Review: 4.5 stars. Best menage I've read so far
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 26, 2011
4.5 stars. ****spoiler alert****I consider myself still new to m/m and I don't usually choose menage books, let's say I read them when they happen to me (the books, obviously, not menage). I don't think I've ever read a menage book where I saw all the persons involved start together and it was great.The book is written in first person and there is only the narrator's point-of-view. When the perspective is so restricted I have a doubt lingering that: first, there are parts of the story or feelings that will always be out of reach for me; second, that not every single person in the menage gets what they really need.As for my first concern, it's not the case here, because the narrator, Luke, is the less open of the three. Richard, the older man, is rather pushy and bossy, probably because he is the most experienced of them and he really knows what he wants. When something doesn't go as he's planned, he talks about it and he goes deep into it, until everything is explained. Matthew, the younger man, carries his heart on his sleeve and he is sweet and affectionate. He is the one who can calm the other two and his generous sensuality is soothing and arousing at the same time. It's like Richard is the brain in the relationship and Matthew is the heart. But what is Luke? That's hard to say. Maybe he's the gut, the least noble part of the body but what makes it function, he is the courage to want to change. And this solves my other concern: each one of them gets what he needs from this relationship: someone to love and to care for and to go home to for Richard; someone who lets you be and appreciates you for what you are for Matthew; a safe harbour where you can be free for Richard.Sex is an important part in the relationship and there's a lot of it, but it is always a way to communicate and it's never meaningless. At least it's never meaningless for the narrator, because Luke is probably the one who needs sex to express his feelings and frustrations, because he is also the one who cannot say how he feels.The only reason I can't give 5 stars is that Luke's father is too bad. I think only the fact that he was a famous politician, running for the presidency and trying to hide he had a gay son was enough. (spoiler)*** The fact that he had been in love with another man and renounced it for his career was bad enough, and I could have believed that he envied his son in a way, but paying male prostitutes for himself, having his son's lover "cured" from homosexuality, stalking Luke, threatening him with a gun, it was too much, so just something less could have been enough to make the reader hate him, without turning the man in the epitome of evil.*** (end spoiler)It's a great book, it's rather long, but Luke kept me glued page after page, while he was struggling to be a better man for and through the love of Richard and Matthew.