Review: A book that will not kill more of your brain cells
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 8, 2014
First of all,if you are into books about shifter's pregnant mates or the archtipical love story with saccharine romance, a bit of conflict towards the end and a happy ever after with a couple of lovely adopted children and one or two pets, this is not for you. As it has already been said there's cheating. I don't care and I don't get the moralistic up hand and prudish point of view about stories. It's fiction, for funksake! If I wanted to be righteous I would be reading Mormon romance or the likes. I liked this book. A lot. I like that the author has a story to tell and she's not afraid of writing her characters as not perfect, not loveable. At all. Matter of fact, they are quite imperfect, sometimes shady, corruptible, inscrutable, morally dubious, indecisive and lacking backbone. This is the story of two men, two attorneys starting a relationship in the midst of a complex legal case regarding fraud, inside trading ( remember Martha Steward?) and other niceties of the sort. Maybe even killings. Perhaps. Joseph is the big shot lawyer, more or less openly gay. Difficult to gauge, always keeping his distance. Quite uncompromising. Ryan is the new boy in town or the new attorney in office. Inexperienced, quite naive and in huge denial of his sexuality. They fall in lust quite soon and there we have the clean cut Texan boy cheating on her fiancee for not just a few days. The story follows the progress of his and Joseph's sometimes uncomfortable love ? affair as well as the legal case in question, including important secondary characters like Ryan's dad and the owner of the questioned company. Its not an easy tale. Joseph is kinda coldish and shady. Ryan is immature, a pushover and has some wishful delusions of grandeur.He wants to make it big in the legal arena and we can't really see if he really loves J or everything is a convoluted mess of lust and ambitions. Joseph seems to be even more complicated and we get to see it in the epilogue.Well, I'm not gonna spoil it. But beware the book ends up in a sort of cliffhanger, although not clearly stated as that. There's no resolution.Anyway, I loved it. I didn't like that much the 3rd. Person present tense writing style. It made for a colder and more distanced tale. But that's me and probably was the writer's intention. There were a few plot holes (very few) or/and some abrupt changes of paces that should have been smoothed by the editors, but lately seems that editors;like newspapers' correctors are an extincted species. The sex stuff isn't in your face. Thanks Thor there are not extensive depictions of the male genitals, like frenulums and the sorts.;-) Sorry, m/m authors, but gets boring and even annoying after awhile! Only one full sex scene, and short. But several BJ's and HJ's so you still can see that the thrill is NOT gone. :-).Wrapping it up: Ms Bond, great debut novel. Much better that many books lately published by established authors.Thanks for giving me a plot, a story and layered characters so I can delay a bit more the onslaught of brain celulite, just by using my mind to think a little.And last but not least: Your story is obviously unfinished. Please, write me the rest, even if you're not ready to make nice. Just sayin'