Once upon you & me

This trip is about business, not pleasure. This is what Taylor Frost keeps telling himself after arriving at the Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills and meeting its general manager, Ethan Golding. Taylor's boss, Amy Lu, who divorced Ethan five years ago, has sent Taylor to the resort to set everything up for her daughter's sixteenth-birthday celebration. Taylor is certain that none of those preparations involve ogling his boss's ex and Samara's father, even if Ethan is everything Taylor could ever want in a boyfriend and more. Carefully sprinkling his own brand of fairy-tale charm and dry wit into his latest contemporary romance, Janovsky (The Merriest Misters, 2024) again delivers a love story that not only incorporates real life issues, including living with ADHD, into the story line but also manages to be both red-hot sexy and sweetly romantic in equal measures.

This bewitching queer contemporary from Janovsky (You Had Me at Happy Hour) finds 40-year-old Ethan Golding, the divorced owner of the fairy tale--themed Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills, looking forward to hosting his daughter Samara's Sweet Sixteen party. Enter Taylor Frost, Ethan's ex-wife Amy's efficient personal assistant, who arrives in advance to help prepare for the festivities. Ethan is exactly Taylor's type, and Ethan falls for Taylor just as fast, despite acknowledging that he is "the most off-limits person possible." The men agree that "business and pleasure do not mix" and vow not to give in to their mutual attraction. However, their fireside bonding soon escalates into flirting and sharing sexy fairy tale readings--and when a fallen branch damages Taylor's Snow White--themed cottage at the resort, Ethan invites Taylor to stay with him. The cozy domesticity soon has Ethan and Taylor revealing their feelings for each other and becoming increasingly intimate. But their bliss is cut short when Amy and Samara arrive, and the guys vow to keep their weeklong situationship secret. Also threatening their possible future together is the fact that ironically Ethan "doesn't believe in happily ever after." Janovsky lays on the fairy tale aesthetic thickly, which may strike some readers as a bit too precious, but others will find it irresistible. This is a charmer. (Mar.)