Review: great writing & characterization
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2010
[I will never disclose a single plot detail in my reviews.  For teasers, read Amazon's Editorial Reviews, but be careful in these customer reviews.  Too many people write too-detailed grade-school style premise or plot summaries, leave off the climax, and happily delude themselves that they have somehow not spoiled the book.]Harper Fox is, quite simply, an extraordinary writer.  If her protagonists in "Life After Joe" were straight, and therefore appealing to an even broader audience, her work would be on bestseller lists.  As a gay man, I am selfishly delighted that she chooses to use her talent in the M/M genre.  She writes skillfully, with emotional honesty, for adults. This isn't a light-hearted HEA romp.  Her characters go through some serious, real-life experiences.  They are three-dimensional, and Ms. Fox inspires compassion for them, even when they make lousy choices.  I even felt a smidge for the antagonists.  Okay.  I sobbed a few times.  And I wanted to yell intermittently, helplessly, at one or another character, "Noooo ... stop!!" as they proceeded to do something destructively in-character.  The limited, steamy sex scenes (one particularly outrageous and character-revealing) alternated satisfyingly between being both deliciously descriptive (minus tired adjectives and euphemisms) and metaphorical.  Ms. Fox also paints environments evocatively yet efficiently.  And as an Anglophile living in the USA, I really enjoyed the English setting, idioms, etc.  In my estimation, Ms. Fox is in the top echelon of M/M writers.