Aiden Bates

The men at the Vanguard Towers call themselves "brothers"...and they are, only not by blood. They all grew up in foster care...and the Vanguard Towers is an old building that several of them bought and restored into apartments in the first book. It's home to all of them and their ever-growing family of significant others. This is one of the brothers, Owen, and his "love interest"...Howie's story. They are two men who find love in this edition of the series. This series is one of the first M/M Romance series that I acquired... but it hasn't by any means been my last. I bought this series, book by book when it when it first came out and am now rereading it for probably the fifth or sixth time. There were hints in books 1-4 books that something was going to happen between these two, but you don’t need to have read all 4 of those to completely understand this one. It nicely stands up on its own. Owen and Howie get the story started with a hook-up that afterward each man thinks was more than likely a bad idea. Their attraction for one another brings them back together, but they try to keep it casual. The more time they spend together though, the more they’re starting to realize it’s much more than just casual. Howie is ready to jump into the commitment. but Owen, is much more cautious. He has a lot of trauma, which is why he's in Howie's office to begin with...caused by an unprofessional shrink, long ago. He's never properly dealt with it and now when he finds love its holding him back from trying to have a relationship with his current shrink and the personal friend of all the guys at the Vanguard Towers. One of Aiden Bates’ best themes is "found family". He adds scenes that include all the Vanguard Towers "brothers" (and significant others) interacting with both Howie and Owen. These are some of my favorite scenes. Bates also keeps things low-angst and sweet. If you’ve read and liked previous books of this series; or others like it... you’ll enjoy ‘Rise and Fall’ also. Although I have all the books, I decided it would be fun to hear the guys, so I listened to the audio. Guillaume Dubois, the narrator...did a fantastic job on the voices. It was quite the experience to hear the voices of the individual men.… (meer)

I started reading this series several years ago when I found book #1 in the box of books that my guys that bring me books, brought to me. The series is about a group of eight guys that grew up in foster care together and always had each other's backs. When they aged out of the system...one of them from book #1 who had become a successful doctor, had the idea to build an apartment complex from an abandoned warehouse and provide a place that they all could live their individual lives but be there for one another, as they had in childhood. Each book in the series builds on and includes the characters from the previous book. This one is about Richie. He is the only one of the eight foster brothers that is bisexual. He's mostly dated women including the self-centered gold-digger, Patrice. Richie is very attracted to his fire fighter partner, Cam. Cam and Richie are best friends as the story starts, with Cam claiming he's straight and often coming to blows with the fire station's homophobe, Shane, who I hated from the start. Richie's brothers understand his feeling for Cam. The conflict centers around Cam's self-image. Patrice doesn't like being casted aside, so she waltzes back in with a bombshell package of complication which only adds to Richie's turmoil. The brothers at Vanguard Tower, of course, rally around Richie as Cam finally comes to term with himself making Richie the first Vanguard brother to announce a very special occurrence. This story had so many good surprises. I only gave it 4 stars because of all the turmoil before the Happy ending.… (meer)

I liked this one a surprising amount. I think this is just different enough from other stories that it impressed me. I really thought the pacing of the relationship was really good. There was time for the relationship to develop and that's not always the case with this type of story.
I liked our two main characters. They didn't have the best characterization I've ever read and they definitely fell into some tropes but I really didn't mind that. I feel like with some of these stories, the human character accepts the existence of non-human creatures a little too quickly and I think that happened with Matthew a little bit, considering he was supposed to be the skeptic, but he did still want some proof which I appreciated.
The world building in this was pretty good, though some things still need to be fleshed out more. I felt like I got a sense of the structure of dragon society without too much info dumping. The author did a good job working the lore into the actual plot.
I think I will be continuing on with this series. I hope the later books in this series will continue to impress me and I hope the relationships in those books continue to be just as strong as they were in this one.… (meer)