One and Done by Frederick Smith is a captivating exploration of personal growth and redemption. The story centers on a protagonist facing the consequences of a single life-changing decision, delving into themes of regret, resilience, and the quest for forgiveness. Smith’s evocative storytelling draws readers into a poignant narrative filled with rich character development and emotional depth. This book offers a compelling look at how one moment can alter the course of a life, making it a thought-provoking read that lingers long after the last page.

This book was like a warm hug. It was very black and I loved every second of it! It had some dad joke vibes at some points and lots of details in academia but the details lead to an understanding of the roles that Taylor earned.

This couple's meet cute was adorable. It was fun to see love in the bay and spend time at drag queen brunch. This is a cute romcom that you will enjoy reading.

This book had a great plot with intriguing characters. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author.

while i loved the romance in this and fell in love with taylor and dustin, i came away from this feeling pretty underwhelmed. i didn’t feel like every issue was resolved and ended up feeling frustrated.

i do think this would work for some people but it just fell flat for me.

thank you so much to netgalley, the publisher and the author for the arc 🫶🏻

Was obsessed with this book from the first page to the last. I particularly appreciate the representation of gay love that's not youth-centered, but show adult Black gay men navigating life, careers, and relationships. The main characters were so interesting, so relatable, I couldn't help but fall in love with them and their story. It was everything.

Without wasting time I am just going to get to few of the things that didn't work for me.

- There were no resolution for the conflicts. Like Taylor was super mad at his mom for telling his head at the uni about the relationship and later in the end she was also seen to be the one who gave away the surprise party Dustin was organising for him. All in the name of a woman can't keep a secret which to me was like okay but that would start to piss me off too.

- under developed characters; by the time I was done with the book I had no understanding of the characters especially Dustin. Taylor had a pretty easy life so there wasn't much to say but Dustin had a tough childhood, he was in an on & off relationship with his family and his brother was in prison but we never learned what happened.

- In the beginning Dustin gives the vibe of a jerk but once you reach to his pov I actually preferred him over Taylor. I had a hard time liking Taylor. He was judgmental and I couldn't really understand his reasons for the way he was behaving. He started giving cold shoulder to Dustin for no fault of his. And I never saw him apologizing for it. Then he had a very weird I can only be with you if you are in good terms with your parents condition. Like hello? Privileged much?

- The romance hits out of nowhere and I was thinking um when did this happen?

- Taylor basically gets drunk and word vomits to his best friend where he narrated Dustin's entire story. I didn't really like it. It wasn't your story to tell. You are allowed to rant about your feelings without exposing your partner who you were highly insensitive to hours ago. And instead of trying to talk to him about it which I would expect guys in their 40s to do you go ahead and narrate his entire family history.

- This one is specifically on me but when two people are sleeping together, romantically involved, call each other bruh it gives me the ick.

One and Done had so much potential but at best it's a half baked cake with all the right ingredients and flavours.

This was my first read from the author and it was quite enjoyable. Taylor and Dustin did not hit it off from jump but the attraction was there. When the two are working together on the accreditation of Taylor’s school things start to get interesting and sparks fly. I did wish there was more. I felt like after the brief conflict the couple was ok again then the book wrapped. But overall the was good.

I enjoyed One and Done and would recommend it to those who like M/M romance about two mature men who know themselves and yet still have much to learn about relationships. I really appreciated that even when I thought I knew where the plot was going, the author frequently delved deeper into the character's feelings and unexpected plot changes occurred. And I loved reading about SF because it's a place near and dear to my heart.

I was really interested in reading a book about two black MCs in their 40s but unfortunately I couldn’t finish it. I loved the SF setting as someone who lives nearby, but I was lost on a lot of the other references. There were also too many Beyoncé references which had me wishing there were references to other queer artists. I ended up finding Taylor’s head a chore to be in with all the info dumping to the point where I would constantly be taken out of the story, doing more telling than showing, and the overall feeling of reading a chatlog to a friend.

While Dustin is in San Francisco for a consulting job, Taylor catches his eye at a Sunday Funday brunch in the Castro District. Will it be a one and done type of night?

Two successful black male professionals, not looking for love.. well I was rooting for them to fall hard! What I liked most about this book was that the two MMCs both had big hearts. Dustin just had some challenges to work through and it gave his character layers that I really enjoyed throughout the book. This was an enjoyable read, but in the beginning things seemed a bit forced where I would have loved for the book to spend more time building the romance.

I recommend this if you enjoy MM romance, workplace romance, and/or forced proximity.

I was excited to read a book about an older queer couple of color - especially being mlm - but the dialog and the building of the relationships fell flat for me. I struggled to want to pick it back up and read more because I struggled to care as much as I wanted to about the characters. It fell flat for me <3

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this book.

Oh wow!!!!! This was a first for me by this author but will not be my last! Such a good story! The characters worked so well together. Such great chemistry. Good love story!!

What I loved:
❤️ 2 older MCs (we love to see it)
❤️ A not-so-great first impression when they meet.
❤️ Banter, banter, banter.
❤️ Found family vibes.
❤️ Higher education, work-place romance. With a sprinkling of Only One Bed (never a bad choice, in my opinion 😉)
❤️ Quick pacing, great tension.
❤️ A book about 2 queer Black men that was obviously written by a Black man. The vernacular, the family/friend dynamics, all the little details that I loved because they gave a real glimpse into the culture.

I'm glad I got the chance to read an ARCof this book. I'll definitely read more from Frederick Smith!

I am so sorry dnfed it. I've read a few mm romance books which I loved, I was excited to read this cause the cover was appealing and the synopsis drew me. But it fell flat for me I couldn't get past chapter 3 and I didn't want to end in a reading slump. Hopefully i get to read more from the author but this wasn't for me

What a treat to read a romance novel that centered two Black men that I feel like I know! The story reminded me of the glory days in page turning fiction reminiscent of e. lynn harris, james earl hardy, and joseph beam. And who does not love a happy ending?

It was a perfect beach read.

I chose to read One and Done as my first NetGalley book because it is a BIPOC queer romance novel. The story is told from two perspectives. Taylor, a 40-something Black gay man vying for a promotion to university president, and Dustin, also a 40-something-year-old Black gay man but the one with the power to tarnish Taylor’s prospects. After reading the blurb, I was ready to fall in love with the characters and feel organic chemistry between them, but the book left me feeling underwhelmed and confused by the storyline’s direction.

My first gripe with the book is the inconsistent and unnatural dialogue. Much of the dialogue flowed between poorly attempted AAVE, cultural references that tried too hard to play into gay and racial stereotypes (POP TONGUE) *If you know, you know, and switched to non-contracted words with a hint of posh speech that didn’t match the characterization. In short, I found the characters felt unreal in many cases, especially when the dialogue included unnecessary exposition, as is the case with Dustin’s mother.

My second grip is the overuse of summary to skip over events that would have raised the stakes. It felt like every time we’d see some conflict from perhaps Taylor’s arch nemesis, Wes Jenkins or activities involving the accreditation process, they’d be skipped over and replaced with shallow conversations about why Dustin was the problem.

Which leads me to my final point. Dustin’s background as a man who came from poor beginnings and a rough neighborhood was used to make him seem like a worse person than he was. There was no real reason why Taylor should have been upset about him withholding information when they were strangers and then professional colleagues. It felt like the author completely forgot about external conflicts like Wes or the ex-boyfriend because they served no real purpose in making the plot more dynamic. By the end, it felt as though the author didn’t know how he wanted the book to end, and the pacing rushed through much of their love story with little yearning and dating happening on the pages. The promised one passionate night happened too late in the story.

Part of me blames the independent publisher for not having a keen eye reading the manuscript and getting a developmental editor who understood black culture. And the other believes the author could have written a better final draft before submission. Either way, the ball was dropped. I will always support Queer and BIPOC authors and literature, but this did not meet my standards.

So disappointed by this! A great premise: 2 guys meet in a bar, recognize they are both 40-something out and proud gay Black men, get flirting, have a disagreement, turns out they have to collaborate for a work gig for 1-2 months.
They struggle to deal with attraction, dislike, and professionalism throughout and start to catch feelings. They can’t do anything about this until the project is over due to conflict of interest and ethics violations it would cause.

Despite what the blurb and title say though, they don’t have a steamy night one and done, they get interrupted in the first chapter by side character info dumps and don’t hook up at all.
They work together with them both announcing repeatedly how professional they are and how much they value their jobs above all else.

Then with couple weeks left in the project, they decide to have sex, describe their plans while in the workplace to spend the entire weekend in public places on dates and having sex at home, then do that and get seen because why wouldn’t they be, and drop all their ethics and values and even logical ambition.

They plan out in advance how to trash their careers and drop every value we’ve been told they have all book.
It’s infuriating and makes no sense. And it makes the reader like them less and lose respect for them.

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There’s also a ton of telling, and a couple times we first get all of it from one character’s POV, and then the other character being told or telling someone else the entire thing again.
For such a short book we get a ton of repetition while key moments happen off page. We get very little of their three day relationship and a ton of biographies for them and side characters that is excessive and slows the pace.
We also get told over and over how Taylor is selfless and mentors another character and spends his weekends volunteering, but we never once see him interact with his mentee or go to any events. He’s either in the office or day drinking at drag brunch on Sundays. I would’ve loved to have seen any of his positive characteristics instead of being given a laundry list of them while all he does is be unprofessional and immature.

Things just get worse from that point, with key moments like characters dying, characters careers being at risk and meetings about it, etc being off page. The worst is the two main characters reconnecting after months of no contact off page. Why wouldn’t we see that?

Honestly the ending made me furious. These dudes dated a total of 3 days then didn’t speak for over a month, and this is what is happening?

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Easy fixes to make this not go 100% against the characters’ values:
A. characters wait until after the consulting to date, for some reason (maybe something shady Wes did) Dustin has to come back and they have to debate hiding things, breaking it off, etc.
B. They actually have the One and Done the title implies the day they meet in the bar, and then conflict between them occurs based on the debate to hide the previous hookup while maintaining completely professional until the process is done.

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I received an ARC from NetGalley on ebook. My review is my honest opinion.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this book. I wasn't a fan of the writing style and the overuse of pop-culture references, which already feel dated. I wanted to enjoy this one, but I just didn't enjoy it.

One And Done was very easy to read and grasp the story. Very fast paced with great black and queer representation. I loved Dustin and Taylor and there beautiful chemistry and love. The ensemble of supporting characters were really great addition to the book. This book was a delightful read. But I wish it was a little better maybe romance wise between the leads.
Will be checking out more stuff by Frederick Smith.
Thank You NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the ARC of the book.