Two Roads Converged

The book cover doesn’t do this book justice. This was a remarkably fun read. Action, slow burn romance. It does get sexy at a few points but always in service to character and story.

Two boys mixed up at birth. One raised in poor circumstances, the other is raised in privilege. There is a great cast of characters. There is one character who obviously reminds one of a certain orange ex-president in his New York years who is easy to dislike. And it all leads up to a very dramatic, and satisfying conclusion.

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Disgrace, exile, escape, retreat, escape, true love, escape…in some of the most beautiful locales in Europe.

After spending his first seventeen and a half years in small town western Pennsylvania, Arrow Carson Youngbird doesn’t become a seasoned traveler voluntarily, but he is young, intelligent and healthy and he adapts well to change. Arrow isn’t in control of his life but he (mostly) enjoys the journey with Janis, the warm-hearted second generation hippy who raised him and especially their new traveling companion: tall, handsome fellow athlete Zephan Adler Kelly, a calm, confident natural leader whose heroes are Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

On the outside, Arrow seems tough, cool and doesn’t smile that much but he wants love just like anyone else. Raised in poverty and burdened with family problems, he is snatched from the world he’s adapted to and confronted with people whose motives and intentions he doesn’t understand. His new life is complicated enough but then love enters the picture and Arrow finds himself in Europe struggling to cope with a hopeless crush while trying to help a friend escape from desperate and greedy forces determined to take everything from him.

Set in Manhattan, France’s southern Provence region, the Swiss Alps, Amsterdam and London, Two Roads Converged wants to be a new adult love story, but it also happens to have a coming out story, a few sex education case studies, and some suspense and action that intrude on a happy travelogue.

The Purple Fantastic Steam rating gives this a 3 out of 5. It gets a bit sexy at times, but always in service to story and character development.