AUTHOR: Bryn Colvin
PUBLISHER: loveyoudivine
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 10k)
GENRE: Fantasy erotica
COST: $2.50
Charley Bowman’s life is nothing as he imagined it might be. At thirty-two, he lives with his parents, has no friends, a dead-end job, and has never been in love. Until he spies a marble statue in the cemetery he cuts through twice a day for work. It’s the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. It deserves attention. It deserves care. It deserves love…
This is the second story I’ve read by this author, though the first erotic piece. It won’t be the last. The author has a delicate touch in her writing, as well as a way of creating transcendent characters that completely appeals to me. In this, it’s Charley. Poor, lonely, sad little Charley. There’s nothing special about him. He still lives with his parents. He’s got an awful, mundane job. He doesn’t have friends. It would be so easy to make a character like this pathetic, but under Colvin’s skillful touch, he’s not. At his core is a hopeful heart, something a lot of authors miss when trying to write this kind of character. His spirit carries the story through, from the haunting prose at the beginning where he walks through a cemetery that felt as real as my back yard, to his rush through the rain near the end, where I practically felt the raindrops dribble down the back of my neck.
It’s this identification with the main hero that makes this haunting, melancholy story such a compelling read. The relationship he develops with the angel walks a fine line between creepy and heartwarming. When the story turns erotic, it’s his emotions that give the various scenes their real depth. This is not a romance, not in the genre sense of the word, but the love that permeates every page in this is practically palpable. It’s probably one of the most romantic erotica shorts I’ve read, at turns sweet and torturous, hopeful and agonizing. It’s not perfect. The editing isn’t the tightest I’ve ever seen, with enough silly typos to mar my enjoyment, and it can, at times, be overwritten. Those two factors are likely the reasons the climax didn’t punch me in the gut the way I’m sure it was intended.
Still, I’m coming to admire the fact that this e-publisher is willing to put out erotica that cuts across the norm. This is a piece I will remember, and Charley a hero I’ll ache for, for months to come.
| Readability | 8/10 – A lyrical melancholy makes this flow |
| Hero | 9/10 – The soul of this shy, average, Plain Joe permeates every page. |
| Heroine | 5/10 – An object of his focus in more ways than one |
| Entertainment value | 8/10 – The ending didn’t have quite the impact it probably could have, but this haunting story still got to me. |
| World building | 9/10 – The haunting atmosphere of the cemetery does half the work into sucking the reader in. |
| TOTAL: | 39/50 |
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