Hi there! Sharing a review in the book blast for a new serial from Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths. WILL & PATRICK is a rom-com romp, and sure to be spicy. Each book will come out every three weeks or so, until all six episodes are published. I’ve already read the first one, WAKE UP MARRIED and I’m eager to read more.

Check out the excerpt and be sure to enter the giveaway for your copy!

About the Book:
Join the wild ride in this vibrant and fun first installment of the new romantic comedy serial by best-selling author Leta Blake and newcomer Alice Griffiths!

After a drunken night of hot sex in Vegas, strangers Will Patterson and Dr. Patrick McCloud wake up married. A quickie divorce is the most obvious way out—unless you’re the heir of a staunchly Catholic mafia boss with a draconian position on the sanctity of marriage.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Will and Patrick don’t like it, or each other, but they have to make the best of it until they can find another way out of their marriage. To ensure the trust fund Will’s charitable foundation relies on isn’t revoked by his mobster grandfather, he and Patrick travel to Will’s hometown of Healing, South Dakota, posing as a newlywed couple in the throes of true love at first sight.

Complicating their scheme are Will’s unresolved feelings for his all-too-recent ex-boyfriend Ryan, and Patrick’s desire to get back to the only thing that really matters to him in life: neurosurgery. Will they fool everyone? Or will the mafia get wind that their marriage is a fake? Throw their simmering attraction into the mix and all bets are off!

Episode 1 of 6 in the Wake Up Married Serial.

How about a little taste?

Patrick sits down beside Will and rubs his hands together in anticipation. “So, what did Granny say? Can she free me from the shackles of our loveless union?”

Will puts his head in his hands. “It’s not going to be as easy as I hoped initially. It might take some time.”

“We knew that. How much time? A week? Two?”

“Maybe a month?”

“What?” Patrick’s voice is loud.

“Maybe more than a month? Possibly up to a year?”

Patrick’s eyes grow dark with anger. “Don’t tell me the all-powerful Eleanora Molinaro you were going on about so enthusiastically when you were convincing me of this half-baked scheme can’t make a little inadvertent marriage disappear.”

“Could you hold it down?” Will whispers. “Or do you want someone to hear?”

“Oooh, right, the Molinaro spies. Might have the place bugged. Guess I shouldn’t yell then? I’m not your toy, Will. I want a divorce and I want one now,” Patrick hollers.

Will glares at him. He raises his own voice, saying, “Don’t be so dramatic, baby!”

He stares Patrick down, daring him to say something else. “You know I love you more than life!”

Patrick looks daggers at him. “Who do you think you’re fooling, Will? The bellhops? The maids?” He wipes a hand across his face and rises. “You know, no. I can’t believe I’ve let your paranoia and insanity drag me across the country into this hornet’s nest of absurdity and—”

Patrick rants on, but Will’s not paying attention anymore, because Patrick’s tossing his new clothes onto the bed, and getting out his suitcases.

“Wait,” Will says, putting his hands on Patrick’s arms. “Wait, don’t.”

Patrick throws a shirt into the bag and sighs. “What do you want from me? I gave your plan a chance, but there is no way in hell I’m going to hang around this town for a year. Not when I could be at the Mayo Clinic or Cedars-Sinai or Vandy. Not when I can be honing my skills and expanding my practice. I am not small-town material, Will. I’m the big-time. I have absolutely no desire to play your loving spouse indefinitely and if
your grandmother can’t get us out of this mess? Well, I sure as hell can.”

“Look,” Will says. “I know you can. I just need you…no, no, stop that. You’re not going anywhere.” Will pushes Patrick, trying to move him away from the bags.

Patrick lurches toward him, gripping his forearms and shoving him back with surprising strength. “I’ve been pushed around enough in my life, Will. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m going to take care of this my way.”

Will breathes in hard. Terror and attraction jolts through him at once. He swallows and backs away from Patrick, his hands shaking, and his throat dry. Blood rushes in his ears.

Patrick picks up his bag and heads for the door. Will tries to block Patrick from getting it open.

“Really? It’s come to this? Holding me against my will?”

Will pushes the barely open door shut with a hard slam. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Patrick. This is just our first lover’s spat. That’s all. The first of many to come in our long, wonderfully happy marriage.”

Patrick stares at him like he’s kind of impressed by this level of insanity. “Good God, you’re drinking your own Kool-Aid.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a very, very expensive drink.”

“You think you’re so clever don’t you?”

Will shrugs. “I think I don’t know what else to do.”

My Review:
This is the beginning of a serial M/M romantic comedy, but this episode is, uh, not romantic. At all.

Will Patterson is a diabetic and a recovering alcoholic with a lousy (new) ex. He’s also the eldest son of Tony Molinari, incarcerated head of a mobster family. Will’s been raised outside of that syndicate realm in tiny Healing, South Dakota, with his mother, step-siblings and paternal Nonna but he’s in possession of the Molinari trust as the eldest grandchild. He’s using the millions of blood money to fund Good Works, a charitable foundation that provides free and discounted medical care all over the world. He’s just financed the expansion of the Healing Hospital, and is at a medical conference in Las Vegas to recruit neurologists and Neurosurgeons to the hospital when he gets a call from Ryan, his on-again/off-again boyfriend of the past 6 years. Ryan lets Will know, via telephone, that they are through. For good.

We learn all of this when Will wakes up from a killer bender, naked, in a strange hotel room, and married to a man he doesn’t remember. As it all comes back into focus, Will is horrified by his actions. He’d been sober a number of years, and he adores Ryan, and he stands to lose all the monies in the Molinari trust if he divorces the now-surly and soon to be unemployed Dr. Patrick McCloud.

Patrick is a sexy, demanding Neurosurgeon. He’s the epitome of a prima donna surgeon and his ego and big mouth make him zero friends. While freaking out over his newly-married state he supremely pisses off his chief of staff, and is summarily dismissed.

Will convinces Patrick to visit Healing, and help him sort out the possibility of getting the trust amended to allow for a divorce without all the money being given back to the mob.

This predicament is rife with issues, and Will and Patrick are angry with themselves and each other for a good deal of the book. I liked Will, as he’s easily likable. Patrick’s a prickly one. I’m reserving my thoughts on him for the moment, on account of they aren’t especially flattering, and I suspect he’s going to have an epiphany in the very near future. He does show elements of compassion, especially when helping manage Will’s diabetes.

Throughout I was holding out hope for some actual tenderness to pop up between Will and Patrick, but it’s too soon, I think. This episode was truly only the first 36 hours in the aftermath of waking in their debacle. They are both hungover and freaked the heck out. There are some clear elements of Molinari menace in the background, and it’s likely that this will become more prominent in the next episode. Also, I think Patrick’s cockiness is going to get soundly trimmed soon–likely due to having fewer career options than he suspects.

I’m intrigued to read on, and hoping there will be some romantic elements in the near future.

Interested? You can find WILL & PATRICK WAKE UP MARRIED on Goodreads, Amazon, and Amazon UK.

****GIVEAWAY****

Click the Rafflecopter link for your chance to win one of two copies of WILL & PATRICK Episode one.
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Good luck and keep reading my friends!

About the Authors:
Leta Blake
Author of the bestselling book Smoky Mountain Dreams and the fan favorite Training Season, Leta Blake’s educational and professional background is in psychology and finance, respectively. However, her passion has always been for writing. She enjoys crafting romance stories and exploring the psyches of made up people. At home in the Southern U.S., Leta works hard at achieving balance between her day job, her writing, and her family.

You can find out more on her website, Facebook and twitter.

Alice Griffiths
A long-time reader of romance novels, Alice Griffiths finally took the plunge into writing, teaming up with best-selling author Leta Blake for the ‘Woke up Married’ serialized comedy. A lover of tropes, Alice enjoys mining old ideas and putting a fresh, funny spin on them. Formerly working in the newspaper industry, Alice is now an art curator. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

You can find out more about her by following her on Twitter and Facebook.