Review Tour: Good Boys by Keelan Ellis

Posted September 10, 2016 by Laura

Blurb:

Paul Solomon is a homicide detective in Baltimore, a city with a high murder rate and a complicated relationship between the police and the citizens they are sworn to protect.

He’s also a gay man who has been out on the job since he first joined. Being out on a tough police force hasn’t always been easy, but living with integrity is important to him.

Paul’s love life becomes as tumultuous as his job with the demise of his relationship of eight years. While dealing with the emotional and physical upheaval in his personal life, a case comes across his desk that hits a little too close to home—the murder of two gay teenagers.

Paul and his partner, Tim Cullen, must solve the double homicide, and Paul has to find a way to move on from his failed relationship.

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*I got an ARC of this book through EyesOnBooks

Keelan Ellis is not a new author for me. I liked Misinformation a lot, though maybe not as much as my co-reviewer Annie did (you can read her review for that one here). I went into this one expecting something good, and I got so much more!

I have to say that while this book certainly has some romantic elementes, it’s most definitely more of a mystery than a romance. That worked great for me, since I’ve always loved mystery (seriously, I grew up reading Agatha Christie’s books) and I needed to take a small step back from romance or I was in danger of a HEA overdose.

I loved the characters we get to meet here. All of them, even the secondary ones, are well-constructed characters with their virtues and flaws. I liked Paul from the moment we met him, and I like that we get to see how the final downfall of his relationship affects him, and how he starts fighting for his own life again. Most of all I loved his friendship with his partner Tim, those two together were a really good team and I liked their interactions a lot. I liked how in Tom’s head it went from partnership to frienship. The friendship had always been there, he just needed to aknowledge it, and Tim let him do so on his own terms and time.

And we got to see more interaction between Tim and Paul that between and Paul and his romantic interest. I had no problem with this, but I know some readers may prefer their books with a heavy romance theme, and Good Boys isn’t one of those.

I adored David as a romantic interest when Paul met him, and the date they shared made me melt a little, but he’s carrying around a great burden. I liked how that allowed us to get to know Paul better, to know he always try to see the good in people and empathise with them. I can’t wait to see how that friendship develops in the future.

I can’t say much about the other love interest, though. I can’t even remember his name now (bad reviewer, bad!) But I liked how that relationship helped Paul grow a bit more, how he realised that people change with time, that maybe he’s changed, too.

As for the mystery, I think Keelan Ellis really did a great job here. The case is interesting, and I couldn’t guess who the culprit was. I loved the whole investigation process, and seeing Tim and Paul work and communicate together while on the job was a treat.

I’m looking forward to the next book in this series now.