Love is an Open Road Round Up #1
Opening Statement by Amy Jarvis: I’ve been reading the Don’t Read in the Closet: Love is an Open Road stories for a few weeks now, but due to various reasons, I haven’t gotten around to posting about them until now. They’ve so far run the gamut from “OMGAWESAUCESOME” to “well, I read it.” But I’m not reading them in order by length this year, instead I’m reading them by whatever insane order my kindle has sorted them into, with some exceptions (for favorite authors, especially). So some of these deserve a longer entry all to their lonesome, but…I’m lazy. Also at this point it’s most important that I get started on posting these. So without further ado;
An American Homo in Paris by Vanessa North: This was a great start to the …anthology? Group? Set? whatever. It’s a sweet tale (that I think is a sequel to something? It certainly referred to past events such that it could have been, but I can’t find anything to support that) of a gay couple that moves to Paris, and…things don’t go as planned. It’s hot and intense, and really sweet, too.
Hunters of a Faded God by JC Shelby: DNF This was…good, I guess. I didn’t read it all in one sitting, and somewhere in the break I realized it spent A LOT of time being a textbook example of why you shouldn’t write a story mostly in flashbacks. It has a really solid plot, and the characters and world are both interesting, but I got tired of the randomly switching flashbacks, the inability of the author to let us know anything, the constant rehashing of stuff we already knew, and the unnecessary exposition.
Top Floor by K.C. Faelan: DNF Top Floor was another one that I didn’t finish, although I made it much less of the way through than with Hunters. It was about a hotel bellboy in the 20s who went to work for the exacting client on the top floor of the hotel. I stopped somewhere around when the story hit “improbable Cinderella” levels, with Bad Shit still going on behind the Exacting Client’s back, while he was buying the Hotel Boy new clothes…It just hit really absurd levels with me, and I only need to know so much about fashion in the 20s, anyway.
Darksoul: Part One by Lexi Ander: Darksoul was a relief to find after two duds (and I believe a few that were best left unstarted). It’s a solid sci-fantasy world with a few different alien races who mostly get along, and one half-breed who is rescued by his father’s people because his mother’s people want to kill him, and then there are political shenanigans. Also, a human nurse who may or may not have some magic of his own, which may or may not compliment the half-breed’s. And all the uncertainties are left for the sequel! …Except while I enjoyed Darksoul, I don’t have any burning desire to read that sequel. If the story had been longer, I probably would have read all of it, but I lack the motivation to seek out more. I can’t remember why exactly, but I also hardly remember the story itself, so perhaps that explains it.
The Biggest Scoop by Gillian St. Kevern: My newest favoritest bookest. It’s a high school romance, but it manages to both take itself very seriously, and not take itself seriously at all–I think that’s helped by the fact that the MC is well aware of the fact that High School Drama doesn’t actually bleed out into the Adult World. And that, in turn, is assisted by the fact that while there’s a Dance on the line and aiding in the Plot, it’s not the be-all end-all of their existence, and no parallels between it and Marriage are made. But whatever the cause this is probably the very best of the stories in this grouping, and if you only read one, it should be this one.
Long Time Waiting by Ann Anderson: Two life-long friends decide to room together for college, and through various collegiate antics end up as lovers. It’s nothing special. Actually, it is a bit “special,” since the longer I read, the more the author felt she had to impress on me how little she knows about things like tabletop D&D. Or steam-rooms. In fact I am now doubting my own experience and understanding of those two things (among a few others) based on how strangely they were portrayed. So mostly I read it with a mild sense of alarm and cliches about train wrecks running through my head.
Reclamation by Cari Z: I stand by my comment about Biggest Scoop, but if you’ve enough time to read two stories from this list (or if you don’t have enough to read that one), this would be the second one I tell you to read. It’s a dystopian setting, where one character is a cop undercover as a stripper, and a guy who works in …uh…reclamation. The Romantic Nemesis is incredibly cliche, but otherwise this whole world and the people who inhabit it are intriguing, and dimensional, and have their own troubles and goals. It’s also full of some of the best kind of UST, and the ending is optimistically realistic, rather than fairy-tale happy. So it’s just a wonderful read, and I highly recommend it.
Divine Intervention by JC Wallace: A man survives a horrific car wreck, and refuses all help and assistance in getting back on his feet until the Love Interest comes on the scene. This was decent. There were parts of it that went…too rosy towards the end– like it was slow and reasonable until the man started getting back on his feet, and then all of a sudden, everything went perfectly and quickly (except for a few dramatic bumps for literary reasons). But it was subtle, and it was a heart warming read.
Dare to Live by Caraway Carter: Another heart warming one, this time about two old friends trying to get over the deaths of their spouses, and also hiking Machu Picchu while being 50ish. It was sweet, and endearing, and optimistic.
