“Perfect Day is the sort of book you finish with a heartfelt sigh of satisfaction and a dreamy smile.” –All About Romance When Joshua Newton, son of Long Island’s elite, fell in love with ambitious young actor Finn Callaghan, his world finally made sense. With every stolen moment, soft touch and breathless kiss, they fell deeper in love. Finn was his future…until Joshua made the worst … made the worst mistake of his life and let his family’s disapproval tear them apart.
Eight years later, Finn has returned to the seaside town where it all began. He’s on the brink of stardom, a far cry from the poor mechanic who spent one gorgeous summer falling in love on the beach.
The last thing he wants is a second chance with the man who broke his heart. Finn has spent a long time forgetting Joshua Newton–he certainly doesn’t plan to forgive him.
Drawn together yet kept apart by their history, old feelings soon begin to stir. Back in the place where their romance began, Joshua and Finn finally come to realize the truth: love stays. Even when you don’t want it to, even when you try to deny it, love stays.
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
This book is approximately 63,000 words
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When I read romance, I want to be moved. I want highs and lows and ultimately, soaring joy — and this delivered in spades.
Fabulous, wonderful story! 5+ stars.
This seems to be my year for reading books that retell stories by famous authors. Perfect Day is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and I LOVED it.
I must confess that I’ve never read any of Jane Austen’s books but this is the second retelling of Persuasion that I’ve read recently. While I enjoyed the first one very much this one really hit me in the feels so hard! Perfect Day is also the first book I’ve read by Sally Malcolm and I was so happy to learn that there will be a follow up novel about a different couple (half of whom we met in Perfect Day).
Perfect Day is a wonderful second chance story (read the blurb, it’s a good one) and it left me breathless in anticipation during a lot of the story. I could feel how desperately Joshua and Finn wanted each other. I could feel how angry and upset Finn was about what happened in their past and how sorry Joshua was about it.
I really can’t say much more about this wonderful book. It made me terribly sad in places and my eyes leaked. When things finally work out I cried tears of joy. If you enjoy a romance that will break you and put you back together again you need to read this.
If you’ve never read an M/M romance before, but have thought about it, I strongly recommend Perfect Day as a perfect one to start with. There is no explicit on-page sex, it’s just a really wonderful second chance romance.
LOL – I just realized how many “wonderfuls” I have in this review. Can you tell I really liked this book?
Well, this week’s read was a downright pleasure, folks. It wasn’t what I was expecting going in, yet I came out the other side thoroughly sated and filled with all the happiest of little sighs. Perfect Day by Sally Malcolm is a gender-bending retell of the classic Persuasion by Jane Austen. And, oh my heart, what a sweet and wonderful twist on that tale it was.
It didn’t march side-by-side with the plot of Persuasion, but it held true in all the areas that mattered most. Really, though, it’s those places Ms. Malcolm strayed to make the story her own that make it shine as brightly as it does. Because, yes, the skeleton of the classic is there, holding strong and true, but the heart of the story—and indeed, the characters themselves—feel fresh and uniquely reimagined.
I absolutely adored Joshua and Finn, our heroic and loveable leads. They each had a distinctive voice within the narrative, and they were rife with flaws and realistic thoughts and reactions that made them delightfully genuine. My eyeballs get tired from all the rolling when the main characters are the epitome of perfection. I cannot stand when every head turns and drool puddles on the floor anytime one of the MCs is in the room, or when an MC embodies godlike flawlessness. That’s not an authentic representation of any true human being, so it makes it pretty flippin’ hard to relate to the characters. It puts them at a distance no reader can cross and winds up with an unsatisfactory and near-impossible connection.
But Ms. Malcolm and her leading men? They did not fall prey to this faux pas. Nope, not one bit. Both Joshua and Finn were down-to-earth, faithful representations of real human beings, complete with faults, flaws, and beautiful imperfections.
Then again, they were also quite stupendous in their level of awesome. Just not, ya know, unrealistically so. I fell head-over-heels for them both because they were such magnificent, compassionate, and brilliant men, rich in character and full of heart.
My experience thus far with Carina Press has tended toward the high-heat level as far as sexy time depictions go, so I went into this expecting a similar encounter. However, this very nearly faded to black, with just the hint of a carnal undertone overlaid by eloquently written scenes. Did it leave me disappointed? Surprisingly, no. I’m a fan of the high-heat, but when done properly, can absolutely appreciate the softer side of romance. In this instance, Ms. Malcolm did a beautiful job of giving just enough to allow the reader to picture the scene she laid out, then run with it to their heart’s content.
Overall, this was a lovely and thoroughly enjoyable read. I would recommend it to any Jane Austen aficionados out there, and certainly to any m/m romance fans. The love between these two men is genuine, delightful, and a downright pleasure to experience. This isn’t a story any gay romance enthusiast should miss.
-Second chance romance
-UST
-Feels: anger, resentment, longing, heartbreak, hope, love.
The writing was stellar!
Once started, I couldn’t put down Perfect Day by Sally Malcolm.
4.5 Stars! Starting book 2 now!
Being completely hetero, I found this book to be really good. It was a great romance and Well written.
It was a very sweet book i loved the characters in this book and it was written very good
Sometimes a book just grabs you in the first chapter and you couldn’t put it down if your life depended on it. So it is with Perfect Day – a near perfect book. Josh and Finn are young and in love but fate pulls them apart and they don’t reconnect for 8 years. Eight years in which they have alternately hated and missed each other so much it hurts. Finn went on to be a famous TV actor while Josh is discarded by his family and becomes a music teacher supplementing his income by working in a coffee shop.
When his family mansion is sold to pay off his father’s crushing debt, Josh is horrified to discover it has been purchased by Finn’s brother, Sean, a successful NYC lawyer. It isn’t long before the inevitable happens and Josh and Finn come face to face. The confrontation isn’t pretty and for a while neither man can bear to be in each other’s company. Suppressed longing is a bitch to bear.
I loved this story. Sally Malcolm draws the characters beautifully, the tension is paced just right, and the secondary characters are not shadowy figures, but important to the story as it progressed. I particularly liked Finn’s brother, Sean , a guy you’d welcome into your circle of friends in a heartbeat.
The epilogue is a bit long, and verges on purple prose at times, but it’s filled with so much love and hope that I didn’t mind it that much.
All together a delightful story that made me smile and tear up on occasion. Highly recommended.