Recently dumped (again) for being cold, Guy gladly accepts his publisher friend’s request to go to a remote hut in wintry Nunavut to find out whether aspiring novelist Cam Campbell is a plagiarist. By agreeing also to help the eccentric ecologist survey wildlife for a month, Guy buys time to assess Cam’s innocence and hear stories about Cam’s late father–Guy’s favorite fantasy writer and the man … man whose book Cam is accused of stealing.
Guy’s investigation is soon biased by his attraction to Cam and the growing concern about Cam’s odd behavior. At times, Cam dissociates and is icier than Guy could ever be, yet he’s the only one who’s ever recognized, at a glance, the emotions burning beneath Guy’s surface. Guy knows he’s the best person to help Cam abandon the dangerous wilds outside and address those in Cam’s head, but he also knows that he’ll lose the chance if he comes clean about his ulterior motives for getting close to Cam. How can he convince Cam to come in from the cold… and why are they both really out there anyway?
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Get Up is a strange, convoluted story that had the seeds of something great but its path was just too weird and meandering to ever reach its potential.
Guy has been sent by his friend to discover if his friend’s client is a plagiarist, if he plagiarized Guy’s favorite writer, who just happens to be Cam’s father. The Cam he encounters is nothing like he expected, if he had indeed expected anything. Cam is portrayed as somewhat pixieish and he enchants the stoic, unemotional Guy.
Cam is definitely weird and it’s obvious something’s not quite right with him. Will Guy figure out what it is? Will he figure out if Cam is indeed a plagiarist?
At its heart, Get Up is a mystery. I actually liked the mystery, it’s just everything else I didn’t like. I didn’t care about the men’s relationship. I didn’t particularly like Guy or even Cam. I felt for Cam, but I can’t say I liked him or connected with him or Guy. Reece Pine’s writing style is just so disjointed and messy that I couldn’t wrap my head around this story or connect with it or like it. To be honest, it bored me and even gave me a headache at times. I can’t in good conscience recommend Get Up because I just couldn’t get into it.
Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team
Sarah –
Part psychological thriller and part romance, this story of a secretive novelist and the man his publisher sends all the way to Nunavut to find him is full of surprising twists.
Neither Guy nor Cam is quite what he first appears. Guy is immediately attracted to the beautiful young author but finds himself wary of Cam’s unconventional and unpredictable behaviour. Cam is wary of publishers and guards himself carefully against Guy from the start.
At times, the relationship that builds between Guy and Cam feels more like a strategy game than a friendship, romance, or professional relationship. Both men keep secrets and Guy’s objective is to untangle Cam’s secrets. As Guy pulls at the threads of Cam’s life, he exposes dark secrets.
I’m conflicted about this book. I like the suspense element of the book and the departure from most traditional romance tropes, but I feel like the story needed more of a clear structure and more careful editing to make the suspense sharper and to make parts of Cam and Guy’s backstories more clear. I read an ARC and I’m assuming that the many copy editing issues will be resolved before publication – but they did throw me off at times. I didn’t connect emotionally to either Cam or Guy at the start and it was only at the very end of the story that Cam and Guy started to feel real to me. Ultimately, the story felt like a rough draft with the potential to be a great read and I would have liked to have read a more polished finished product.
Reviewers on the Wicked Reads Review Team were provided a free copy of Get Up by Reece Pine to read and review.
One of the most unique and creative books I’ve read, Reece Pine’s Get Up completely blew me away. Seeing these two characters interact, and how their relationship changes both their lives was an intense and moving experience. The unexpected twists and turns in this thoughtful story kept me fascinated and dying to see what would happen next.
This is the second book I’ve read by Reece Pine and what struck me with both of them is the absolute originality of her stories. The characters are one of a kind and the unpredictable plots are a pleasure to read. Once I started Get Up I couldn’t put it down, and when I finished it I scrolled right back to the beginning and started reading again. (I love when that happens!)
This is a complex, multi-layered novel which builds consistently as the story progresses. As the men grow comfortable with each other and begin to interact on a more personal level, they are forced to confront their own damage before they can truly connect. There are some intense things going on here and Reece Pine does an amazing job building the tension. This is a slow reveal, artfully done, and I never saw it coming.
My favorite part of Get Up is the way the characters express themselves. The dialog is clever and creative, and as the attraction builds between these two I thought the sexual tension might just kill me. When these guys finally get together, and I’m not going to spoil anything here, but these are some of the most erotic scenes I’ve read in a long time.
Few things equal the rare and wonderful experience of a book I can’t put down. A truly spectacular story, Get Up deserves all the praise I can give it. I’m so glad to have discovered Reece Pine and I’m waiting anxiously to see what this extremely gifted author will write next.