Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Tony
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About The Book
A midlife M/M romance novella about equality.
Casimir has a good life: a nice little house, a hard-to-get job, and an online store for his Shakespeare-inspired paintings. The only thing he’s missing is someone to come home to. Then ballet teacher Misha rings his doorbell.
Misha risked everything on America twenty years ago, and so far the risk has paid off. The only thing he’s missing is someone to share his future. Then he drops in at the online store’s showroom and meets the painter.
Casimir let his job cost him one important relationship already. Within a day of meeting Misha, he’s willing to take the biggest risk of his professional life. And Misha’s willing to stand at his side, no matter what happens.
Adult situation, themes, and language; 32,500 words and a happy ending.
The Review
Screw Your Courage is a love story, told beautifully. It covers the last few weeks of the year 2018 when Casimir, a teacher and artist, meets Misha, a dance teacher. Their attraction for each other is immediate and almost undeniable.
Casimir teaches English at Olympus, a private academy, and has been single for the last four years as a result of not being able to come out to his employer and work colleagues. Misha, on the other hand, escaped from Russia so he could be free to express himself in safety.
As their relationship grows, Casimir decides that he does not want to hide any more, and that could become an issue for him and his employer. All Casimir wants to be able to do is bring his partner to work events, and to be able to say ‘we did’ rather than ‘I did’ when asked how his weekend went.
The only problem I had with the book was the constant switching of perspectives between Casimir and Misha. This happens almost paragraph by paragraph when they are together, and I found I had to backtrack every so often to be sure whose point of view I was experiencing. But once I was in tune with it, the story felt quite dynamic and exciting, with Casimir and Misha meshing together so well.
This is a heartfelt story, told with passion and joy. Casimir finds he has more support than he imagined as he screws his courage to the sticking place. It is a brave and lovely story with no chapters. Just go with it – you’ll love it as much as I did.
The Reviewer
Tony is an Englishman living amongst the Welsh and the Other Folk in the mountains of Wales. He lives with his partner of thirty-six years, four dogs, two ponies, various birds, and his bees. He is a retired lecturer and a writer of no renown but that doesn’t stop him enjoying what he used to think of as ‘sensible’ fantasy and sf. He’s surprised to find that if the story is well written and has likeable characters undergoing the trails of life, i.e. falling in love, falling out of love, having a bit of nooky (but not all the time), fending off foes, aliens and monsters, etc., he’ll be happy as a sandperson who has just offloaded a wagon of sand at the going market price. As long as there’s a story, he’s in. He aims to write fair and honest reviews. If he finds he is not the target reader he’ll move on.
