Review: A fairy tale for Christmas
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 31, 2013
Amy Lane brought me a fairy tale for Christmas. Well, a contemporary fairy tale, to be sure, but it embodied the soul of a classic. "Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived in a tower. He had been born to a king and a queen in the kingdom of San Francisco, and he was raised by nannies and boarding schools. He was a good child. He did everything he was told. He never questioned his world, and his rebellions, on the whole, were very, very small." And so began the story of Zach and how he finally got his knight to rescue him from his tower.Zach is sad, but he doesn't even know it, and that probably makes it even more sorrowful. Someone looking in at his life might wonder what he has to be sad about. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, was educated at the best schools, is wealthy, owns his own law firm handling union violations, and lives in a gorgeous penthouse. He has no one to share his life with, though. No close friends, and certainly not a boyfriend since he's hidden that part of himself from his parents his whole life. He isn't close with his parents and I don't blame him for that. They are the type of people to care more about society than the happiness of their only child. So it comes as a bit of a shock to his system when he realizes that after running into the same guy in the elevator, twice, that Zach is smiling, of all things.Sean is a teacher, looking for a job and sharing an apartment in Zach's building with five other people. Sean does a lot of substitute work while looking for a full time job and I'd have loved having a teacher like him in the eighth grade! He dresses for his students depending on what he's teaching and that gives him and Zach stuff to talk about while they ride the elevator together. Well, that and the outfits he has to wear doing singing telegrams for money. *snort* Of course, Sean doesn't know that Zach has been timing his leaving just so he can share the elevator with Sean. The part where Zach tells his parents he's gay, at a fundraiser for his father's Republican political campaign, was priceless and I loved it. Nobody should ever have to hide who they are.I love that there are always, and I mean always, phenomenal secondary characters in this author's work. The problem? Then I want books about them, even if they're heterosexual! Leah is Zach's secretary and, in my opinion, she and his infrequent elevator dates with Sean are part of the reason the prince begins to venture away from his frozen tower. She is amazing and becomes Zach's first real friend he's ever had, which gives him the courage to open up a little, to smile more, to break out of his cocoon. Not to mention that Leah and her roommate are giving Zach an education in…ummm…how should I say it? Vulgarity? Women? "Leah moved around him but her arms stayed firmly planted at his ribs. 'God you're short,' he said, wondering how he'd managed to work with her for three years and live without the hugs and the companionship and the crude sense of humor and the best friend who made him laugh.""He couldn't explain it. He couldn't. It was like his entire life, he'd thought he knew what breathing was, what pleasurable meant, what human connection could be. He was wrong. So, so far off the mark, so far short of what the world was about." Zach got his knight in shining armor and Sean got to save his prince from the tower. And, how do all those tales end? Oh yeah. They lived happily ever after.