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cyphomandraAnxiety disorders
Heidi Cullinan, Dirty Laundry. Adam is a post-grad entomology student with OCD and generalised anxiety disorder who is bullied by frat boys in a Laundromat and saved by Denver, a muscle-bound bouncer in cowboy hat and boots (and other clothes) who then has hot and slightly kinky sex with him in a pile of (clean) laundry. I liked this one a lot until about three-quarters of the way through, when it briefly became a BDSM sex toy catalogue (also, Denver, despite previously just picking up twinks from the bar for one-nighters, appears to have spent his spare time constructing his own playroom complete with fairly time-intensive bondage equipment for this sort of ships-in-the-night approach). I also liked the idea of the supportive female best friend being trans but, wow, I wish she'd actually had her own agenda rather than just talking Adam out of a panic attack, providing him with a kink-friendly trans therapist, and being an object lesson in Sometimes Things Aren't What They're Meant To Be. Probably the best for anxiety disorders intersecting with life, although Adam's big panic attack didn't really come across as that much worse than his others.
Ex-con
Sloan Parker, Breathe. Lincoln McCaw gets out of prison without his job, his car (he caused a fatal car accident) and his partner, and hits the bars. He meets Jay, the husband of the woman he killed, also lost and unable to move on, and they get together, a process hampered by their own feelings, Jay's family and in-laws, and an evil but almost totally unconvincing stalker who is sending threatening letters to Lincoln and then begins to act on them. I actually thought this did a surprisingly good job of selling me on the central romance. The mystery bits didn't work all that well - too much trying to make you think everyone was a suspect - but I'd give the author another go.
Felicia Watson, Where the Allagheny meets the Monongahela. Starts with Logan Crane, a mechanic, having one of those days where all the bad choices he's made (including staying highly closeted) come crashing down on him, which gets even worse when he hits his wife in an argument. Post-sentence and in a counselling program for domestic abusers, Logan offers to help teach women at a shelter basic car maintenance, and meets Nick Zales, openly gay, a counsellor for abused women, and holding a deep hatred for wife abusers that stems from his father beating his mother multiple times, but in the end so badly that she is now demented. Against all odds, this was actually a good, thoughtful romance, with believable caution on both sides and any number of characters prepared to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes. I liked it a lot and am only annoyed that it's the author's first.
Also, I found the bit where Nick confronts his dad in prison and, among other things, tells him he's gay, totally and inappropriately amusing (his father: "Guess I got no room to talk [...] what the hell do you think I've been doin' for sex these last twenty years?")
Ex-con meets person with anxiety disorder
J.D. Ruskin, When One Door Opens. Logan (obviously not a name to pick if you want to avoid the prison system) is a 6 ft 7 shaven-headed ex-con alcoholic lucky enough to get a job as a package handler after getting out of prison. Then his boss offers him additional cash to deliver groceries to Caleb, his nephew, who is severely agoraphobic. Logan is attracted to Caleb and tries to help him, a help that becomes mutual as Logan struggles with staying sober and also gets caught up in possible criminal activities at work. Another first book, this has a great start, a lot of interesting characters (Logan's AA sponsor, Stacy, and his parole officer, Dabb, are both well-rounded) and the non-get together plot is actually believable. It also does an excellent job of having the obvious plot show up early - it's established that Caleb would not leave his house in a life-threatening situation, but the obvious subsequent development is not saved for a dramatic climax, and works much better for it.
Unfortunately there isn't quite enough oomph to get through the rest of the story, and in particular if Caleb was that bad then he does recover enough to make it to a baseball game remarkably quickly - it was a nice scene, but I didn't think they'd earned it. I am also not convinced that Logan is obviously every gay man's type.
Nates
Katie Porter, Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Kyle Wakefield, an up-and-coming film producer who spends almost no time on the phone or actually working, is shooting an action film in London, and has hired a stunt firm specialising in rehabbing ex-cons run by his own ex, Nathan Carnes, whom he split up with under suitable tragic miscommunication circumstances thirteen years ago. Kyle is unconvincingly closeted (in Hollywood? As a producer?) and therefore agonises over whether to get back with Nate while the two of them have rather lengthy sex all over London to the soundtrack of that band they liked when they were teenagers (no, really, they go to a club where the song that was playing the first time they had sex is on - despite the fact that the actual band, also performing, isn't coming out (pun not intended) for another hour or so). Also, apparently, the band's roadies act as a foreign exchange, as Kyle bribes them with two hundred *dollar* bills so that he and Nate can have some more improbable sex under the stage during the performance. The Big Misunderstanding (which neither character reveals until the climax, despite the fact that they both knew what went on) is the usual My Rich Parents Tried to Buy You Off, and there's a dramatic stunt sequence that goes wrong, and, really, I mainly just finished this one because I was walking the dog and didn't have anything else much to do.
Sam B. Morgan, A Rookie Move. Mike is a seasoned closeted cop who falls for Nate, his former trainee-now-partner from a wealthy family with a fiancee (who leaves fairly quickly). After a lot of agonising, eventual snogging, and a blow job, Nate shoots a woman at a domestic violence call-out and then the two of then (um, Nate and Mike) have lengthy full-on sex during Nate's three-day compulsory stand-down. I was more than a little disturbed by this method of getting the characters together (the woman is killed, by the way). There's a bunch more sex, more agonising, and at least the two of them end up partnering other cops at work (but being out as a couple), but I really didn't get past the whole shooting incident.
I also read Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, which I am completely unable to incorporate into any of these categories. It did remind me how much I liked the original Star Wars movies, though.
Heidi Cullinan, Dirty Laundry. Adam is a post-grad entomology student with OCD and generalised anxiety disorder who is bullied by frat boys in a Laundromat and saved by Denver, a muscle-bound bouncer in cowboy hat and boots (and other clothes) who then has hot and slightly kinky sex with him in a pile of (clean) laundry. I liked this one a lot until about three-quarters of the way through, when it briefly became a BDSM sex toy catalogue (also, Denver, despite previously just picking up twinks from the bar for one-nighters, appears to have spent his spare time constructing his own playroom complete with fairly time-intensive bondage equipment for this sort of ships-in-the-night approach). I also liked the idea of the supportive female best friend being trans but, wow, I wish she'd actually had her own agenda rather than just talking Adam out of a panic attack, providing him with a kink-friendly trans therapist, and being an object lesson in Sometimes Things Aren't What They're Meant To Be. Probably the best for anxiety disorders intersecting with life, although Adam's big panic attack didn't really come across as that much worse than his others.
Ex-con
Sloan Parker, Breathe. Lincoln McCaw gets out of prison without his job, his car (he caused a fatal car accident) and his partner, and hits the bars. He meets Jay, the husband of the woman he killed, also lost and unable to move on, and they get together, a process hampered by their own feelings, Jay's family and in-laws, and an evil but almost totally unconvincing stalker who is sending threatening letters to Lincoln and then begins to act on them. I actually thought this did a surprisingly good job of selling me on the central romance. The mystery bits didn't work all that well - too much trying to make you think everyone was a suspect - but I'd give the author another go.
Felicia Watson, Where the Allagheny meets the Monongahela. Starts with Logan Crane, a mechanic, having one of those days where all the bad choices he's made (including staying highly closeted) come crashing down on him, which gets even worse when he hits his wife in an argument. Post-sentence and in a counselling program for domestic abusers, Logan offers to help teach women at a shelter basic car maintenance, and meets Nick Zales, openly gay, a counsellor for abused women, and holding a deep hatred for wife abusers that stems from his father beating his mother multiple times, but in the end so badly that she is now demented. Against all odds, this was actually a good, thoughtful romance, with believable caution on both sides and any number of characters prepared to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes. I liked it a lot and am only annoyed that it's the author's first.
Also, I found the bit where Nick confronts his dad in prison and, among other things, tells him he's gay, totally and inappropriately amusing (his father: "Guess I got no room to talk [...] what the hell do you think I've been doin' for sex these last twenty years?")
Ex-con meets person with anxiety disorder
J.D. Ruskin, When One Door Opens. Logan (obviously not a name to pick if you want to avoid the prison system) is a 6 ft 7 shaven-headed ex-con alcoholic lucky enough to get a job as a package handler after getting out of prison. Then his boss offers him additional cash to deliver groceries to Caleb, his nephew, who is severely agoraphobic. Logan is attracted to Caleb and tries to help him, a help that becomes mutual as Logan struggles with staying sober and also gets caught up in possible criminal activities at work. Another first book, this has a great start, a lot of interesting characters (Logan's AA sponsor, Stacy, and his parole officer, Dabb, are both well-rounded) and the non-get together plot is actually believable. It also does an excellent job of having the obvious plot show up early - it's established that Caleb would not leave his house in a life-threatening situation, but the obvious subsequent development is not saved for a dramatic climax, and works much better for it.
Unfortunately there isn't quite enough oomph to get through the rest of the story, and in particular if Caleb was that bad then he does recover enough to make it to a baseball game remarkably quickly - it was a nice scene, but I didn't think they'd earned it. I am also not convinced that Logan is obviously every gay man's type.
Nates
Katie Porter, Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Kyle Wakefield, an up-and-coming film producer who spends almost no time on the phone or actually working, is shooting an action film in London, and has hired a stunt firm specialising in rehabbing ex-cons run by his own ex, Nathan Carnes, whom he split up with under suitable tragic miscommunication circumstances thirteen years ago. Kyle is unconvincingly closeted (in Hollywood? As a producer?) and therefore agonises over whether to get back with Nate while the two of them have rather lengthy sex all over London to the soundtrack of that band they liked when they were teenagers (no, really, they go to a club where the song that was playing the first time they had sex is on - despite the fact that the actual band, also performing, isn't coming out (pun not intended) for another hour or so). Also, apparently, the band's roadies act as a foreign exchange, as Kyle bribes them with two hundred *dollar* bills so that he and Nate can have some more improbable sex under the stage during the performance. The Big Misunderstanding (which neither character reveals until the climax, despite the fact that they both knew what went on) is the usual My Rich Parents Tried to Buy You Off, and there's a dramatic stunt sequence that goes wrong, and, really, I mainly just finished this one because I was walking the dog and didn't have anything else much to do.
Sam B. Morgan, A Rookie Move. Mike is a seasoned closeted cop who falls for Nate, his former trainee-now-partner from a wealthy family with a fiancee (who leaves fairly quickly). After a lot of agonising, eventual snogging, and a blow job, Nate shoots a woman at a domestic violence call-out and then the two of then (um, Nate and Mike) have lengthy full-on sex during Nate's three-day compulsory stand-down. I was more than a little disturbed by this method of getting the characters together (the woman is killed, by the way). There's a bunch more sex, more agonising, and at least the two of them end up partnering other cops at work (but being out as a couple), but I really didn't get past the whole shooting incident.
I also read Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, which I am completely unable to incorporate into any of these categories. It did remind me how much I liked the original Star Wars movies, though.
