Here’s my April review for the Desert Island Keepers reading challenge – The Assignment by Evangeline Anderson.

Sean O’Brian and Nick Valenti are cops, long time partners. They’re close friends and spend a lot of time together. Neither of them are gay, but after O’Brian gets stabbed, Nick begins to realize his feelings for O’Brian are deeper and more sexual than he’d ever expected. When they’re assigned to go undercover as lovers in a gay resort to break up a drug trafficking ring, Valenti is concerned he’s not going to be able to hide his true feelings. When the two men are required to get physical with each other to keep their cover intact, Valenti becomes more and more enamoured, as well as more convinced he will never be able to work with O’Brian again – as it will be too painful.

The story is told entirely in Valenti’s point of view. Maybe we wouldn’t have felt Valenti’s emotional anguish so exquisitely if we, as readers, had known O’Brian’s precise thoughts and feelings, but I still wanted to know! Maybe it’s my need for instant gratification. The lack of O’Brian’s point of view did not in any way detract from the story, and as objective readers, we can see his signals aren’t quite as mixed as Valenti thinks they are. The story was sweet and full of emotion, the guys were hot, the sex was beautiful and erotic. I did wonder at setting it in the 1980’s… the story was pretty timeless and I didn’t notice anything that would have seemed out of place in today’s world. But once again, it didn’t detract at all. In fact, I enjoyed this story so much, I had to own it in paperback as well as ebook. The Assignment is hands down one of my favourites.