Review: Another incredible Novel by author John Goode!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 18, 2013
I could quote so many passages from this book.  I could fill the page with them and none would really make the impact they have when read intact inside this incredible novel.  When your heart is impacted, your thinking challenged and your imagination delighted, you look down at the novel in your hands and realize what you have just been given to read--a gift.  A gift that resonated way beyond the words on the page and right into your corner of reality.  Yes, this was a novel about what love is and, in fact, what the author feels it is not.  But there was more here, there was the courage to say that "love is hard", and if you are up to throwing all your muscle behind the effort, love can be rewarding and, hopefully, lasting.  I liked this story not because it was a sweet love story but because it challenged me, it made me laugh, it made me cry, and it clamored around in my head long after the last page turned.Tyler Parker had experience glorious moments on the football field, riding a scholarship to play college ball and finally hoping that he could open the closet door just a bit and finally breathe, until a knee injury shot him right back to Foster, Texas and the closet that held him trapped all through high school.  As Tyler moves into his thirties, he remains steadfastly alone and hiding.  Although he has come out to his parents, he does not flaunt that he is gay, instead, he allows the town he grew up in, that worshiped him as their local football god to remain in the dark about his sexuality.Living a mere shadow of a life, he allows his friends and mother to "fix him up" only to realize that something is always lacking...it is almost too late when he realizes the thing lacking is himself, his courage to admit who he is and how he wants to live.Home for Christmas, Matt Wallace, grits his teeth to endure yet another family get together.  Its not that his family objects to his being gay or makes him feel bad in any way, its that Matt is his own worst enemy, seeking to be happy with life yet never being happy with himself.  He wants to blame Foster, his past, maybe even his family, anything and anyone but himself.  Surely he was not the problem, surely he was unhappy because of others.These two men collide and the story that unfolds casts a blinding light on what it means to grown up in a town that hides those that are different like a dirty shameful secret.  But the story doesn't stop there, no this author also forces his characters to look inward and painfully  see, for the first time, how they themselves lived as "ghosts", allowing a town to force them to hide or flee but never come out and  live honestly.When I tell you that this story is multi-layered, that there is more here than meets the eye, I am not exaggerating.  While on the surface, Taking Chances may seem like a sweet love story with a potential happy ever after, but to relegate it to that simple a label would be to do a grave injustice to what lies at the very core of this remarkable novel.  In many ways, this novel is a  window into that moment in a person's life where they must make the decision to either continue living a half existence, unhappy and hidden, or step forward, run into the scathingly harsh light that is a small town's consciousness and stand up for themselves, realizing that they will be seen for who they are for the very first time.  This story is risky, messy, and, along the way, alternately heartbreaking and laugh out loud funny.But, in the end, the reward for that act of courage?  Well, perhaps, just perhaps it is love, acceptance, and being able to breath for the very first time.  Not always...the story warns us of that in a very clear way but sometimes, it all works out.  Love is hard...never really neat, always disruptive, but oh so stunning when it finally takes root in our hearts.  I believe this is the real story behind Taking Chances by John Goode, that when we can finally be honest about who we are and realize that what others think cannot be the reason for our own happiness, why, then, even in the darkest of times, we have found true happiness inside ourselves.I highly recommend Taking Chances by John Goode to you.  While its roots lie in his young adult series, Foster High, it is an adult m/m story that can stand alone and be enjoyed without reading the series.