Review: “Tell Me Anything” by Skye Kilaen

Series: Light Gets In, #1

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

Steam: 🔥🔥🔥

Release Date: September 2nd, 2021

Add to Goodreads | Amazon.in (Available on KU)

Where do you turn when your family won’t accept who you are?

Can Isabel return this year for a refund? Because it sucks. Her editing business would be paying her bills just fine… if her ex-boyfriend wasn’t blackmailing her. Of course, if her conservative family wouldn’t disown her for being bisexual, her ex couldn’t blackmail her in the first place. Sadly, she hasn’t invented time travel to un-make the mistake that created this mess.

Derek has a good life. Mostly. He’s an out bisexual man with a successful business and a loving queer found family. But he’s almost forty, living alone is getting stale, and yet dating seems pointless since nobody’s ever found him exciting enough to build a life with. Given he’s now doing zero-creativity craft kits to pass the time, he suspects they’re right. Maybe he should get a dog.

Isabel isn’t holding auditions for a rescuer, and she wouldn’t have expected Derek, a gorgeous, gentle man with his own history of family rejection, to fill the role. But Derek’s “boring” life is the calm harbor Isabel needs, and her affection helps Derek see himself in a new light. Their tentative connection might become the happily ever after they both deserve—if they can hold onto it through the fallout from Isabel’s recent romantic disaster.

 

This is my second Skye Kilaen book and just like the first one, this blew me away. Skye writes LGBTQIA+ characters with great finesse and she ensures that their stories are told in the most real and honest ways possible. You can feel their struggles and their fight while on the journey to being comfortable with themselves, to accepting who they are at every step of the way. Get It Right hit me in the feels with a plus-size heroine and in Tell Me Anything, you have a bisexual woman coming to terms with the fact that she has to tell her family about her sexuality and hope like hell that they don’t disown her.

Tell Me Anything is told in dual POV, following the lives of Derek and Isabel as they get their lives together. It’s a story about their love, and it’s also a story about loving yourself, about loving the parts of you that you usually hide away. About families – blood and found – about friendships and not feeling guilty for being who you are. The book holds strong messages and deep deep love and the combination is wonderful.

26 year-old Isabel’s just been dumped and abandoned by the man she loved, and if that’s not enough, said man is also blackmailing her by saying that he’ll out her to her conservative family. All the worst things that could happen to Isabel are happening and she’s spiralling out of control. Derek is attempting to move on after the end of a long relationship, but it’s harder when you’re 38 and bisexual and most gay men don’t seem to understand the concept. When Isabel and Derek meet in a drunken encounter (she’s drunk, he’s worried), everything in their lives starts to shift in ways they didn’t expect.

I absolutely loved Derek. He’s older, a grump and owns a business. He’s also a big of craft kits to keep him distracted from all the thoughts running through his head. Derek is also a big teddy bear and the most protective person his friends know. So much so when Isabel is falling apart, he doesn’t even think twice to step in and help her. And while protective, Derek doesn’t believe that he’s the only guy to save the day. He knows when to step back and when to provide help, but it also takes a lot of adjustment and effort on his part to not just provide assistance all the time.

This book is an angsty ride, so strap in because you’re going to feel everything these characters go through. Derek and Isabel are so great together, and their relationship is gentle and so goshdarn soft! As someone who’s gone through the process of coming out and being accepted as bisexual, I loved how Derek gave Isabel the support, the resources and the kindness that she needed to accept that for herself. And the slow burn of their relationship is so beautiful. I need more relationships like this one, where everything is there and you can have it all, but you don’t, because you’re not fully ready to give yourself to the person just yet. But that moment when they do? Gah, it’s so beautiful. Then there’s the banter, the slow build of trust and the comfort they find in each other. Sometimes, love isn’t just about romantic love, it’s about loving the way that person makes you feel and Derek and Isabel have that in spades!

Skye has included a list of triggers that the book has, so it’s a great way to be prepared for certain topics that might be hurtful or unsettling for some readers.

Thanks to Skye Kilaen for generously providing me with an advance copy. I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.