Reviews

Review: Option Four by Jon Eliot Keane

Books, Reviews

About the Book

Title: Option Four

Author: Jon Eliot Keane

Published: 25th May, 2017

Publisher: Beaten Track

ISBN: Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78645 126 2

eBook ISBN: 978 1 78645 127 9

ASIN: B072J2DQMC

Category: Fiction

Genre: Young Adult, LGBT, Drama, Romance and Relationships, Contemporary Fiction

Goodreads

Synopsis

It’s 1997, and seventeen-year-old Donn Carhart wants to come out. There are four ways it could go: reject, tolerate, accept, or they’ll say ‘me too!’

But his parents don’t like gay people, and he doesn’t know any other gay kids.

After meeting Alex, an openly gay transfer student, and learning a little bit about gay history in the United States, Donn starts the Acceptance Project club at school. The club is about addressing discrimination, and it draws a lot of student members, including Thad – the most popular guy in his class, who just so happens to be Donn’s crush.

After Donn comes out, a group of parents try to shut it down as a ‘gay club’ – a danger to their children and the community. With his family, community, and classmates pushing back on his decisions, will Donn push forward or will he opt out?

Purchase Links

Beaten Track [paperback] | Beaten Track [ebook – multiple formats] | Amazon [Kindle edition] | Smashwords [ebook – multiple formats]

Review

This is an excellent first novel. It’s young adult fiction, and as such, I’m going to focus on that aspect. I’m not the book’s target audience.

Too often, YA fiction makes the mistake of treating readers as either older or younger than they really are, especially when it comes to LGBT fiction. This book makes neither of these errors. What I love about Donn, and hope that other readers will too, is that he feels exactly right for a young man coming of age. He’s entirely likable even when he’s making mistakes. Donn feels real, especially when he’s fumbling over his words or getting ahead of himself in telling his story.

There are so many sweet, funny, and charming moments in the story. Donn has a lot on his plate, between coming out, having his first boyfriend, and balancing his budding activism with his relationships. There’s also a lot of heartache, and many serious issues come up in the book. The students at the core of the Acceptance Project bring to light more than just homophobia, but not in a heavy-handed way. This isn’t by any stretch an “educational” book, which I think would put readers off. Hopefully the understated, gentle way these issues are raised in the story will encourage readers to look into those things further.

Without giving spoilers, I will say that I was glad to see a bisexual character. That said, this read just a little to me like it wanted to be “gay for you” and ended up being a bisexual character instead. That reads a bit flat and like a throwaway line. However, having perfect representation is not possible, and it isn’t terrible By no means is it entirely bad characterization. It felt more like an incomplete understanding, and some of that is the result of first-person narration by someone other than the bi character.

There were two other things that made me pause. One is that I’m not sure if today’s youth will be able to entirely relate to it due to the setting. The story takes place 20 years ago, and there are some ways in which that shows. On the other hand, it does help for young people to understand our history and how things were for past generations. The other thing that I found puzzling was that in the club, which was about acceptance and various forms of discrimination, the club officers were all boys. There’s overt sexist language addressed in the story, but not the far more common ways girls are undermined (like not allowing them leadership).

I would feel comfortable giving this book to readers ages 13 and up. Although there is nothing I would label “mature content” in the story, I think the themes (in particular the couple of violent incidences, which are not described in detail) might be harder for younger readers to process through.

For likable characters, good work with social justice issues, and a compelling plot, this gets 8/10 fountain pens.

About the Author

Website: Jon Eliot Keane on Facebook

Jon Eliot Keane studies people for a living. Sometimes, he writes about them too. He and his husband are owned by an obstreperous tortoiseshell cat, collect books and odd knickknacks, and make their home in Southern California near Los Angeles. Option Four is his first fiction publication.

Review: Cigarettes & Wine by J.E. Sumerau

Books, Reviews

About the Book

Publisher: Sense Publishers

Author: J.E. Sumerau

Length: 250 pages

Release Date: 1/17/17

Synopsis

Imagine the terror and exhilaration of a first sexual experience in a church where you could be caught at any moment. In Cigarettes & Wine, this is where we meet an unnamed teenage narrator in a small southern town trying to make sense of their own bisexuality, gender variance, and emerging adulthood. When our narrator leaves the church, we watch their teen years unfold alongside one first love wrestling with his own sexuality and his desire for a relationship with God, and another first love seeking to find herself as she moves away from town. Through the narrator’s eyes, we also encounter a newly arrived neighbor who appears to be an all American boy, but has secrets and pain hidden behind his charming smile and athletic ability, and their oldest friend who is on the verge of romantic, artistic, and sexual transformations of her own. Along the way, these friends confront questions about gender and sexuality, violence and substance abuse, and the intricacies of love and selfhood in the shadow of churches, families, and a small southern town in the 1990’s. Alongside academic and media portrayals that generally only acknowledge binary sexual and gender options, Cigarettes & Wine offers an illustration of non-binary sexual and gender experience, and provides a first person view of the ways the people, places, and narratives we encounter shape who we become. While fictional, Cigarettes & Wineis loosely grounded in hundreds of formal and informal interviews with LGBTQ people in the south as well as years of research into intersections of sexualities, gender, religion, and health. Cigarettes & Wine can be read purely for pleasure or used as supplemental reading in a variety of courses in sexualities, gender, relationships, families, religion, the life course, narratives, the American south, identities, culture, intersectionality, and arts-based research.

Links

Purchase on Amazon: http://a.co/5bsI4v2

Book website: https://jsumerau.com/cigarettes-wine/

Online sample: https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/3086-cigarettes-and-wine.pdf

The making of the novel: https://www.writewhereithurts.net/creating-cigarettes-wine-a-southern-bisexual-and-non-binary-coming-of-age-story/

Review

This is the fourth or fifth book I’ve read in less than a year set in the 1990s, and I still have two more ahead. A lot of late Gen X-ers are writing about our own coming of age years, perhaps feeling the pull of our age and the need to tell our stories, to connect our parents’ generation with our children’s. These were the books I needed as an introverted, confused adolescent struggling to see myself in mainstream fiction. The characters are the people I longed to know but was afraid to find. Although this book, and others like it, are written for teens and new adults, they are also written for us. They are for the youths we were, growing up just after the awakening of Gay Liberation but being raised under the looming presence of the Religious Right.

In Cigarettes and Wine, the main character is never named. The novel has a memoir-like feel to it, and we’re treated not only to the narrative of their young adult years but also their philosophical musings about the experiences. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, it is an absorbing read and an eye-opening look at small-town Southern life during that era.

This is not a romance, but there are many kinds of love contained in the story. The narrator has more than one romantic love, but they also have strong bonds with many friends. On page, many people come in and out of their life. Some remain to become lifelong friends; others drift away. There is a brief part where the narrator ponders how incorrect we can sometimes be about the importance of someone we meet. I think this is almost the overall tone of the whole story, discovering who the important people are.

There were many things that I found myself nodding along to, experiences the narrator details which match my own. But emotionally, I actually related most to their years-long boyfriend, Jordan. Although first-person narration leans toward the unreliable, I found the main character to be refreshingly honest about their feelings toward the other characters. Whether these were close friends, lovers, or people they disliked, all were drawn as fully human, whole people rather than the narrator’s caricatures of them.

One thing which surprised me was not to see any mention of HIV/AIDS at all. I’m not sure if this is a function of the narrator’s relatively sheltered upbringing, and it isn’t something to be criticized. It’s only notable because there are other key events of the 1990s which do come up, including Matthew Shepard’s death. In all other ways, so much of that era will resonate for anyone who lived it, and it will be interesting to see how young adults coming of age now perceive the climate of twenty years ago.

In true literary fashion, there is a lot of foreshadowing for the last quarter of the book. I had a feeling I knew where the story was going from fairly early on, but that did not detract from my enjoyment. Instead, it helped me both to see the rich history of my near-age-peers and to view the story as metaphor. This is a classic example of the shattering of innocence and the often painful slide into adulthood, especially for those of us who were not fully accepted or integrated within our churches, schools, or communities.

While I am now at a stage where I prefer happy or hopeful endings to ambiguous or tragic ones, I still found so much to enjoy and appreciate here. This is a highly skillful story which I hope is widely read. Ideally, adults who lived through this era would have the chance to read and talk about it with today’s young people. Even now, many lgbtq+ youth are almost forced to raise themselves with far less guidance than straight kids. A book like this, and the stories contained in it, could bridge the age gap and help us to understand one another.

For a solid story, a book full of wise words, and characters who stick with you beyond the end, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

About the Author

J.E. Sumerau, PhD is an assistant professor of Sociology, a novelist, a public sociologist, and the director of Applied Sociology at the University of Tampa. Ze holds a PhD in sociology from Florida State University (2012). A proponent of arts based and mixed methodological research, teaching, and activism, ze has published over 50 articles, book chapters, and essays concerning intersections of sexualities, gender, religion, and health in academic journals, edited volumes, and public blog formats. Ze regularly writes about issues related to life in the academy, bisexual and transgender experience, and the social and educational aspects music at Write Where It Hurts (writewhereithurts.net), Conditionally Accepted (conditionallyaccepted.com), Insider Higher Ed (insidehighered.com/users/conditionally-accepted), and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction Music blog (sssimusic.wordpress.com). In 2016, ze received the Early Career Gender Scholar Award from Sociologists for Women in Society South. For more information, please visit jsumerau.com or follow zir on twitter @jsumerau and @writewherehurts. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review: The Making of Us by Debbie McGowan

Books, Reviews

About the Book

Title: The Making Of Us

Series and Number: Checking Him Out #4

Author: Debbie McGowan

Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing

Publication Date: June 20, 2017

Word Count: 96,000 words (366 pages)

Publisher webpage: http://www.beatentrackpublishing.com/themakingofus

Purchase Links

Synopsis

When English Lit. student Jesse Thomas meets Leigh Hunter, he has to reconsider a few assumptions he’s made about himself.

Two years ago, Jesse joined Pride—the uni’s LGBT+ society—to support best friend Noah, and Noah’s boyfriend, Matty. As a straight, cismale ally, Jesse keeps a low profile—not difficult for someone as shy and body-conscious as he is.

Leigh Hunter is Noah and Matty’s new housemate. Born with a life-threatening congenital condition, Leigh is intersex and identifies as queer—none of which alters Jesse’s conviction that they are the most beautiful person in the world.

While Jesse and Leigh get to know each other, a new academic year begins in earnest, bringing with it the usual challenge of balancing work and play. Add in a week’s holiday in Cornwall that Jesse and Leigh half-wish they hadn’t agreed to, Jesse’s unplanned involvement in the election of Pride’s new officers, and some big decisions for Noah and Matty, it’s going to be an interesting semester all round.

NOTE: this is a stand-alone novel.

Review

Before I review, I should make a note that I’ve read all the books in this series, and this one is very different. Not so much in tone but in that it’s less focused on the romance between Jesse and Leigh and much more on Jesse as he tackles some big (pun intended) issues. Despite that, the story is still in keeping with the light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek humor as well as the emotional and psychological undertones of the series as a whole.

Jesse is entirely likable. He’s not perfect, and he has lots of things he’s dealing with: His size, for one thing, and his developing feelings for Leigh and new understanding of himself. Through a series of sometimes funny, sometimes mortifying, sometimes enraging events, Jesse’s standing up for himself results in an unexpected situation with Pride (the campus LGBT+ group). Watching him fumble his way through it is quite a ride.

Fortunately, Jesse’s friends have his back. After reading the other books, it was utterly fascinating for me to read Noah from a peer’s point of view. I admit I didn’t care for him before, but I had new appreciation for him after this book. Matty, as always, is a delight. Once again, it was interesting seeing him through a friend’s eyes.

Then there’s Leigh. I can’t say enough good things about Leigh. It’s not hard to see why Jesse’s smitten so quickly; I think I would be too. Leigh is one of the most wonderful characters. The relationship between Jesse and Leigh is natural, sweet, and not full of drama or discord. They fit together perfectly, and it’s with Leigh’s love and support that Jesse is able to come out of his shell. This is not because Leigh “rescues” him in any sense. It’s simply the confidence he has knowing Leigh adores him and his friends have his back.

Jesse’s feelings about his body and his weight are an important part of the story. Yes, there are other books about fat characters, but one thing really stood out to me. This is not a Jesse-learns-to-manage-his-weight book. Nor is it really a Fat Pride and Acceptance book. There’s a very little bit of both, but they aren’t the heart of the story. This is much more about who Jesse is becoming as a whole person. Much of what he describes will resonate with anyone who has been through similar issues.

Unlike the rest of the series (except for the novella), there is not much in the way of descriptive, on-page sex. The sensuality is understated, and it fits perfectly with the tone of the story and the characters. Jesse isn’t body-confident, and it would’ve felt to me exploitive and inappropriate to have it be too graphic. There’s a lovely scene of Jesse “taking care of business” in the shower which has this nice feel of being completely G-rated. Even though Jesse’s a fictional character, I had the sense it would’ve been embarrassing for him to know readers could “see” what he was doing. It sets the tone for later on, where there is such a sweet tenderness to his lovemaking with Leigh. The understated quality feels like letting us have a glimpse while still respecting the privacy of their intimate acts.

To me, that’s the hallmark of great storytelling. Everything in this fits together just right in this book. It’s about friendship, love, and who “our people” really are when it comes down to it. Is it a bit of an unusual romance? Yes. But I hope that readers will give it a chance, even if it’s different from the sexy guy-on-guy story fans have come to expect in this series.

For more-to-love characters, good social themes, and a love story sweeter than ice cream, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Excerpt

What I loved about Pride was, apart from Sarah, everyone was welcoming and friendly. It was only at Pride socials that I didn’t feel self-conscious about my size. True, there were a few of the guys seriously into the body beautiful, who worked out obsessively and strutted and posed, but that was true of the campus as a whole, not just the gay guys.

Most of the members identified as gay or lesbian; there were a couple of trans students—Jazz being the only one I knew well, because we’d been at Weight Watchers together the previous year. I’d lost six kilos, and I was pretty sure I’d put them all back on again in a matter of weeks. Jazz had lost around twenty kilos and kept the weight off, and she looked amazing. Well, she’d looked amazing before, but now, she was more confident and less self-conscious, and she got to wear clothes that accentuated her curves. Tonight, she was wearing a floor-length dress—red or purple, I thought—with a low back and a fair bit of cleavage on display. With her heels, she wasn’t far off my height.

“She’s beautiful.” Leigh suddenly appeared at my side.

“Y-yeah, she is,” I agreed, but now I’d seen Leigh, and oh my god. Oh my god! I’d never seen Leigh in a dress before. I didn’t think they wore dresses. OK, so I was wrong about that.

It was black and short and sparkly, and the sleeves appeared as if they had slipped down, baring Leigh’s shoulders. No high heels, though. The Doc Martens, with silver laces to match the sparkles in their dress, and as I finally made it back to Leigh’s face, I saw silver eye make-up completed the look.

I was staring, and almost drooling, and I really needed to tell Leigh how beautiful they were. Like, now, before they walked away thinking I had the hots for Jazz.

Leigh stepped away from me and put a hand on their hip. “What are you looking at?”

I swallowed. No spit.

“Well?”

“You.” I cleared my throat. “You’re beautiful.”

For a few seconds, Leigh remained with head tilted and an expression between a sulky scowl and a puzzled frown. But then the scowl disappeared, and in its place was a beaming smile. “Aww, thanks! You like it?” They spun on the spot, the skirt swirling around them in a circle of sparkles that caught in the light. They easily moved as gracefully as Matty, and in big clunky boots as well.

“I love it,” I confirmed—the outfit, the wearer…

Leigh stopped spinning and faked a dizzy stagger, coming close enough to grab my arm. My stomach clearly thought we were on a roller coaster, because it did some kind of rush up into my throat, flipped and plummeted with a thadum. Or that was what it felt like.

“So, you’re here for Noah, I’m guessing?” Leigh asked.

“Um, kind of?”

“And Matty, of course.”

“Yeah. And also…” I wasn’t sure I could say it, for no reason other than I’d never said it before, and to Leigh. After all, it was them who made me realise I wasn’t ‘just an ally’.

“For Jazz?” Leigh guessed.

“For me.”

About the Author

Debbie McGowan is an award-winning author of contemporary fiction that celebrates life, love and relationships in all their diversity. Since the publication in 2004 of her debut novel, Champagne—based on a stage show co-written and co-produced with her husband—she has published many further works—novels, short stories and novellas—including two ongoing series: Hiding Behind The Couch (a literary ‘soap opera’ centring on the lives of nine long-term friends) and Checking Him Out (LGBTQ romance). Debbie has been a finalist in both the Rainbow Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards, and in 2016, she won the Lambda Literary Award (Lammy) for her novel, When Skies Have Fallen: a British historical romance spanning twenty-three years, from the end of WWII to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. Through her independent publishing company, Debbie gives voices to other authors whose work would be deemed unprofitable by mainstream publishing houses.

Social Media

Review: The Great North by J. Scott Coatsworth

Books, Reviews

About the Book

Publisher: Mischief Corner Books

Author: J. Scott Coatsworth

Cover Artist: Freddy MacKay

Length: 34K

Format: eBook

Release Date: 6/14/17

Pairing: MM

Price: 3.99

Genre: MM, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Romance, Myths, Legends, Gods, Post-Apocalyptic

Synopsis

Dwyn is a young man in the small, isolated town of Manicouga, son of the Minstor, who is betrothed to marry Kessa in a few weeks’ time.

Mael is shepherding the remains of his own village from the north, chased out by a terrible storm that destroyed Land’s End.

Both are trying to find their way in a post-apocalyptic world. When the two meet, their love and attraction may change the course of history.

—————

The Great North was inspired by St. Dwynwen’s Day, also known as Welsh Valentines Day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwynwen

Purchase Links

Publisher | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

Review

This is a fairly quick read, both in terms of length and pacing. I was able to finish it in just an afternoon. It’s enjoyable, and the characters are likable. I ended up with some mixed feelings, but overall, the positive outweighs any hesitations.

What I loved: The setting. The reason I agreed to review this is that the author is outstanding at world-building. Everything is flawless. It’s not hard to understand the context, right from the beginning, and there are no long, dull expository passages. The cues are built right into the narrative.

I also love the way fantasy, science fiction, and dystopia are seamlessly integrated. The writing style reminds me of Madeleine L’Engle in that regard. This story in particular has, for me, some of the same emotional similarities to a couple of my favorites of hers. What a delight to be not only taken to a new place but to be reminded of something familiar and beloved.

I have a soft spot for retold fairy tales, and this one delivers. Although it’s not a story I was familiar with, that certainly didn’t take away from my enjoyment. Covering an old story is often done by giving it a contemporary setting. This novella is unusual in placing it in a post-apocalyptic world, which I think is brilliant.

There were only a few things that made me pause. I like to hope (because I know the author’s work and really appreciate it) that this was not anything intentional. However, I was mildly irritated at the social setup of the people of Land’s End. They are sort of a bisexual, polyamorous society, except…not. There’s a distinct split between “people you love” and “people you make babies with.” So they engage in bisexual behavior exclusively for reproduction unless they happen to be straight. Which seems somewhat odd to me. I would think such a society would allow a person to have more than one person they love, even if one of those is also for babymaking. It’s okay, I guess, and better than a lot of book bisexuality. But I’d have liked it better if it didn’t seem like the society was built on navigating the gay/straight binary. I know it’s hard to show in such a short space, but a passing mention would’ve done.

The other thing was that this story seemed to have an Agenda. That’s okay, and I like books like that. I just wish I’d known. It’s pretty anti-Christian, which is also fine with me, but it was another binary split: evil Christians vs. good whatever-Mael-is. Something Pagan-ish. It wasn’t even particularly subtle, which might have made it seem less like a whomp on the head. Probably something LGBT+ readers who are also Christians might want to be aware of before reading.

The other things were more minor, such as the instant-love between Mael and Dwyn and the odd ending. They weren’t enough to make me dislike the book, but those might have been my lack of understanding about the original myth this came from. Otherwise, this novella is pretty solid.

For exceptional world-building, a different take on retold fairy tales, and likable characters, this gets 8/10 fountain pens.

Excerpt

“We celebrate Dwyn’s Day as a testament to true love and sacrifice. It’s a remembrance of the way things were and the way they’ve come to be. In the end, let it be a reminder that every one of us has the power to change the course of events through love.”

—Dillon Cooper, New Gods and Monsters, Twenty years After Dwyn

The gray clouds scudded by overhead, blowing in quickly from the east.

Dwyn shivered and pulled on his woolen cap. It was cold out, unusual for so early in the fall. The rains had been heavy this season, the wettest in a generation, and Circle Lake was close to overflowing its banks. If he stretched to look over the rows of corn plants, he could see the waters lapping at the shore far below, as if hungry to consume his village of Manicouga.

His father had consulted the elders, some of whom had seen more than fifty summers, and everyone agreed things were changing. Whether that augured good or ill was anyone’s guess.

He shrugged and moved along the row of plants, breaking off ears of corn and throwing them into the jute sack that hung from his shoulder.

Ahead of him, two of his age-mates, Declan and Baia, were working their way down the next two rows.

Dwyn frowned. He got distracted easily, and he’d let the two of them get a jump on him. That wouldn’t do.

He redoubled his pace. He moved with focus and purpose, and soon he was closing the gap with his friends.

“Someone’s being chased by a lion,” Baia said with a laugh.

“Or a tiger.” Declan grinned, his nice smile only missing one tooth, lost to a fight with one of the Beckham brothers the year before.

Dwyn grinned. “Or a bear?” Dwyn only knew lions and tigers from the fairy tale his mother used to tell them, “The Girl and the Aus.” He had no idea what an Aus was, either.

Bears he knew. The hunters occasionally brought one home, and old Alesser had a five-line scar across his wrinkled face that he claimed came from one of the beasts.

A shout went up from ahead of them. Dwyn craned his neck to see what the ruckus was, but he couldn’t make out anything. “What’s going on?”

Declan, who was half a head taller, looked toward the commotion. “Hard to tell. Something down by the road.”

Dwyn laid down his sack carefully and ran up the hill to one of the old elms that dotted the field. He climbed into the tree, scurrying up through the leaves and branches until he had a clear view of the Old Road. It ran from up north to somewhere down south, maybe near the ruins of old Quebec if the merchant tales held any truth. Hardly anyone from Manicouga ever followed it, but occasionally traders would follow it to town, bringing exotic wares and news from the other villages that were scattered up and down its length.

They swore it went all the way down to the Heat, the great desert that had consumed much of the world after the Reckoning.

“What’s going on down there?” Baia called from below.

Dwyn tried to make sense of it. “There are three wagons coming down the pass. They’re loaded up with all sorts of things. They don’t look like traders though.”

The first of the horse-drawn wagons had just reached the field above the main township. It stopped, and someone hopped off to talk with the villagers who had gathered from the fields.

“We need to get down there,” Dwyn said, scrambling down the tree trunk. “Something’s happening.” Nothing new ever happened in Manicouga, and he wasn’t going to miss it.

He grabbed his sack and sprinted toward the Old Road, not waiting to see if Declan and Baia followed.

About the Author

Scott spends his time between the here and now and the what could be. Enticed into fantasy and sci fi by his mom at the tender age of nine, he devoured her Science Fiction Book Club library. But as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were in the books he was reading.

He decided that it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at his local bookstore. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

His friends say Scott’s mind works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He loves to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.

He runs both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects their own lives.

Social Media

Review: Frank at Heart by Pat Henshaw

Books, Reviews

Title: Frank At Heart

Author: Pat Henshaw

Series: Foothills Pride (#6)

Genre: Contemporary gay romance

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Publication date: May 31, 2017

ISBN: 9781635336313

ASIN: B072HWHXNV

Pages: 151

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34936542-frank-at-heart

Everything about thirty-five-year-old Stone Acres hardware store owner Frank McCord is old-fashioned—from his bow tie and overalls to the way he happily makes house calls to his dreams of lasting romance, true love, and marriage. Frank’s predecessors have run the store and been mainstays in the small California town for over a century. While genial Frank upholds tradition and earns the respect of friends and neighbors, he fears he’s too dull and old to attract a husband.

Then handsome thirty-six-year-old electronic games designer Christopher Darling and his fifteen-year-old son, Henry, come into his life. Christopher has everything Frank could want in a potential partner: charm, kindness, and compatibility. Also, he’s a terrific father to Henry. When their Stone Acres home turns out to be uninhabitable, Frank offers the Darlings temporary lodging in his ancestral farmhouse, where he and his tenant Emil reside. Since Emil thinks Frank is his, sparks fly. Suddenly, Frank’s monotonous life promises to explode with love and threatens to change him forever.

I’m always happy to see another installment in the Foothills Pride series. It’s one of my favorites. These are relatively short reads, low on heat but high on character growth. Even the town itself is a player on the stage. Every story stands alone, but there are always familiar faces and at least mentions of how everyone else is getting on since we last visited. It’s like sitting down on the porch with a friend to catch up on the latest news.

This time around, we have Frank, the owner of the town’s hardware store. He’s old-fashioned, a bit nerdy, and doesn’t believe he’s anyone’s type when it comes to love. But he’s a romantic, and he dreams of finding his true love.

I liked Frank from the first page, though I did have to laugh at his opinion of himself as “middle aged.” I don’t think I’d considered thirty-five all that old. On the other hand, Frank definitely has an air about him of being older than his calendar years suggest. He dresses the part of his grandfather, almost as though he’s trying to earn his approval from beyond the grave.

My favorite thing about Frank is his absolute honesty (his name is quite fitting, and I doubt that’s accidental, given his character traits and the title of the story). He knows and owns his struggles with anger and anxiety, and he knows who to go to for help. His friends have his back.

Christopher is, of course, just as “darling” as his surname implies. I loved his innocence and his desire to believe the best of people. I know the pain of being taken in by something I thought was the right thing to do, and I really felt for him.

I’m a sucker for books with teenagers, especially when they’re well-written. Henry is wonderful, and he’s exactly as you’d expect a smart kid his age to be. I love how the adults never talk down to him. In fact, Frank treats the handful of other teens who pass through with the same respect.

Emil is wickedly fun to dislike at first, and then he takes a somewhat darker turn that I wasn’t expecting. To be honest, I wondered from the blurb if Frank was going to have to choose between Emil and Christopher. I won’t spoil it, but in the end, I mostly just felt sad for Emil.

Perhaps my favorite thing about these books is that they are the way the world should work. Not merely happy endings but full of love, support, kindness, joy, and friendship all throughout. They’re the kind of uplifting stories we could use more of.

For a visit to a favorite town, characters who are easy to love, and a story with just a hint of a message, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Pat Henshaw, author of the Foothills Pride Stories, was born and raised in Nebraska where she promptly left the cold and snow after college, living at various times in Texas, Colorado, Northern Virginia, and Northern California. Pat enjoys travel, having visited Mexico, Canada, Europe, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Egypt, and Europe, including a cruise down the Danube. She now lives in Sacramento.

Now retired, Pat has spent her life surrounded by words: Teaching English composition at the junior college level; writing book reviews for newspapers, magazines, and websites; helping students find information as a librarian; and promoting PBS television programs.

Her triumphs are raising two incredible daughters who daily amaze her with their power and compassion. Fortunately, her incredibly supportive husband keeps her grounded in reality when she threatens to drift away while writing fiction.

Review: Shards of History trilogy by Rebecca Roland

Books, Reviews

About the Books

Author: Rebecca Roland

Shards of History (#1)

August 21, 2012

World Weaver Press

340 pages

Goodreads

Feared and reviled, the fierce, winged creatures known as Jeguduns live in the cliffs surrounding the Taakwa valley. When Malia discovers an injured Jegudun in the valley, she risks everything — exile from the village, loss of her status as clan mother in training, even her life — to befriend and save the surprisingly intelligent creature. But all of that pales when she learns the truth: the threat to her people is bigger and more malicious than the Jeguduns. Lurking on the edge of the valley is an Outsider army seeking to plunder and destroy her people. It’s only a matter of time before the Outsiders find a way through the magic that protects the valley — a magic that can only be created by Taakwa and Jeguduns working together.

Fractured Days (#2)

June 9, 2015

World Weaver Press

330 pages

Goodreads

Malia returns home the hero of a war she can’t remember. The valley burning under the Maddion’s invasion, the fate of her late husband, the way she resolved the long-time distrust between the Taakwa people and the wolfish, winged Jegudun creatures–all of it has been erased from her memory. Malia hopes to resume training as her village’s next clan mother, but when the symbiotic magic that she and the Jeguduns used to repair the valley’s protective barrier starts to consume more and more of her mind, she’s faced with the threat of losing herself completely.

A powerful being known as “the changer” might hold the solution to her vanishing memories. But the Maddion’s new leader, Muvumo, also seeks the changer, hoping the being will cure them of the mysterious illness killing off his people. Meanwhile, Muvumo’s bride hopes the changer can bring about a new era, one in which she and the other Maddion women no longer need to hold onto their greatest secret.

Shattered Fates (#3)

May 23, 2017

World Weaver Press

296 pages

Goodreads

The magic barrier protecting the Taakwa from their enemies, the Maddion, is gone. Malia, who led the Taakwa against the Maddion in the Dragon War, must convince the magical being, the changer, to repair the barrier before the Maddion invade to take revenge on her people and the winged Jeguduns who also call the valley home, even if it means reversing the healing the changer wrought for her.

Chanwa, the wife of the Maddion leader, uses the disorder created by the changer to lead a coup against her husband in a desperate attempt to ensure she and the other Maddion women are treated as equals. Her life, and the future of every Maddion woman, depends on her success.

Both women know the only way to succeed is to come together in an unlikely alliance.

Shards of History

This is a terrific beginning to the series. Although it does end with some loose threads, it can still be enjoyed as a complete story. The main plot of the book resolves by the conclusion.

The world-building here is excellent. While there are some longer descriptive passages, they pertain mostly to providing us a visual of the countryside, home life for Malia and her people, and the encampment of the Maddion. Nothing feels like too much or as though it’s there only for exposition. For the most part, everything is woven into the plot seamlessly. I enjoyed the vivid picture the author paints of the different cultures and people.

Malia is a wonderful hero. She isn’t without flaws, particularly her stubborn streak and her reluctance to ask for help. However, she is also brave, kind, and honest, and both her strengths and her weaknesses end up serving her well.

There’s a lot of death, but I love how it’s handled here. It doesn’t feel careless or for the sake of demonstrating violence. Instead, the characters are allowed their human moments of grief, even when the deceased is an enemy. In fact, that’s one of the things I particularly liked. The Maddion are a brutal, patriarchal society, and yet even within that the characters are not flat villains. Through the eyes of Kushtrim, we see both his desire to help his people and the brutality of the methods he’s chosen to do so.

The one thing which surprised me is that there are so few women characters, and they don’t interact much with each other. Malia’s people are matriarchal and revere their women, but I didn’t get a strong sense of this in the first installment. It doesn’t necessarily bother me, and it won’t reduce my rating. I was merely surprised.

Aside from that, this is an absolutely outstanding novel. It hit all my buttons just right, between the historical/fantasy setting, the deep character development, and the gorgeous style.

For beautiful writing, a thoroughly engaging plot, and characters who drew me in, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Fractured Days

This second part of the trilogy is a good bridge between the other two. The others read as complete plots on their own, and although that’s true here to some degree, it cannot be read on its own. That is not a problem, since I was so captivated by the world and the people while reading that I wouldn’t have wanted to read it alone.

In this part, there are a host of new characters. Since so many of the Maddion died (or were never named) in the first one, that leaves room for us to meet more of them in a different way. I give credit to the author for drawing me into Muvumo’s desperation. I truly felt for him while at the same time being repulsed by him. His actions swing between eliciting sympathy and anger.

Meanwhile, his wife, Chanwa, is a fascinating person. She has so many secrets, and I loved her character development. She and Muvumo represent opposite sides of the same coin. Both want to save their people, but Muvomo believes that means from without and Chanwa sees that coming from within.

None of these stories are romance at all, but there are a number of relationships which develop and are explored in the text. Some of them are enemies becoming allies, others are friendship, family, and romantic. There is a relationship between two of the women, and I really like how it develops and how the author handles it. It is neither more nor less than any other couplehood, addressed in the same understated way as the rest. One thing I appreciate is that it isn’t used against them as some sort of “hero’s downfall.”

I enjoyed this book every bit as much as the first, and my concern over the lack of women has been laid to rest. I’m still surprised that we see much more of the Maddion women than the Taakwa, but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the story.

For a superb follow-up, an excellent new cast of characters in addition to familiar faces, and a cliffhanger that promises an exciting conclusion, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Shattered Fates

This is the last part of the series, and I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how it was all going to come together in the end. It did, though, and I was left feeling exhilarated, satisfied, and emotionally spent. It is absolutely the perfect conclusion.

As much as I love Malia, Chanwa became my favorite character. She is absolutely wonderful, and her perseverance is inspiring. She’s fascinating on every level. I wasn’t sure what to hope for aside from simply wanting her to win. It would be spoilers to give details about how she carries out her plan, but it’s brilliant. Also, she deserves credit for creative use of a fertility statue in her quest for victory.

I was also not sure how or whether the mutara, who had more than one name in the story, would be integrated at the end. The way it happens is gorgeous and perfect, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Everything about this is pitch-perfect. Despite some of the darkness and destruction, there’s also a thread of hope throughout and plenty of low-key humor. The romantic subplots continue to be understated but integral to the whole story, and the resolutions to those are highly satisfying.

This is a series with a message, but it’s not delivered in a heavy-handed way. Instead, it’s brought out in the love women have for those around them: family, friends, lovers, and even former enemies. These books are must-reads for anyone who enjoys a bit of realistic commentary with their fantasy escape. I’m looking forward to reading more by this author.

For an absorbing story, characters who become like friends, and a perfect ending, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

About the Author

Rebecca Roland is the author of the Shards of History series, The Necromancer’s Inheritance series, and The King of Ash and Bones, and Other Stories. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nature, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Stupefying Stories, Plasma Frequency, and Every Day Fiction, and she is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can find out more about her and her work at rebeccaroland.net, her blog Spice of Life, or follow her on Twitter @rebecca_roland.

Review: Cigarettes & Wine by J.E. Sumerau

About the Book

Synopsis

Links

Review

About the Author

Review: The Making of Us by Debbie McGowan

About the Book

Purchase Links

Synopsis

Review

Excerpt

About the Author

Social Media

Review: The Great North by J. Scott Coatsworth

About the Book

Synopsis

Purchase Links

Review

Excerpt

About the Author

Social Media

Review: Frank at Heart by Pat Henshaw

Review: Shards of History trilogy by Rebecca Roland

About the Books

Reviews

About the Author

Let's Be Friends

Sharing

Tip Jar

Shopping Cart

Your Shopping Cart

Supposed Crimes Publishing

Beaten Track Publishing

Reviews

About the Book

Synopsis

Purchase Links

Review

About the Author

About the Book

Synopsis

Links

Review

About the Author

About the Book

Purchase Links

Synopsis

Review

Excerpt

About the Author

Social Media

About the Book

Synopsis

Purchase Links

Review

Excerpt

About the Author

Social Media

About the Books

Reviews

About the Author

More Content

Let's Be Friends

Sharing

Tip Jar

Shopping Cart

Your Shopping Cart

Supposed Crimes Publishing

Beaten Track Publishing