Nightclub manager Anthony is devastated when his boss and adopted father, a female impersonator, is murdered.  His unhappiness is compounded when the man’s son, Michael, decides to come to the funeral only because he’s needed at the reading of the will.  Anthony has always felt that Michael caused his father a great deal of unhappiness by ignoring any attempts to build a relationship.  When Michael arrives, Anthony writes him off as a gold-digger.

Twenty-year-old Michael is surprised to hear of his father’s death, but he tells himself he doesn’t care.  After all, his father abandoned him when he was small.  Still, he attends the funeral and reading of the will, hoping to inherit something.  He feels an instant attraction to Anthony, yet his fury over the terms of his father’s will makes him hate the man as well.  Will Michael be able to run the club with Anthony, as his father’s will stipulates? 

My Father’s Lover was one of those reads I had sort of a love/hate relationship with.  I really liked quite a few aspects of the book, but there were also a couple of things that absolutely drove me crazy, which I’ll get to later.  The best thing about My Father’s Lover was the emotion.  I felt sorrow, anger, love, and hate right along with the characters.  Even when I wanted to yell at the characters, their emotions and motivations were realistic and almost always understandable (if not admirable).  I also really liked Anthony, whose strength, patience, unwavering loyalty to his family and friends, and overall yummy-ness really endeared him to me.  The secondary characters, a wide cast of female impersonators, bartenders, and others, added a lot to the story as well.  The only secondary characters I could have done without were Michael’s shallow, promiscuous “friends,” who made me want to kick them.  They only added to the tangled string of people who wanted to be, were thought to be, or actually were sleeping with each other.  The real frustration for me, however, was Michael.  He started the book as a selfish, greedy, obnoxious jerk, and through a large part of the story he stayed that way.  He did begin to grow and change as the book went on, but I quickly grew impatient with him.  It was difficult to understand what Anthony would see in such a brat.  He continually took everything he saw and heard the wrong way, refused to believe the truth no matter how many times he heard it, and used sex to get back at people.  Luckily, Michael did grow up before the book ended.  DJ Manly is an author whose characters, no matter how unlikable they may seem at times, are realistic, and they often face situations that end up changing them (generally for the better).  Overall, My Father’s Lover is an emotional and occasionally frustrating read with an ending that makes the ride worthwhile.