Review: Layover by Elizabeth Coldwell

I requested this book from Xcite because it sounded like a fun bit of erotica, and actually, yes that's what it was!  It tells of Scottish flight attendant, Cal, who has an overnight layover in Aruba where he meets Justin, the manager of the resort where Cal is staying.  They hit it off and when the tail end of a hurricane means that Cal has to stay another night, the pair make the most of their time together.

This short novella had a lot of good things about it. I liked Justin and Cal but there wasn't anything which made them stand out from the ordinary. They are both nice men who have demanding jobs and who are a little bit lonely.  We find out next to nothing about them other than that and a little about Cal and his ex-boyfriend.  The sex scenes between Cal and Justin are hot and well written with a slight kink to them, although the number of times the word 'wank' was used made me snigger like a teenage boy.  One slight question was when Justin used the word wank. He's from the USA and I didn't think they used that word over there, maybe someone can correct me on that.  As this is an erotic novella, much of the story is made up of sex, but there was also a decent balance between sex/not sex in the book and so I didn't feel that it was all sex and no plot.and the HFN ending left me with a smile on my face.

 The setting was unusual and I liked some of the descriptions of Aruba. I've not been there and it sounds like a very interesting place to visit.

I did have some niggles, mainly minor ones. For example Cal and Justin both make great pains to let us know that they don't sleep around and that the way they jump into to sex with each other in the first few minutes is atypical.  I always find this a bit annoying in books as it's used as a sort of shorthand to signpost 'this is the one', and really it wasn't necessary. I'd rather a character behaved as they normally do, and it would have only taken a short time of them getting to know each other to make it believable that they would then want to have sex.   Another niggle was that at the beginning of the story the flight crew are partying rather raucously in the bar and Justin asks them to leave saying it was late. It was only 10.30pm! I can't see a hotel manager turfing out paying customers at that time - maybe asking them to keep it down, yes, but not asking them to leave.  Then Justin and Cal go skinny dipping and we are told that no-one was about because it was so late. It was still way before midnight by my reckoning so that seemed a bit wrong too as I would have expected plenty of people to be out enjoying the balmy night air at that time.

As I said these are only very minor niggles and are all from the first few pages of the book, after that the story settled and I rather enjoyed this erotic story.  If you're looking for a fairly quick sexy read with a pair of amiable heroes, then this book would be a decent choice.  Grade: Good.

Buy this book HERE.