As soon as possible Daniel Gardner left his hometown and his family. But with Christmas fast approaching and his boyfriend pressuring him to take the next step in their relationship he finds himself coming back home.

Trey Eriksson was taken in by the Gardner family after his father was jailed for killing his mother. A crime that Trey has always believed his father innocent of, and one that he has spent fifteen years trying to discover the truth of.

Trey and Daniel used to be close, very close in fact. Trey used to sneak into Daniel’s room at night even though he denied it by the light of day. He is also the reason that Daniel hasn’t come back to Easton, PA and the memories in the old house.

But here they are fifteen years later and new clues are appearing. Daniel can still feel the sparks that Trey causes in him and Trey is no longer in the closet. But can the two get to the bottom of these new clues or will they become victims of the past?

I have found that there are a few authors that it’s hard to go wrong with. K.A. Mitchell is one of these authors. I have yet to read anything by Ms. Mitchell that hasn’t been a great read. Filled with deliciously troubled characters, angst, a bit of a mystery, and some wild, steamy sex, Chasing Smoke was one that I couldn’t put down. I loved the correlations between the two families. Both were seemingly perfect on the surface but underneath things were very, very different. Daniel and Trey took my breath away. I wanted to hold them both and comfort them. Their shared past meant that things were even more awkward than normal. Not just the past explorations of the physical nature but no one knew the other more than they each knew each other. This constantly conflicted with the men that they had grown to become after fifteen years apart. They would reach for remembrances of their past selves and find that they were literally chasing smoke. Elusive and impossible to grasp the past cannot be recaptured, only built upon. I can’t recommend this book enough. It has so much going for it that I read it in one sitting hardly pausing to breathe. I can hardly wait for the next foray into the mind that is K.A. Mitchell.

Reviewed by: Hayley