Book Review: Closer than a Brother by Nkem Ivara

From the moment I read the blurb and excerpt I wanted to read Closer Than a Brother by Nkem Ivara.  The novella is a about Daye and Samantha (Sami) who have been best friends for years. They discover that they have each fallen in love, with each other. The catch is that they are too afraid to let the other one know because neither of them wants their friendship to change in a negative way if the other doesn't feel the same.

I love romances about best friends falling in love. The story is quite engaging and the reader sees how the pasts of both Daye and Sami interferes with their ability to express their love in the present. Nkem Ivara has written a lovely sweet  romance  that I enjoyed very much.

I give Closer Than a Brother four chocolate bars. If you want a short, yet complete, sweet romance that will have you saying ahhhh at the end then this is the book for you.

I bought my copy at Amazon.com

Here are the blurb and excerpt that hooked me.

Daye Thompson didn’t know when it happened, but while playing the role of the-big-brother-she-never-had to beautiful Samantha Egbuson, he’d gone and fallen in love with her. Confessing his true feelings could signal the end of their lifetime friendship. Can he risk losing her altogether?

She may have fallen for her best friend, Daye but can Sami trust him with her heart when she’s had such rotten luck with men she trusted in the past?

Excerpt:

“Could you zip me up, please?”

Daye swallowed as he zipped up the dress, desperately trying not to look at the fastening of her pink lacy bra. He imagined what it would feel like to slip the dress off her shoulders, unclasp her bra and hold her pert breasts in his hands. He closed his eyes as he thought of planting feathery kisses all over her back till she moaned out his name in pleasure.

“Daye…Daye! So what do you think?” Sami’s soft voice roused him out of his daydream.

“Erm…yeah, good,” He looked away from her, cleared his throat and hoped his voice sounded normal to her, because it certainly didn’t to him. If he told her what he really thought, she would run and not look back. He couldn’t risk that.

“Good? Is that all you can say? I have tried on three different outfits and you’ve barely had anything complimentary to say. What’s the matter with you today? Are you ill?”

She reached for his forehead. He stood quickly and walked to the bedroom window of Sami’s Borough twelfth-floor flat. The skyline of the square mile stretched out before him but he hardly noticed. His senses focused solely on the woman in the room.

“I’m not ill, just a bit distracted, that’s all.” He didn’t want to have to deal with the feel of her skin against his. What did she want from him? Blood? Well there was definitely plenty of that rushing to his groin now. He shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his back to her so she wouldn’t see the bulge in his trousers.

“So tell me then, how do I look in this dress?”

Stunning, sexy, drop-dead gorgeous, absolutely divine. “I think it’ll do fine,” he said, still looking out the window.

“How would you know? You’ve barely looked at me.”

Oh! He’d looked plenty. He’d seen how the champagne dress fit like it was sewn on to her, showing off her curves. He’d noticed that it stopped just above her knees and made her already long legs look even longer.

“Daye, whatever is the matter with you? You’ve been acting really strange today.” She walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder. Her touch burned through his shirt.

He turned around to face her and smiled. He wanted to kiss the frown off her face. “Hey, scrunch-bunch, I’m fine, really.” He’d nicknamed her when they were back in school as she had a tendency to frown whenever she was concentrating.

She smiled and punched him in the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?” he howled in a mock protest, rubbing his arm.

“That’s what you get for calling me ‘scrunch-bunch’. So it’s this one then?” she asked, swiftly changing the topic.

“You look beautiful.”

“Really? Do you mean that or are you just saying it to placate me?” Sami asked, raising her eyebrows, smoothing her hands over her hips as she looked at him.

He swallowed as his eyes followed her movements, wondering what it would feel like if those were his hands. He hadn’t intended to say the words out loud. He’d been thinking them and they just slipped out.

“I mean it. He’s a fool if he doesn’t take one look at you and propose at once.” He smiled, but his heart was breaking at the thought of her spending the rest of her life with someone else.