After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian
Set during the crazy tumultuous era of the late 60s, After Hours at Dooryard Books is a sweet and heart-warming story of love and acceptance.
Patrick manages Dooryard Books. He specializes in old antique books, but there’s a magic to the bookstore. It’s a safe space for anyone who needs nonjudgmental care and healing.
Nathaniel, hiding from his past, enters the bookstore as a new employee with severe PTSD. The busyness of the New York City existing outside of the bookstore sends him into a panic. He starts the healing process under Patrick’s care, but to completely heal he eventually must confess his secret shame.
Susan, Patrick’s best friend and sister-in-law, is another important character. She lives above the store, along with the men. She’s struggling from the loss of her husband who was killed in Vietnam. She provides her own amount of care, wisdom and love to the two men.
All three people, including Patrick, who believes he’s as happy as he’ll ever be, are lonely. Together in this quiet sanctuary they find love and acceptance.
The love story between Patrick and Nathaniel is a long slow burn but is a beautiful thing to watch as is the friendship that develops between the two men and Susan.
It’s difficult to write a good slow-burn romance, filled with grief and a found family amid the kind of turbulence of 1968, but Sebastian writes in such a way that the story isn’t slow or boring or too focused on outside events. Sebastian has managed an atmosphere in direct opposition to the crazy happenings of that era. Dooryard Books is a quiet, welcoming sanctuary—an oasis of calm needed by all three characters.
I couldn’t put this book down. I recommend it for all those readers who, during our own tumultuous times, want to read a lovely, heart-warming story, written by one of the best gay romance writers around, about a found family who love and care for each other no matter their past.