Review: The Chase: contemporary male-male with very likable characters
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 19, 2013
It’s a familiar story: the father who can’t deal with his son’s sexual orientation, the son who compensates and punishes through manipulation and self-indulgence. Brew returns home after years away, living off the largesse of his father’s fortune, to find nothing much has changed. Tasked with taking care of the house while his parents are called away to tend to the father’s dying brother, Brew is maneuvered into working for an old family friend, Roy Grayson, a rancher with a looming problem with the BLM and their claim to rights to a substantial portion of the ranch property.Brew is willing to give the job offer a try, despite the tasks being very far from his comfort zone of intellectual pursuits and total  immersion in the SoCal gay subculture.Chase is Roy’s son, a hardworking young man, who has struggled silently with his sexual orientation, although he never took it further than an apparent obsession with a former high school student: Brew, the object of his dreams and lusts. Chase explores his inner landscape by writing out his fantasies and sexual desires.The two young men are thrown together to work on the ranch and, not surprisingly, the attraction is immediate, intense and quite sensuous. They are adults, they have the means and opportunity, and Brew takes steps to initiate Chase into the pleasures of male-male sexual encounters. Along the way, each man comes to realize that their attraction is far more than skin deep, especially for Brew for whom relationships with other men had been a frequent, albeit far from long-lasting feature in his life.Against the backdrop of their sensual explorations is the subplot of corporate greed and collusion with a government agent that threatens a family’s ties to the land and its long history. Some of the better scenes involve Brew and Chase pursuing ways to outwit the machinations of those looking to strip them of their heritage.Brew extends a plea for help from his father but the death of his uncle means he will have to rely on his own wits to come up with a solution that will satisfy an informal appeals process.The characters are likeable, the issues contemporary, the setting interesting, the tone upbeat and sensual. For me, the HEA came too soon (very early on in the narrative). I would have preferred a more in-depth character study, more conflict between the characters, and less of a ‘tying up loose ends’ approach to the finale.But that’s just me. For others, this is a very pleasant read, with extensive ‘scenes of affection’ handled (no pun intended) competently without requiring a GPS, and an ending that works reasonably well.The editing is better-than-average (and I am a stickler). Would I journey back to Noble, Nevada for more adventures? You betcha.For this genre (male-male romance) it’s a solid read, four stars.