Review: An excellent, well-crafted story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 1, 2013
Vary rarely does one of my passions outside of my book addiction becoming the focal point of a book I’m reading. Spokes by PD Singer is that rare exception and it was a joy to read. I first heard about Spokes at GRL in Atlanta when Eden Winters came up to me and said I had to read this book she knew I’d love it. While I do triathlons I’ve always been intrigued with road cycling and my favorite part of the triathlon is the bike. When I’m out training and I get passed on the road by the large peloton it is both scary and impressive to see the cyclist all working together and in synch. It is quite a sight to behold. It is also very dangerous, one wrong move and you can take the whole pack down. This story takes us deep into the pro-cycling world and what happens when a two men fall for each other but their respective lives make it really difficult to be anything more than secret lovers.Spokes is told from Christopher Nye’s POV. He’s a part-time writer for Cyclo World, works in a bike shop and in his spare time loves to ride his bike throughout the hills of Colorado with his best friend Stu. His pro cycling idol is Luca Biondi who has started training in Colorado to take advantage of the high altitudes. Meeting briefly at the bike shop followed by an encounter out on the road, Luca and Chris form a friendship that quickly grows into a relationship but one that must be kept secret. Luca can’t afford for anyone either on his team or in the cycling world to know he is gay. He has too many concerns about reaction from the cycling world especially since he is on a new team, has new sponsors and can’t afford for people to know about him and Chris.Luca and Chris are very sweet together but while Luca is racing in Europe and Chris awaits his chance to visit, Chris’ job as a reporter brings near disaster to their relationship. I was on the edge of my seat and in near tears as everything seemed to crumble apart. There were several sections in the book with even more emotion because cycling is a dangerous sport, but for me their relationship had me sucked in. I wish I could have read Luca’s POV; I wanted desperately to know how he felt about Chris. I know his actions spoke for him but just to know what he thought of Chris like was his attraction as strong, did he suffer as much? They have a sweet relationship but the story is not erotic. Chris and Luca have several steamy scenes but it does not overtake the pages of the book which I prefer. It worked really well with the flow of their relationship and story. Luca is written with a heavy Italian accent which read like I thought an Italian would speak English although occasionally he came across like a caveman in my head but overall he does come across as a native Italian speaker.As for the cycling, I learned so much about road cycling in this story and loved learning about other races besides the Tour de France. The best part however was learning all about Il Santuario della Madonna del Ghisallo, the patron saint of cycling. It is a church located close to Como Italy and becomes a focal point of the story. Ms. Singer did an amazing job with the visualization of the church and the statue there. I even googled it after finishing the book to see for myself what the church looked like (picture below). There are a lot of biking details throughout the book that I hope the reader will appreciate as much as I did. The visualization was excellent because I could imagine the routes, the races and Chris’ apartment. Some scenes I wanted a bit more depth to them such as a big one between Chris and Stu just so I could get a clearer understanding of what happened but it didn’t impact the story in any way.Overall, an excellent, well-crafted story that was a perfect blend of romance and cycling…a rare find!