Hello everyone!
That's not fair to say, but admittedly I've always been much better with the book thing, though this year I'm kind of falling behind in my reading challenge, not something I expected. I'm going to have to kick myself into high gear!
Anyway.
By now, if you've paid attention to this blog at all, you'll know I'm a HUGE fan of Serenity Woods. The accidental download of one of her books has led to a very decent romance with them, considering I devour any and all new works that are published.
I'm also incredibly lucky to have actually communicated with the author, which isn't something that happens every day, but it only makes everything that much better!
So to start us off, I'm reviewing another King boys book. This one's Albie's, and it's called My Roommate, the Billionaire.
You can find links to the other books of this series down at the bottom of this post. There will still be a few more, covering the kids' stories, and I can't wait! Honestly, the Kings were the books I started this journey with, so coming so far as to read about their children is actually a little bit amazing to me.
We have Hal, Brock's son, who's happily in a relationship with Izzy now.
Leon, Matt's boy, who's found his happily ever after with Nix.
And now we're down to Albie, Charlie's whiz kid.
If you remember, Albie is the one who ended up getting socked by Leon back in the time when Hal concocted a plan to get Leon to admit his feelings for Nix. The situation's cleared up in this book a little bit more than in that one, which is charming to watch since the three men are really quite close in all aspects of their lives.
Anyway!
We start our story at a charity ball Summer throws for Charlie's birthday, and where Albie's wondering whether or not Remy, the woman he wants, is wearing any underwear under her red dress.
I know. To the point, isn't he?
He's sort of had a thing for the girl since forever, and she lives with him in the house since she needed a place to stay, so he always gets tortured when she washes her lingerie and leaves it out in the sun to dry. Right now, however, he'd settle for a dance, and the funniest thing of all is the advice he gets from all three of the original Kings.
I swear those guys should have a site for romantic problems.
Before accepting his offer to dance, Remy gets to spend some time alone with Charlie, who explains that Albie is quite a bit like himself - meaning that he's also slightly Autistic and behaves appropriately for that very reason (cue my heart squeezing on the spot, I think it was the first moment of the book where I started sniffing like I had a serous pollen allergy). He encourages Remy to give his son a chance, though her reasons for not doing so are also quite sound, since she's leaving New Zealand in about two weeks.
Still, she does dance with Albie and they have a little bit of a chat in a quiet corner before he walks her up to her room, where we see the first of many, many instances where Albie's insecure about misunderstanding the cues a woman's giving him. He doesn't realize why Remy's nervous - she thinks he's going to want to come into her room for a one night stand, which she doesn't want right now, and he just offered to be nice. She does, however, reassure him when he's horrified, and they share a parting kiss.
This doesn't stop Albie from trying to get Remy to see they do still have some time left so they COULD do something together, but in any event she's a little side-tracked when she spies a black bag one morning which has a big ass dog costume inside.
Albie takes her along to one of the hospitals where he dresses up as Dixon the Dog from Matt's toy books (remember, the original Kings do this in their books, as well) and cheers up the sick children there. Remy gets to see another side of him which floors her, but he explains later that no one else of the family knows he's doing this, because he's afraid they'd tease him. She clues in his confidence is occasionally just bravado to put on a brave face, and it's adorable.
You'd think that would lead somewhere, right? Haha, wrong, because New Zealand is getting the tail end of a hurricane, and the two of them hustle to Noah's Ark to help secure everything down.
Everyone's there and it could have even been a nice vigil with the wind and rain howling about if not for the tiny fact that a tree is about to come down on the side of the building which houses the sick and recovering animals.
And then the tree DOES fall down just as they manage to get most of the animals out ... and they realize Albie's nowhere to be seen.
In fact, Albie is still in the room, and he grabs the last dog, a pointer, to take her with him despite the fact Leon urges him to leave her behind and save himself. He then climbs out and makes his way around the building, and cue my waterworks when he loses his way and Noah, of all people, comes out to help him inside.
I'm tearing up even now and I'm just thinking about it!
Hal manages to revive the dog, and Albie takes Remy home after the storm passes, and the two of them finally have sex. They also clear the air where Remy promises Albie she will ALWAYS make sure he understands what she's saying, and that she's going to do her very best not to get aggravated with him if he doesn't quite get it on the first go.
They also decide they should make the best of the two weeks they still have together, plus there's a different development: originally, Remy came to New Zealand to find her father, whom her mother said walked out on her after learning she was pregnant, but Remy hasn't had any luck.
Now though, Albie's activated his family, and Erin (Brock's wife) tells him she's going to try contacting some of her relatives since the surname Remy gave was her great grandmother's (I think, in any event, it was a relative). So things are moving along, and Remy also gets mad at some of the comments Albie's family and friends make about him, even though they are in good fun, but she explains that they still hurt because he's convinced people just see him as this emotionless robot.
The others, naturally, are horrified (and cue me crying again).
They do clear this up, and Leon explains that, even though Albie's on the spectrum, Charlie told Hal and him not to make allowances for him and not to step in too much. They did, of course, defend each other, but they treated him normally, because that was the only way for Albie to grow thick skin and to function normally, as well.
This leads to some more hot sessions with Albie and Remy later, but they're sort of interrupted when no one else but her dad rings the doorbell.
He explains that he and her mother spent a week together in France during his overseas experience, and that he asked her to come with him when he learned she was pregnant. She refused, and severed all contact, even though he kept writing to her for a bit. Now though, they've found one another and Jamie invites Remy to one of his sons' birthday parties that weekend (he has two other boys). It's a cool little scene where she starts to familiarize herself with the large family she has in New Zealand, and it's a good thing it's a happy scene, too.
Because a few pages later, we learn Summer's been taken to the hospital.
Now, Summer, if you remember from Charlie's book, has Cystic Fibrosis, and her life expectancy isn't very long, so any cold or anything of the sort is really, really bad. Zach, her husband, drops their two boys with Albie and Remy for some sense of normalcy, though that gets thrown out the window soon enough once they get into a fight at school and Albie decides to just take them out for the time being while their mother's in hospital.
It's a waiting game, until it's not.
Zach calls they're moving Summer because Charlie wants to start a new gene therapy he's been researching, and it MIGHT help, so Leon's called with the chopper, and everyone's on standby since Summer really isn't well. Her lung function is low and dropping and they also need to operate before they can try the therapy ... it's a clusterbleep by the time Albie takes the boys down to see their mother, as a just in case.
I swear I had such a hard time reading through these pages, I was crying so much. Summer is a character I've known through several books, and the idea of her not making it ... UGH.
We see the family react to this in different ways, and it's hard to read about Charlie's outburst since he's always so patient and put together, but that said, if you power through this ... you learn Summer does, in fact, make it, and the gene therapy seems to be working. Also, Albie admits to Remy he's been studying French in secret so he can tell her something, and he then proceeds to declare his love and his wish for her to stay with him so they can have children together, which I thought was super sweet.
The gang has a going-away party for Remy at Noah's house, a French-themed one to boot (with a special shout-out to none other than Hercule Poirot!!!), and afterwards Noah explains that Albie is going to run a branch of the We Three Kings foundation which will be based out of the Ark, because he's wanted to work with kids more and Remy went to talk to Noah about it.
Everyone's excited, and Noah also assures Remy there's no issue with her visa since he and Leon have contacts at the Ministry and they can turn it around, especially since she'll probably end up marrying Albie in the end, anyway.
As for the happy couple, they're off to Europe together before they return to their home in New Zealand, where they'll also adopt Belle, the pointer Albie rescued during the night of the big storm, which is significant since Albie didn't want to have any other dog earlier because he used to have two pointers, Merry and Pippin, who accidentally ate some of his neighbour's rat poison and died, which is another sad scene I can't think about much without tearing up since it also features Charlie and a boat load of emotion.
This is where the story ends, but we're not done with the Ark yet, so stay tuned!
About Albie and Remy, however, I think this might be my favourite of the Ark books yet, though it's hard to pick and choose when each one is so amazing. This one just pulled at all my heartstrings and made me cry so many times my mother thought I'd lost it and gone mental when she watched me go through a box of Kleenex, LOL!
But it has everything, an independent heroine, a thoughtful hero who knows when to put his foot down, all the cute animals, and cameos from our favourite Kings and their significant others - past, present and future.
It's also a good book to raise awareness about Autism and Cystic Fibrosis, and I encourage you to read this - and Charlie's book, An Ideal Present, which begins these themes.
All in all, however, you just can't go wrong with this one. So why not read it simply for pleasure?
xx
*image not mine
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