Review: Redemption
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2014
Eden Winters is looking at the other end of romance—what happens in a long relationship when trouble’s brewing? This short gives us a look at breaking, healing, and rekindling of what had been so good for so long.Ian is too stinking proud to chase after Travis when he left, even to ask why. The wound in their twenty-plus year relationship has been festering, with neither willing to cut loose, but neither willing to reach out. A milestone anniversary and a persistent son get them back in the same room long enough to see what went wrong and get a glimmer of how to fix it.Ian is our PoV character, and the inside of his head isn’t very comfortable. He feels wronged and slighted, and justified in thinking that at long last he’ll sever the tie Travis frayed by leaving. He misses Travis bitterly, but pride is a deadly sin. The author proceeds to deliver a reality check of monumental proportions, starting with finding out how Ian cut Travis out of their friend’s lives, and adding smack after smack until Ian is forced to confront the fact that he’s actually been a douchecanoe.Travis has his own demons—clinical depression played with his judgment, leaving him unable to speak up for himself. When he does speak up, Ian’s horrified by what he has to say.It’s a huge turnaround for Ian to acknowledge his shortcomings, and it’s also a major struggle for Travis to emerge from his depression and decide how he wants to truly live. This is Eden Winters writing: her characters end up happy but they have to work for it. Hard. Really, really hard.Leaving aside the issue of how they went so long before they actually got to the most basic question, (my one quibble), this is a lovely story of redemption and love restored.