Genre: Contemporary, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: J. Comer
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About The Book
Love & Limitations is Scott’s fourth short story collection and first one featuring contemporary MM and LGBTQ+ stories:
I Only Want to Be With You: Derrek likes Ryan. Ryan likes Alex. Alex treats Ryan like trash. So why can’t he see who really loves him?
The Boy in the Band: It’s hard for a trans kid in high school, just like it was for a gay kid two decades before. Can Ryan and Justin find common ground in time?
Translation: Dominic has a thing for Italian guys, especially his boss, Dante. His roommate Enrico has a thing for him. No matter how this ends, someone is going to get hurt.
Slow Thaw: As the Antarctic warms, so does the chilly relationship between scientist Javier Fernandez and new arrival-and trans man-Col Steele as they contend with a disaster on the ice.
Ten: After the death of his husband, Chris faces a gay mid-life crisis-at thirty-five-as he jumps back into the dating scene for ten dates in ten days.
This is the first time all of these stories have all been collected in one place, and the first publication of the The Boy in the Band in any form.
The Review
Love and Limitations is a collection of short stories, romantically themed, which feature gay and trans men. There is not a unifying theme or characters; each stands on its own. Coatsworth is known as a writer of fantastic literature, much of it SF-themed, but these stories are mundane in their settings.
“I Only Want To Be With You” is a more-or-less vanilla holiday romance, but “The Boy In The Band” relies on Coatsworth’s knowledge of Arizona, where he lived for many years, and his adolescence, with the horrors of gay life in high school transferred to a trans boy who becomes suicidal, and is saved by an older gay man. This semi-autobiographical story was very affecting to read, and one of the two best in the book.
“Translation” draws on Coatsworth’s close familiarity with the Italian language, portraying a bilingual workplace romance. The long tale “Slow Thaw” is the most serious and the best researched work in this collection: set in Antarctica, it recounts the adventure of two LGBT polar explorers as they seek to measure global warming, amidst the dangers of the ice.
The last story, “Ten”, counts down the days before Christmas, and a man’s search for love. This story was truly well written, with attention to both the characters’ emotions and the readers’.
What can we make of this? I would probably not have picked this book up without the intervention of Coatsworth, who is its author and a friend of mine. I was given the book without strings attached (that is, without the expectation of a review), and was surprised by the quality of the work.
I enjoyed “Slow Thaw” and “The Boy In The Band”, with their characters’ rich development and the well-researched settings. “Slow Thaw”’s characters seem strong enough to carry a novel, in particular.
Other works were written to enter contests, or something similar, and Coatsworth’s SF talents are mostly missing from this book. All in all, it wasn’t bad, and romance lovers as well as Coatsworth completists should look this one up.
The Reviewer
J. Comer is a writer and teacher who lives in Northern California.
