Genre: Holiday, Romance, Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
A M/M holiday romance novella about finding your way home.
Rhett Carpenter’s early fame ended with a crash. Sixteen years later, he’s working steadily: writing, producing, narrating, even acting. He’s made a decent life for himself. The trouble is, he never wanted a life that was only for himself, and he’s not sure he wants this one anymore.
Gabriel Aguilar didn’t know who Rhett was when they met on the train, but it didn’t take long to find out. They noticed each other around the neighborhood, as well as on the Metro. Months later, when Gabriel’s apartment burned down, Rhett offered the vacant studio behind his house.
They weren’t close, but they were friends. So when Rhett needed someone to reach out, Gabriel did. And before long, they were much more than friends.
The Review
As I’ve come to expect, Alexandra Caluen does it just right. This is a delicate little love story, with some dark undertones that in no way make it a dark or angsty story. Caluen manages the language and the setting so deftly that, to me at least, it felt real. For a classic m/m romance, this was like experiencing someone else’s life.
Rhett and Gabriel. Neighbors who know each other in a sort of casual way, until the day that Gabriel’s home burns down (careless fireworks in the neighborhood) and Rhett offers him his unused studio apartment by the garage. This detail alone is very California, very Los Angeles. You don’t get these in the East much.
But then, or in fact right away, you learn that Rhett is depressed, and that Gabriel, in the most delicate, loving way, pulls him back from the edge. Gabriel sees what’s going on, and interferes without being intrusive or judgmental. He acts with respect and from a place of generosity and genuine humanity. From that point on the story continues to alternate between Rhett’s and Gabriel’s viewpoint – made more interesting by the fact that each man talks about the other man as much as he talks about himself.
There is not a lot of “action” in this – just as in Caluen’s other “LA Stories.” People live their lives, and in this case two youngish men live their lives near each other in ever-tightening circles.
Rhett’s life history is the more complicated, which we gradually learn until we feel we fully understand why he ended up in the dark place Gabriel found him. Gabriel, on the other hand, also has a sad story, but not an unusual sad story in this modern world. His hardship has brought him into Rhett’s world, and awakens Rhett’s need to look outside himself recognize how he can make someone else feel better, and together they begin to find their way into happiness.
5 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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