Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
An M/M romance novel about discovering who you really are.
Bob Anderson knew it was not quite normal to be relieved that the woman he’d proposed to turned him down. He thought he was ready; he was thirty-six, it was time to choose a partner and take the next step. He wanted her as much as he’d ever wanted a woman. It was not quite normal to be sitting in a bar asking himself whether he’d ever wanted a woman at all.
Jade Derecha wasn’t out to pick anyone up. He wasn’t out to meet anybody. He only went to sit with the guy in the suit because he looked so tragic. And then the guy put that ring box on the table without a word, as if it had a story to tell. Jade opened the box; thought wistfully about how good that ring would look on his own graceful hand; and put it on.
By the end of the night, Bob was calling himself Robert, because he wasn’t the person who’d always been called Bob. Only one other thing in his life had changed. That one thing changed everything else. Because he woke up beside Jade and realized there was so much more to want.
The Review
Set in 2010 and 2011, which provides an interesting bit of historical distance, this is a polished little book, offering up what appears to be a straightforward m/m romance. What makes this unusual is its jumping-off point: a 36-year-old sports agent in LA suddenly realizes that he’s gay, after being rejected by the woman he’s just asked to marry him.
The story is neither that simplistic nor that blunt. It’s a surprisingly tender and emotionally freighted interplay between the rejected suitor—Bob Anderson—and the Hollywood stylist, Jade Derecha, just a year his junior.
Jade finds Bob in shock in a local bar, and recognizing pain when he sees it, sits down to talk to him. The rest is an elegantly restrained back and forth between their two points of view, as each realizes that their chance encounter is seeming more and more like a bit of destiny.
As you learn about these two men’s backgrounds, you realize how they got where they are. I loved both Bob and Jade, but I really appreciated the way the author explores Bob’s sudden self-revelation and Jade’s reaction to it. People do go through life doing what they’re expected to do without giving it much thought. That’s Bob, and he is completely believable. Jade is someone who didn’t—couldn’t—do that, and suffered the consequences. His story is more familiar. Neither man has ever met someone like the other. Watching them gradually begin to really see each other is a miracle of subtle disclosure.
The secondary characters are all carefully crafted to amplify our understanding of the two central figures, and while they don’t play big roles, they are bright, necessary spots in the landscape.
Even the expected scenes of physical intimacy feel somehow essential to the development of the story. They are neither too much nor too little: they do exactly what they’re supposed to do, and genuinely add to the emotional power of the narrative.
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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