SYNOPSIS
Oliver Park, a recovering addict from Indiana, finally has everything he ever wanted: sobriety and a loving, wealthy partner in Nathan, a prominent DC trauma surgeon. Despite their difference in age and disparate backgrounds, they've made a perfect life together. With everything to lose, Oliver shouldn't be visiting Haus, a gay bathhouse. But through the entrance he goes, and it's a line crossed. Inside, he follows a man into a private room, and it's the final line. Whatever happens next, Nathan can never know. But then, everything goes wrong, terribly wrong, and Oliver barely escapes with his life.
He races home in full-blown terror as the hand-shaped bruise grows dark on his neck. The truth will destroy Nathan and everything they have together, so Oliver does the thing he used to do so well: he lies.
Title: Bath Haus
Author: P.J. Vernon
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication date: June 15, 2021
REVIEW
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thanks to PRH International and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Wow, that was INTENSE! This was my first gay domestic thriller and now I want more! It is so refreshing to see some diversification in the genre. Not only straight people behave stupidly and appallingly!
The story started off with a bang and didn’t hit the brakes until the very last end. It was dark, compelling and full of twists that will make you say OMG many times.
Both main characters, Oliver and Nathan, were wonderfully developed and the study on their relationship was such an interesting one. Wanna read about a toxic relationship? Look no further! That was a time bomb waiting to explode and when it did it was in a really spectacular way.
I loved seeing the gayness of it all front and center in the story, no apologies, and in a big publishing house! We seriously need more queer representation in thrillers in which the plot is not about the characters being gay but a plot where the characters happen to be gay.
But Bath Haus was great not only because of the representation but for the story itself. It had all the elements you want in a domestic thriller and more. Sex, drugs, infidelity, steam!, a psychopath…If that’s not bingeable I don’t know what is!
Hope this book means the start of a new trend and that we’ll have many more queer thrillers in the months to come. I, for one, can’t wait to see what P.J. Vernon comes out with next.
With six months yet until the end of the year Bath Haus is a serious contender to be one of my top 10 books of 2021.
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