Review: A Strangers on a Train Short Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 2, 2013
When Mandy joined an online dating agency she was looking for a temporary escape from her day to day life as a single mum. Her monthly dates with a handsome stranger who has never even told her his name has bought the fun back into her life, particularly when she gets to dress up and pretend to be someone else for a while as they step back in time during their role play games. At first she was happy with the lack of commitment between them but now she is starting to develop stronger feelings and she is desperate to get to know the real man behind his role play persona's. After bumping into him at a party and finally learning his true name Mandy gathers the courage to ask for more but will her stranger be willing to take a risk on love?Big Boy is one of the five stories in the Strangers on a Train series published by Samhain, each of the stories has been written by a different author (the authors involved in the collaboration are Ruthie Knox, Meg Maguire, Serena Bell, Donna Cummings & Samantha Hunter) and is currently available as an ebook but I believe there will be a print bind up containing the whole series published sometime next year. These stories can be read in any order, they are linked only by the common theme that each couple start out as strangers who meet each other on a train, so there is no cross over of characters or story lines.I'm a huge fan of Ruthie Knox and have read everything she's written so of course I couldn't wait to get my hands on her latest story. Big Boy is actually very different from her other stories but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. This is a fairly short story at only 66 pages but I was still able to connect with both of the characters and found myself willing them to find a way to make things work. Mandy has been through a lot in the last couple of years, not only is she grieving for the loss of her sister but she is also struggling to cope with the demands of being a new mother and one with very little support. She agrees to date Tyler because his profile makes her smile and the fun games they play help her completely escape from real life for one night every month. Tyler actually has his own reasons for wanting to escape from reality and they are both wary of starting a relationship when they have so much else to deal with. The historical role playing was a really interesting element to the story and I can imagine it would be a lot of fun searching for the perfect outfit for the era of their next date. Ruthie Knox has done it again and created a romance that I enjoyed every minute of, I would have loved a longer story about this couple but who knows - perhaps she can be persuaded to write about them again in the future!