for handling ‘things’, but not for handling people and emotional issues. Part of that is because of the tragedies surrounding him and because his brother Chase lives far away. No one is around to support him and Ian is in an emotional holding pattern at the time when each of those tragedies occurred. Current situations with his swimming also keep him stuck. It’s Ian’s relationship with Ricky that finally unsticks him. But first, Ian has to do some growing up and some major groveling. I have to say that the author did a good job of making Ian grovel. I wasn’t convinced reading the first book about Nathan’s groveling. But Ian did well, although the author took the same theme of making a public apology and announcement as the groveling mechanism. The author did a good job conveying the attraction Ian had for Ricky as both Ricky and as Rosie.

I enjoyed seeing the characters from previous books show up in this one and this story ended on a HEA. The author mentioned that this was the last book in the series, but I can see there’s a possibility for more. There’s Sam the roommate who moved back in who doesn’t have anyone yet, and there’s Chase, Ian’s brother who grew up and learned a few things. He attended one of Rosie’s shows at the end and liked it. I can see a story of him coming to terms with an attraction to drag queens also. So I see two possible stories, but of course they aren’t based on sports players. I suppose the author could make a series on drag queens.

Overall, I enjoyed Advance and Retreat but not as much as the first two books in the series. I’d prefer to give this 3.5 stars, which I can’t on Goodreads or Amazon. On GR and Amazon, I’ll give it a hesitant, 4 Stars. On Booksprout, I’ll give it 3.5 Stars.



I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review. ( )