A review by geofroggatt
Beyond Complicated by Mercy Celeste

3.0

After reading Going Home by Max Vos and loving it, I fell in love with gay taboo romance and erotica, and I decided to pick this up. For former porn star Liam McGuire, life is pretty tame, except that his twenty-one year old son is now dating the love of Liam’s life. At the ripe old age of thirty-eight, Liam’s entire world is collapsing around him, his past catching up with him, his secrets and his lies are coming back to bite him. All because Kel had to go and fall in love with Seth. The writing was fine, but there were many random and consistent spelling errors, and I noticed that many words were missing an “L” and spelled incorrectly throughout the book. Despite this, it did not ruin my ability to follow along with the story. I was surprised by how fleshed out the characters were. I love romance and erotica that don’t have characters that feel like caricatures, and I love storylines that have more weight than just a thin plot connecting various sex scenes. I loved Liam as a protagonist, he was very lovable and his backstory felt authentic and real. I liked that the darker parts of the story were given serious thought and fairly represented within the story. I liked the slow burn and slow buildup to three way relationship between the characters. The sex scenes were hot and the author does a great job at depicting these scenes without using words and terms that take the reader out of the moment and the story. I loved how the author deepened the story, characters and plot in the final 25% of the book, it made these characters feel like real people with real, complicated lives. I thought the ending was sudden, but interesting. I recommend this book for fans of gay romance books.