A Boy Called Rainbow, by Robin Knight

[Ulysses]

A Boy Called Rainbow
By Robin Knight
Published by the author, 2023
Four stars

A juicy full-on M/M romance that I read during a rainstorm, which was completely appropriate.

A deaf young man, neglected and abused all his life by his rich family and selfish, greedy older brother, Rainbow Fontaine lives alone in a ramshackle beach house near Hope Bluff, Georgia. Miles Tate is hired by the older Fontaine brother, a corrupt local lawyer, to appraise the collection of paintings by Odette Fontaine – the young men’s late grandmother. Rainbow guards these paintings, and Odette’s house, with his life, while his brother plots with his cronies to break Odette’s will and steal Rainbow’s inheritance.

Miles Tate knows something about loss, both in his youth and much more recently, when his dreams of opening a gallery in New York fell to pieces in a perfect storm of betrayal and humiliation. Miles comes to Hope Bluff to make money and start over; but he finds something more precious than he could have ever imagined.

This is pure melodrama, but so tenderly rendered as to be impossible to resist (if you’re a romantic, and who else reads romance novels???). Miles Tate, so caught up in his own inner vision for the future, was blind to what was going on around him. Rainbow, having taken shelter in the one place where he felt safe from the cruelty of the world, was deaf—literally and figuratively—to everything but his circumscribed existence.

And then there’s the hurricane, and the cats, and the dog, and the mouse. And there’s Delphine, hostess of the Hope Bluff Inn and protector of Rainbow Fontaine. For all its simple romantic plot, Robin Knight uses metaphors and portents beautifully, building an emotional crescendo and a surprise twist at the end that made me want to cheer.