Genre: Erotica, BDSM, Interracial, Contemporary, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
In the conservative East Texas town of Black Creek, you’re either old money or you work for them. Redmond Cole is the latter. The long hours he spends fixing fancy cars in the local garage are barely enough to support himself, let alone his sixteen-year-old half-sister, Katie. All he wants is a better life for the both of them, one that’s easy and real, but he has a secret. One that could blow up the meager existence he’s worked so hard to maintain.
Red is gay.He doesn’t want to lie, especially to Katie, but Black Creek isn’t the most hospitable environment for those who are different. His secrets keep them safe. He’s all but resigned to a life in the closet when he’s propositioned by the dashing, wealthy Victor Itachi.
What follows is a secret and intense sexual relationship that challenges everything Red believes about himself. When an unlikely friendship with the only out gay man in town opens Red’s eyes to new possibilities, he must make a choice: submit fully to the relative safety of Victor’s control or risk it all for a chance at real love.
The Review
I’ve read a number of m/m novels that have a plot focused on dom/sub or other BDSM themes. Where this trope manages to step outside its typical boundaries is the point where it begins to be interesting to me. Courtney Maguire manages to do that in a surprising way in “Drive.”
Redmond Cole is an auto mechanic in a small town in East Texas. He sees the world as pretty clear-cut: rich folks versus everybody else; but also straight people versus everybody else. In Red Cole’s case, the class divisions inherent in his hometown have limited his prospects, but he loves what he does, so no big deal. On the other hand, the deeply-ingrained homophobia in his world—right up to and including his military father’s—makes him feel trapped and afraid.
The arrival of the cool, elegant Victor Itachi in Red’s world pushes (or drags) him out of his closet and into a different world—one of hidden sex and a particular variation on the dom/sub world called puppy play. At almost the same time, the openly-gay (and disowned) scion of a local old-money lumber family, Sean Delaney, appears in Red’s shop, his car vandalized with homophobic graffiti.
Red is torn between these two men: the dominant allure of Victor, and the warm sincerity of Sean. Victor promises to take care of him, but keeps him in a world of secrecy. Sean offers him real friendship, but at a cost of public embarrassment for daring to associate with someone notoriously “out.”
What the book is really about is Red’s journey to discovering what really matters to him. Both of the other men, Victor and Sean, have suffered at the hands of prejudiced families, as has Red. They, however, have made peace with themselves, whereas Red has not. Having repressed his gay self for so long, Red is torn.
Maguire’s writing is good and her characters felt three-dimensional and engaging.
It’s a pretty interesting dilemma that Red has to puzzle through, and while there were some significant details that I felt were not resolved adequately, ultimately the story satisfied me.
Four stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
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