Glacier Gold by Crystel Greene
Up in the Alps, a single night can change your life.
Struggling college student and self-taught graphic artist Justin Bennet isn’t the most self-confident guy, but he knows he’s good at two things: snowboarding and sex. Why does Andi, the hot instructor at the Tyrolean ski resort, pretend Justin doesn’t exist? Justin becomes all but obsessed with the idea of scoring with the young Austrian. Because for all the man’s reserve, he made it quite obvious he likes Justin—at least from the neck down.When Justin books a private heliboarding trip with Andi as his guide, he thinks he’s one step away from striking gold.But then the forces of nature take over, trapping the men in a snowstorm, and things get real. What was supposed to be about some freeriding fun and inviting a closeted guy to start exploring his options suddenly becomes about survival—and the hidden truths of the soul.
World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.
🌟🌟🌟 3.5 stars
🔥🔥 Heat Level: 2 (from slow-burn to flames to ?)
Now the blurb (and author’s notes) for this book drew me in. I was curious from the outset to see what would happen in such a beautiful setting.
The story is about 3 guys who take a 7 day vacation to Tyrolean ski resort in the Alps. From the outset we meet Justin (the main character) in a somewhat curious predicament when the other main character Andi stumbles upon him. There seems to be sparks and Andi comes across as a very shy geek as mentioned by his blush, horned rimed dark framed glasses, and his nervous stuttering words. Sparks fly and Justin becomes rather pushy towards wanting Andi to sleep with him and have a fun and steamy night together. Justin is hit with Andi’s resistance at every turn (both due to fear and being outed) and takes a few shots to his pride but he doesn’t give up. Eventually the push and pull becomes too much and they both start to feel more than their initial lust for each other.
Crystel does a great job in making you fell for Justin and his developing feelings for Andi, you can fell the change in the character as he goes through the idea of having true feelings for someone for the first time. They start to discover different things about each other, without the other knowing and Justin finally forces a situation where he thinks Andi won’t be able to NOT act on their feelings to one another. However, mother nature intervenes and Justin and Andi are forced to save each others lives and try to stay alive in a primitive cabin on Glacier Gold, through a storm, while awaiting rescue. As with most great romance novels, being in a life and death situation brings them together and sparks fly for their first (and only) steamy encounter on the mountain. I really enjoyed their coming together and the scene in the cabin would have a heat level of 4 out of 5 alone for the build up and sexual tension created by Crystel. I loved their mountain time and subsequent rescue and it looked like the characters had finally found each other, but now had to face quite a few obstacles when they are returned home. This is the part of the book where I became a bit disappointed.
I thought this was the start of their journey together and we would see them face some hard life challenges, such as Andi coming out, being together physically for the first time (for both of them), Justin being in love for the first time, finding a way to be together when they live in 2 different countries, you know real life problems. Unfortunately this is where the story ends. They return from their mountain rescue, injured, tired and hungry and then Andi (very quickly) comes out to his family before having Justin take him to his private room. They have a ‘life’ conversation at the door with Andi saying all the things Justin could do/needs to do for them to be together and then they go into his room. The end, no sexy first time for Andi, no life changes explained for Justin, it just ended. I was a bit sad at this point as they finally got together and started to talk and with all the awesome buildup and scene setting I was disappointed it ended this way. I thought for sure there’d be a epilogue with their time later with everything worked out but no unfortunately not. As I’m a person of obsessive details and hate having questions at the end that need answering I was upset by this ending. All in all the book was awesome for the first 90+% then just sort of flatlined at the end. Sorry, to say as it was great writing style (aside from the occasional overuse of the word ‘like’) and I loved the fall of the characters, but I wanted more, at least be able to read Andi losing his V-card 😜.
Some other notes:
From the start I enjoyed the writing style. It was slightly different to the word styles I’d read before and was just descriptive enough to set the scene but not overly descriptive that you’d get lost in the details. Now if you’ve read my previous reviews I do love details especially character descriptions. I am a visual learner and remember the look and ‘feel’ of a character more than I’ll remember their names. This book started off well with the characters. I could visualised Justin as a blonde, long haired, football/surfer type jock with a sports bod. Over 6 feet tall and somewhat ‘alpha male’ from early in the story. As the story progressed other facets of Justin’s character came through and he no longer matched my first image. He now came across as a somewhat flamboyant fit bodied twink, with a rather ‘bold’ fashion sense, with eyeliner, skin tight leopard print leggings and a bright and sheer magenta blouse to name a few. He also develops a fair bit of sass and aside from ‘physical’ description early on I began to think of him as a sport bodied, sassy, somewhat effeminate twink. Even though these descriptions didn’t match up in my mind they didn’t really detracted from the story, I became to love Justin’s sass and determination.
Andi on the other hand was totally different. At first he was describe very briefly and it was more of a feeling decryption than a physical one. Andi came across as a shy geek as mentioned by his blush, horned rimed dark framed glasses, and his nervous stuttering words. Once he is describe (in words), he is a tall (over 6 feet, talker than Justin), buff, fit, tanned man with dark hair. From the progress of the book I felt like Andi was the tough, strong mountain man and Justin was the fit bodied, somewhat bold and eventual bossy bottom, but I guess we’ll never know how bossy Justin could be 😉
Anyway that’s all from me, thanks for reading 📚
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