Review: Fairly good M/M military story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 19, 2014
I was in the Army, had a Secret Clearance, and agreed with my friends who had to deal with being gay or Bi in the military.  This is the story of Will, a bartender, who meets Captain Mike Kelly at the club he is working in.  They go for a drink after work and Mike explains he has requirements before intimacy.  Will is thinking this is a brush off, but they continue to see each other and no sex.  Will and Mike enter into a form of BDSM more usually practiced by hetero couples where the man is dominant and the couple consents to rules and punishments for not following them. The college friends, male and female, seem worried about the new relationship and the interventions do not stop even after Will and Mike married.What was right:  Ms. Borino did a good job of explaining the DD relationship that Mike and Will entered into and how Mike's foster care roots and OCD played into the relationship.  I myself have never trusted anyone in my life to enter a relationship of that sort.  The problems the military is still having with the repeal of DADT and the inequity of the way spouses in Lesbian or Gay relationships are treated is accurately portrayed.  The military has to speed up its reforms so all legal spouses are treated the same.  The aftermath of the recovering from his injuries was fairly good, but does not take into account some of the problems with medical treatment inside the military hospitals as well as the VA treatment problems.What was wrong:  I always joke about how 50 Shades of Gray came out and all of a sudden everyone was writing about BDSM.  Someone starts selling books about committed threesome and that all you see.  Someone else starts writing about two gay or Bi guys looking for a woman for their third and women start hitting on the two hot gay guys down the hall.  In this case, Ms. Borino takes this way to far in a storyline that should have been edited out.  It made her good research dull by the absurdity of the female college friend/bad guy.  This story did not require a bad guy, but it sure needed a good editor.  There were missing words and sentences that did not make sense (the usual spell check editing).  The conversation was stilted and no it was not just Mike's character.  The other thing that really bugged me was how Mike came up with perfect recall after suffering an explosion and the trauma of having a wall crush his arm and after 3 hours having it amputated on site.  I had a mini stroke and after a year my mind was not great.  I volunteered working with a non-profit and worked with autism to brain trauma to patients who had parts of their brains removed from violent convulsions.  It is amazing the things the brain can fix, but not in the short amount of time in her story.  The story idea was good and most of the research was spot on.  I liked the characters, but Ms. Borino's writing is not to the point where she does not need a great editor.  On the plus side, neither is Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton so keep writing and get a good editor.  I did like the title as a loving goodbye.