Undue Influence was different in a good way! I wasn’t expecting this book to take hold and never let go! It’s a must read go check it out!

Persuasion is among my favorite Jane Austen reads so was thrilled to learn of this twist on the story. Undue Influence is a M/M retelling that is almost too literal at times but overall I enjoyed this story and the second chance romance between Adam and Freddy. Though I really really disliked Adam's former boss and his role in the whole mess that led to Adam and Freddy breaking up back in the day. When you learn his reasons it was all just so unnecessary especially when it backfired royally and the opposite of what he wanted to happen, happened. Adam and Freddy were so well matched though and I loved seeing them reconnect and heal from past hurts. Definitely worth the read.

This was a sweet male/male book and I like the second chance aspect to it, but overall I just didn't think it was that memorable. I did like the plot but expected a bit more..

I must confess that I haven't actually read Persuasion yet. Undue Influence just sounded good and it definitely did a great job at making me want to read Persuasion soon. It's a great second chance romance featuring likable characters. In short, I adored it. Adam is adorable character, he's mild-mannered and quiet while his mother and sister are snobby and loud. Adam's family owns a vineyard which they're about to lose because of poor financial management and Adam's trying to navigate his life when he meets his old boyfriend, Freddy, after eight years. Freddy is just great. It's difficult to say anything else since I just liked him - he's nice, kind and just darn adorable. There's certainly a chemistry between the two of them!

Undue Influence is a brilliant love story, it's both sweet and somewhat heartbreaking, but it'll mend any breaks it causes. Adam and Freddy are brilliant both individually and together, and it's almost impossible to not root for them. I highly recommend it, if you're looking for a great second chance romance, adorable love story or a Jane Austen retelling!

Undue Influence is a modern day retelling of Persuasion, but with an M/M pairing. Thank you Jenny Holiday for this modern version. That said, don't focus on the original work, instead just enjoy this tale for what it is.

I love Adam, who's struggling when his mom and sister run his family vineyard into foreclosure. And Freddy, ahh Freddy. He's now back in town as a celebrity chef.

It's with the use of frequent flashbacks that we learn of Adam and Freddy's meeting, dating and breaking up. All of these scenes are informative, as well as entertaining.

Adam's best friend, Rusty, is the car mechanic by day, drag queen by night. As the only one who seems to care about Adam, he's also the one who convinced him to make the biggest mistake of his life.

Overall, it's a cute story of second chances.

This was just meh. I don't know. I just came away without much to say. Ive admittedly never read Austen's Persuasion so I didn't pick up on any significant similarities either way. This was a cute second chance m/m romance even if I was just a bit mildly underwhelmed. A classic "it's not you, it's me."

Oh my goodness this book! I am madly in love with it! I loved how angst filled this was. It wouldnt be a proper Persuasion retelling without it. Adam and Freddy were relatable characters, as were their circumstances. Let us only hope that Jenny Holiday is up for more classic retellings!

This was a retelling of Persuasion by Jane Austen but in the form of M/M characters. I have never read Jane Austen's version so that one I can't comment on, but I did enjoy this book.
Freddy Wentworth and Adam Elliot's friendship went way back to school days when Adam looked out for Freddy.

Adam was the bad boy when younger and Freddy was forbidden to continue the friendship. Adam left town and became a well renowned Chef and Television celebrity and Freddy worked for his Drag Queen friend Rusty. Freddy's passion was the family Winery but after the passing of his Father, his Sister and Mother took over the Winery and their spending habits led to the Winery being sold.

The new owners were none other than Adam's Sister and her Partner and Adam comes back to town and once again meets up with Freddy. Their feelings for each other have never waned but of course others still don't want to see them together and happy and there is so much interference from friends and outsiders that it is hard to imagine either will find their happy ever after.


Very enjoyable book.


Thanks to NetGalley and Jenny Holiday for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit more than I expected to - M/M romance is not really my cup of tea (personal preference!) but this one really held my attention and the characters were SO good. In general, I love Persuasion retellings and this was one of the better ones I've read. I can only hope she does more Austen retellings because I LOVE her writing!!!

A great second chance story.

I have never read Jane Austen's Persuasion, I've actually not read any Jane Austen books. I've also never read a book by Jenny Holiday – until this one. I found Undue Influence to be a very enjoyable story; one that I would probably read again if I ever re-read books.

It's kind of a classic second chance story. Two young people fall in love, circumstances/people tear them apart, they reconnect years later and discover that they still love each other. Those are the things that make Undue Influence like many other books but what made it different for me was the author's way of telling such a romantic story without having to use a lot of graphic sex scenes. Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoy those kinds of books; it's just that sometimes it's nice to one with a little less explicit stuff going on.

The blurb tells you everything you need to know about the book. How it made me feel was at times frustrated, sad, furious and ultimately brought happy tears when things finally work out for Freddy and Adam. The emotions and connection between Freddy and Adam seemed very genuine and I believed that they loved each other when they were young. But, young people do stupid things. Freddy let his pride get in the way of his happiness and Adam let his family and friend's influence persuade him to give up Freddy when he really didn’t want to.

I think Undue Influence is a very good love story and I liked it very much.

A review copy was provided by the publisher via NetGalley but this did not influence my opinion or rating of the book.

***Reviewed for Xtreme-Delusions dot com***

Grade: B-/3.5 stars

I’ve read and enjoyed a number of books by Jenny Holiday (her m/m romance, <Infamous is a firm favourite of mine) and as Persuasion is one of my top two Jane Austen novels (regularly trading places with Emma at the top of the list), the combination of the author and a favourite plotline was one bound to catch my eye. In something of an embarrassment of riches, this is the second m/m re-telling of Persuasion to appear in the last few weeks (the other is Sally Malcolm’s Perfect Day).

In Ms. Holiday’s take on the story, we’re introduced to Adam Elliot, whose mother and sister have pretty much run the family business (the Kellynch vineyard) and finances into the ground and are about to decamp to stay with a friend in the Hamptons. All the business of the foreclosure and removal has fallen to Adam, who is happy to remain in Bishop’s Glen, where he’s lived all his life, in spite of the continual urging of his oldest – and pretty much only – friend Rusty, that he should leave town and make something of his life.

Rusty stands in for the Lady Russell character as the bringer to bear of the Undue Influence of the title. Garage owner by day, Drag Queen by night, Rusty has been the only person in Adam’s life who seemed to give a damn about him – and is also the person who talked Adam into making what he now regards as the biggest mistake of his life eight years earlier.

That mistake was, of course, parting from the love of his life, Freddy Wentworth. Widely termed the bad-boy of Bishop’s Glen (especially after the infamous town-square dick-sucking incident), Adam and Freddy met when they were both working as parking valets at a local hotel.
Adam came limping up to the valet stand and kept on going right into Freddy’s heart.

Ms. Holiday makes good use of flashbacks to tell the story of Adam and Freddy’s romance (through Freddy’s PoV), a device I enjoy when it’s done well, which is the case here. We don’t get the story of Anne and Wentworth’s romance in the original novel, so I appreciated the fleshing out of the backstory in this way.

Back in the present, Freddy is stunned to learn that the property his sister and brother-in-law have recently purchased in what his best friend calls “the armpit of the Finger Lakes” is the one that formerly belonged to the Elliot family – and in spite of himself, he can’t help wondering what became of Adam. In the intervening years, Freddy has made good and them some; he and his friend, Ben Captain, have opened a popular and successful restaurant in New York, and have also become a pair of TV chefs, with Freddy being the grouchy Gordon Ramsay type while Ben is the sweetly encouraging one.

Undue Influence follows the storyline of Persuasion fairly faithfully, so we’ve got the McGuires (Lulu and Henry) for the Musgroves, Ben Captain for James Benwick, who, in the original was engaged to Wentworth’s sister (who died), but who, here, has recently lost his wife, and William Ellison for William Elliot, in the original, the distant cousin who takes an interest in Anne but is later revealed to be a rather unsavoury chap. Some events are, of necessity, omitted or truncated, but even allowing for a degree of dramatic license, I felt that many of the events occurring in the present timeline were rushed or included for the sake of it - just because they were in the original - and the secondary characters are not very well fleshed out.

The youthful romance between Adam and Freddy is sweetly adorable and they have great chemistry; Freddy is clearly deeply smitten and takes every opportunity he can to spend time with Adam, even going so far as to walk home with him, even though he lives miles in the opposite direction, and he shows a side of himself to Adam that he never shows anyone else. Present-day Freddy tries hard to keep telling himself he hates Adam for throwing him over eight years earlier, but it doesn’t take very long for him to admit to himself that’s BS and that he wants a second chance.

The book’s biggest problem, however, is with the reason for Adam and Freddy’s split, which just isn’t strong enough to explain away the eight year separation of two people who so clearly loved each other and, equally clearly, have never really stopped. This is always going to be the biggest stumbling block in any modern retelling of this story, because the reasons Anne Elliot gave up her Frederick Wentworth aren’t ones that would work dramatically nowadays. She was young and from a well-to-do, snobbish family and Wentworth was, at the time, a mere midshipman with neither wealth nor prospects. A young woman in the early nineteenth century was subject to the wishes of her family and Anne was persuaded, by familial and monetary considerations, to reject the man she loved. In the twenty-first century, those reasons are not believable ones, and unfortunately, Ms. Holiday hasn’t been able to come up with something else which satisfactorily accounts for Adam and Freddy’s separation.

I enjoyed Undue Influence and I liked Adam and Freddy, but the weakness of the pivotal plot point was impossible to ignore. I’m not sure if my knowledge (and love for) Persuasion is a positive or negative thing; if I’d come to this as an m/m contemporary romance without familiarity with the source material, might I have enjoyed it more? I’m not sure, because that plot point is still weak – perhaps even weaker if one doesn’t know the reasons given in the original story – and in any case, I can’t “unread” the other novel, so it’s a moot point.

I’m giving this one a cautious recommendation overall; it has a lot going for it in terms of the writing, the romance and the central characters, but there’s no escaping the fact that it’s let down by the big flaw in the premise.

I’m a sucker for retellings of Jane Austen’s novels, and Persuasion is one of my favorites, so I had to give this book a try.

Despite having two male leads and being relocated to a contemporary American setting in New York state, the story is fairly faithful to the original. Under the influence of his awful social-climbing family and an older friend whose drag queen whose stage persona is named Lady Rusty Merlot (ha!), Adam Elliot broke up with his boyfriend, Freddie Wentworth, who was very much from the wrong side of the tracks. Now Adam’s family has lost their money and their winery, Kellynch, while Freddie is a successful chef and TV personality. Freddie is still angry at being rejected and Adam is regretful, so when the two of them meet again, they have some things to work out before they can find their happily-ever-after.

I thought most of the ways the author changed the story worked well. For example, she made Adam a fan of taking long walks, which allowed Freddie and Adam to spend time talking to each other in a way that echoed Austen’s characters. (There’s a lot of walking and talking in Austen’s books.) The one bit that really didn’t work for me was the analogue of the scene in Persuasion where Louisa falls and gets a concussion, and Anne’s calm good sense in taking charge of the situation causes Wentworth to reexamine his feelings. Here, the character falls off a dock, and everybody dithers around until Adam jumps in and saves her. But those dithering folks include a bunch of people who can swim, among them a guy invalided out of the Navy, and having Adam be the only one willing to jump in the water just seemed silly to me. I think the author wanted to make Adam’s role bigger than in the original novel, but instead it seemed overdone and out of tune with the rest of the story.

I liked the book overall, though, and I’d recommend it to other readers who enjoy retellings of Austen’s works.

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley, Jenny Holiday, and the publisher for the ebook copy to review. As always, an honest review from me.

Adam and Freddy both grew up in the same small town with slightly different circumstances. One was a bit of a misunderstood rebel/bad boy. The other did what his family wanted and enjoyed being alone with his thoughts. They met eight years ago one summer and fell in love. Circumstances, fear, and stubbornness got in the way of their happily ever after.

Now they’re all grown up. Freddy left home to become a big time chef, restaurant owner and reality TV star. Adam chose to stay in his much beloved small town, working as a mechanic for his friend and mentor. Due to unforeseen circumstances, they’re back in each other’s lives. Sparks ignite. But can they rekindle their love for each other after years of heartbreak?

I really enjoyed reading Undue Influence. The romance is so sweet without being overly sappy. The two men are genuinely nice people that I enjoyed getting to know. Adam and Freddy are such a cute couple. Here are a few more things I enjoyed about the book:

- Shows the spectrum of gay, bisexual and pansexual men. Also a drag queen. Not just the token one or two gay characters.
- A mechanic who reads and enjoys nature. Love!
- Shows that not everyone has to hate the small town they grew up in
- Respectfully distancing yourself from toxic family members allows you to be much happier #LifeLesson

The only downside is that it took me some time to get into the story at the beginning.

Overall a really sweet romance that I highly recommend.

I read the blurb of this book as was really looking forward to it but it just didn't end up being what I expected. Not that it was bad it was just much sweeter then I thought giving the synopsis. I thought Freddy would be the scorned lover who returned to the town having made something of himself and showing his ex what he missed out on. I thought there would be drama and glares and well it just wasn't. Freddy comes back and he and Adam just act as if they barely know each other.
It was more of them ignoring each other or acting somewhat friendly and polite to each other. So I missed the drama, bitterness and angst that I expected. In fact Freddy and Adam just kind of fall back into a friendship of sorts as if the 8 years never passed.

II also really didn't like Rusty and didn't buy the reason that he persuaded Adam to break up with Freddy in the first place. It just didn't make sense to me and although it was explained I didn't really buy Adam giving in to Rusty on this. Also Adam's mom and sister were a bit too OTT for me. Maybe people like this really exist but they seemed more of a caricature to me. I also wished we'd gotten a bit more Ben as I adored his character.

This was in the end a nice slow burn romance about two men who reconnect after years apart. Not much angst and no on page sex. So if you're looking for a sweet, second chance romance then this book will fit that very well. For me I gave it 3 stars because while it wasn't anything great it was still a nice sweet read that ended up being average.

This was a cute book. I liked the plot and I liked the characters. The only reason I'm not rating this higher is because I think that the story could have benefited from a little bit more angst. I wanted to hurt for the characters more.

Undue Influence is my very first book from this author and it was an okay read. I enjoyed both of the main characters; Freddy was really sweet, caring and thoughtful when it came to Adam. Adam was sweet and tried to do what was right, even if it wasn't the best choice. However, I didn't feel the connection between them that I was hoping to feel. I wanted to believe they loved each other and I didn't get that love feeling. This story did have its sweet, funny and romantic moments to it but I needed a bit more. I also found the story to move at a slower pace than I expected. Undue Influence wasn't a bad read but at the same time it wasn't what I expected. Although this wasn't a 5 star read for me from this author, I enjoyed the world she created for her characters and would give another book from her a try in the future.

This is a favorite author of mine and I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately it wasn't the hit I was expecting it to be.

This is a m/m retelling of Jane Austin's Persuasion and I think the author did a pretty good of keeping to the original plot but with modernizations. I think though that was part of my problem. There is very little emotion between the MC's until around 60%. I was so bored and unconnected to them that I was ready to dnf by 40%. The story jumps back and forth between today and 8 years ago and that didn't help the situation for me. Again, we don't get to them having a connection until way into the book. I didn't feel the grief and sadness that I was expecting since they'd been missing each other for so long. Even in the flashbacks we don't get to the parts where they exchange much emotion until really late in the story.

I wasn't really committed to any of the characters and really didn't care for any of them except Freddy. Adam FINALLY gets his head out of his butt around 80% but I was over him by then. He was so spineless. I really didn't understand the hold Rusty had over him either. I never felt any true connection between them. There was a lot of telling in this book, no where near enough showing. This author can write super emotional books so I'm assuming it was supposed to be this way?? Maybe a nod to Austin?? I'm not really sure, I just know I didn't like it.

If I rated this on enjoyment I would probably rate this more at a two star. I'm not entirely sure about my opinion though. I had just read another retelling of Persuasion by a different author and it was amazing. It's going on my best books of the year list, and as hard as I tried to not compare that book with this one, I just couldn't stop myself. I think if I had read this first I might have liked it a bit more.

So.....very sadly.....not a book that worked for me.

beautiful story about love and what you'll endure for it. Love finds us all in the most unlikely place. Some its instantaneous and others it takes a lifetime to find. These two find it. It doesn't care they are the same sex.

A sweet book about second chances and of first love. I loved the weaving of the story in this book and how realistically the characters were portrayed. A really good book that you’ll smile as the hea comes :)

A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review.

*Warning* The story contains flashbacks. If those aren't your thing, you've be warned.

I've never read this author before and was excited to try this book because the blurb really spoke to me. I love the idea of a scorned lover coming back bigger and better and showing their ex what they missed out on. Undue Influence wasn't as dramatic as I had envisioned, but it was still nice. Slow burn for sure, and no on page sex, which didn't bother me.

The characters weren't what I expected. They were so much nicer and gentler than I have envisioned based on the blurb. I was expecting hard core hate from Freddy when these two saw each other again, but that isn't what happened. They were aloof towards each other, as if they were strangers meeting for the first time. This bothered me because to honest, I love drama (when it's warranted) and I wanted them to have glares and cutting remarks, and bitterness. But nope, they were sweet and kind and kind of just fell back into place after being apart for 8 years.

Having said that, I still had fun reading this. No, my expectations weren't met, and that's ok. This was a very cute story about two men finding each other again after being apart for years because of stupid reasons. Mostly Adams family and his boss made it seemed like insurmountable odds to be with Freddy. That fact really irked me because Rusty (Adam's boss at the garage) was supposed to have Adam's best interest at heart and if Adam had found love, you would think Rusty would push them together, not force them apart. I didn't like Rusty because of that.

As for Adam's mother and sister, yee gods! What a waste of space! Those two are totally spoiled, clueless and selfish people who shouldn't be allowed out. Adam's mother was always putting Adam down, but in a "kind" way, which grr, bothered me! The family kicked Adam out for being gay, but eventually came around to accepting him and he moved back home. However, they made it clear that if Adam decided to be with Freddy, as in live with and have a life together, his mother would not support that, and though the sisters views were never mentioned, I assume she would have agreed since she is just like her mother.

In the end, once Adam and Freddy have reconnected, Adam realizes that he doesn't need Rusty or his mothers' approval. He just needs Freddy, any way he can get him. And that's exactly what he does! :) There is a nice epilogue that shows how these two will be living their life together and it's adorbs.

I give this 3 stars because as cute as it was, it was still just average for me. Nothing extremely great about it, but it was still fun and I love a sweet story with a satisfactory HEA. I would recommend for those looking for this kind of story.