Review: emotional
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 12, 2012
While this M/M romance has its flaws, several flaws actually, it also sports that special quality that is essential to these light reads: it plunges its reader into its pages making him care for the lovers and their happily ever after.As a critical reviewer has pointed out, editing is quite an issue here. Typos abound and there are some obnoxious name switches as well. Once Karl is even called "Kyle".Editing aside, some pages are overwritten and overdescribed. There is also a tendency to overindulge emotional strains and exacerbate conflicts.On the other hand, when not overdone, the same emotional streaks keep the pages alive and the characters interesting. Karl and Paul feel very real, very much alive, very endearing. They are lovable and beautiful enough to star in a romance but not as perfect as to come out plaster-like. Side characters are also good, contributing to the heart-warming feeling of this read.This novel is also quite long and deals with several rather thorny issues: bullying, disability, repentance, guilt trips, closeted homosexuality and its consequences, single parenting, homosexual parents and fetish sex... It is part of its charm that the author manages to cram them all into a single novel with only occasional slips into the overwritten strains mentioned above. At the same time one could wonder if some of these issues would not have been better left aside.My personal choice would have been closeted homosexuality and fetish sex.As the same critical reviewer has pointed out the emotional depth of the novel probably would have been deeper if the author had NOT chosen to make a closeted homosexual of Paul, one who always knew he should not have married his wife. After all the "usual" guilt-trips of a widower chosing to move on after the death of a former partner are already quite a "truck-load" to deal with.As sex scenes are rather sparse, the fetish would have probably been better left out as well. Or there could have been more sex scenes so as to set the fetish ones in a broader context: the first time we actually "see" Paul and Karl going "all the way" they do it fetish-ly...All in all this could have been better but is nonetheless a satifying read. I downloaded it for free but would not have minded paying some.