Only Trick is a book with a difference, it is one of those books that sets you off on one track only to spin you round and wave you off in the other direction – and I loved it.

It was unpredictable and refreshing and it I have to say it didn’t just hold my attention, it held me hostage, because I was just so different from anything I had read previously I couldn’t put it down.

Darby works at the local ER and is used to dealing with any of the emergencies that life throws through the door of the emergency room but when she is confronted with a simple walk in requiring a few stitches, her ordered normal day gets turned on its head, because this sinfully beautiful man leaves her dumbstruck.

The man is question is Trick (Patrick to give him his real name) and everything about him you will learn is as enigmatic as he is.

Darby’s relationship with Trick is sort of like a kid having an imaginary friend, it is real in one respect but completely abstract in another – he is as elusive as he is ever present and the question marks that surround him had me scratching my head, I loved the fact that his whole existence was one huge puzzle.

Darby lets Trick do her makeup for a fundraiser that she is attending (the man is a makeup artist – one of the best in the business) and when things go south with her loser of a date she leaves early and Trick gives her a ride home. I have to say the initial connection between them was so sweet – Darby was told that Trick was gay and so she is under no illusion that there is any hope of a relationship between the two of them, what she doesn’t know is that Trick uses the “gay” tag to keep his clients at bay -  this intensely private man has no desire to lose business by refusing his clients advances but he has no intension of being intimate with any of them either, he has a past that he is trying to fathom and complications of the heart just do not interest him.

But that does not stop him wanting to be Darby’s friend or her his – they’re a weird pairing but they just click and become the best of buddies.

I loved this connection, the normal run of the mill friendship that when it happens is the best feeling in the world, the sort of connection that means you can tell your friend anything, you can let them see the real you, the sort of connection that if you are lucky enough to find, you do anything to hold on to.

Trick is a gloriously mysterious man, he has a past that he can’t remember and finds it difficult to let others in for fear of whatever is lurking in his darkness hurting them, he feels it in his bones that something bad happened but he has no recollection – but what he does have is a love for Darby that sees him doing all he can to protect her, even if that means from himself.

Trick brings Darby out of her shell, this quiet woman has a wicked sense of humour and a mind and mouth that never seems to shut down.

I took to both these characters completely and if you like a story that showers you with both detail and emotion then this is a must read. The characters are so rounded they are completely absorbing, I found Trick to be beautifully complicated, so much so that I just wanted the opportunity to see the world through his eyes, because I believed that for all his dark thoughts, the world was a better place for having a man like him in it, a man that loved completely when given the chance and that even when he discovered the pain that cloaked his past couldn’t stop loving Darby.

Could she forgive him for the actions that haunt him, or more to the point could he forgive himself? Can they move past the chains that have held him back for so long once the truth is finally revealed or are some things just too big to overcome?

Trick stole the show for me and like the title – as much as I loved Darby and her funny, sassy attitude, the book for me was all about the man and that man could be Only Trick!