Review: And unusual couple that really caught my interest
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 30, 2011
Scott lives in a homeless shelter in New Orleans and has since before and after hurricane Katrina. He works at Tiffany's Waffle and Wing place where they are like his family, Miss Tiffany keeps an eye on him and some of the regulars from the drag bar are his friends. One morning he is mugged by a junkie and as he's about to get beaten a large black man saves him but takes him money. Tony lives in an abandoned house and has no job but refuses to sell drugs or himself in memory of his Grandma. Tony lost his family in Katrina. He feels bad for taking Scott's last $5 and after earning a little money unloading trucks he gives Scott his money back and walks him home to the shelter. Scott then agrees to move into Tony's house with him and they start a relationship.This was a very interesting book as you are dealing with two essentially homeless young men (20) although Scott has a savings account at the bank and works 12 hour shifts with tips so he's not broke. While Tony's house has water, there is no electricity and it's boarded over. The only niggle I had was going over the time-line. Scott is mugged on Saturday morning, actually meets Tony on Sunday afternoon and moves in with him the same night and they declare their love on about Tuesday night. Whoa. What I liked was how wanting to be with Scott made Tony a better guy, he went to the fruit market and started offering to work rather than stealing and he started a relationship with one of the vendors. Scott was also the more aggressive sexually in that it was his idea to go to the drug store and get condoms which kind of shocked Tony. Not that he was inexperienced but wasn't so open about it. So what about the timing thing? This book had me laying in bed this morning thinking about this so Lynn obviously did her work and it stuck with me. These are two young guys, both abandoned by their families, both homeless and lost and looking for a connection, so yeah, no time to waste pussyfooting around and dating for 3 months, who knows what can happen, you've seen your life nearly snuffed out in seconds. I could also see Scott wanting out of the shelter, even if it's to an abandoned house where he doesn't have to live with a bunch of other people. So perhaps from that perspective it seemed normal for them to move that quickly. It made Tony start to think about having a real apartment and a home, not a squat somewhere, they kind of brought out the best in each other. So I enjoyed this book and as I said, it made me think about how different life experiences affect the decisions you make. So if you're looking for a book with a different vibe to it, I recommend it. Oh and the cover is prefect even if Scott was skinnier.