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Blurb
Dancing with Daddy

Quick Info
Dancing With Daddy

• Author: Susan Hawke
• Publisher: self-published
• Release Date: 16.05.2020
• Series: Standalone
• Genre: Contemporary, Romance
• Trigger Warnings: abuse, cancer, cheating, overdose, parental death, sexism, slurs
• Rating: 3/5 Stars

I love my daughter, but finding out she wasn’t biologically mine is the best news ever.

I’m a widower who is too scared to have the stupid test that would tell me whether or not I even have the gene that would mean dealing with a horrible illness and certain death. A gene that could’ve also been passed to my child, had she been mine.

She’ll need her father, if something ever does happen to me…That’s why I search for Maddie’s biological father, and when I find him, ask him to become part of her life.

What I didn’t expect is for him to become my best friend. Shane is fun and easygoing, the exact opposite of me. He makes me laugh. He’s the perfect antidote for my neurotic existence. And he’s bi, like me.

But am I courageous enough to take the leap into falling in love with him?

Dancing with Daddy is a super sweet, full-length, standalone, feel good mm romance. There’s no angst, just two very opposite men who befriend each other super fast then slowly find their way to love…all while parenting the precocious five-year-old who belongs to both of them.

The Queer’s Review

Oh boy… the book’s blurb and beginning made me assume something a little bit different.

And as far as I’ve gathered most readers enjoyed Dancing With Daddy very much, so I’m kinda the sore thump here but it’s not like this is the first time – won’t be the last either – and I stand by my opinion.

I expected something light to take my mind of things, “no angst” and tooth-rotting fluff. While there was some fluff, there were many things that hindered my enjoyment. Each on their own would probably be a minor annoyance, there and gone again. Put things just kept adding up and I ended up not being able to focus on the story itself anymore and instead marked with my kindle, ranted on my trello card, and was simply annoyed.

So, what was it that took away my enjoyment?

I love my angst – when I sign up for it. Dancing With Daddy explicitly told me there would be none and instead I get confronted more than once with parental deaths, worrying about deathly illnesses, and on one occasion even drug addiction of a baby.

And I know I’m kinda touchy at the moment with certain themes but still. I signed up for no angst and I got angst. It made me angst myself a little bit.

Put on top female slurs, sexism, cheating, abuse, and a pedophile joke. Maybe you’ve gathered how annoyed I was by those things by how I just slammed them down here. But I really was. Putting them in doesn’t make any sense at all to me.

But I still gave three stars, so some things I at least enjoyed? I still won’t reread it ever but if you aren’t like me and you can read over those issues you get some good in the way both men interact with their daughter. I would have loved for Maddie to play a way bigger part in this book – and less info dumping via facebook messenger. Because lemme tell ya, that was exhausting!

Bookish Thoughts

At least the reader gets warned in the book that everything will be very fast, I guess. It could be put into the blurb as well in my eyes, but alright. Still, the telling not showing was too heavy for me and it took away my cheering for the pairing – not because they fell very quickly in love and kinda unrealistically as well considering he lets a strange man move into the home he shares with his daughter.

But if I ignore that, they could have really become something more. So above the annoyance I’m kinda disappointed by a great premise not living up to what it could have been.

Disclaimer

I received a free copy through Gay Romance Reviews Tours in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.