AUTHOR: Kaje Harper
PUBLISHER: Amazon
LENGTH: Short story
GENRE: Gay holiday romance
COST: Free
It’s Tony and Mac’s first Christmas, but they don’t get to spend it together…
When the het story I’d picked to review for today turned out be less than engaging, I decided to hell with my usual schedule and picked up this free short that follows up to the novel I reviewed yesterday. It’s currently free on Amazon, and follows a few months after the end of Life Lessons. Tony and Mac are still meeting in secret, though Mac spends every night at Tony’s apartment. Tony has to go home to Florida for Christmas, while Mac is hip-deep in police work, including a rather gruesome unsolved about an elderly man who died alone.
In a lot of ways, this is the anti-holiday story, melancholy in tone, separated heroes. Mac knows this is the way it has to be, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing otherwise. The same goes for Tony. Their relationship is fraught with all the tensions of something new, as well as the added issues of having to hide away. It’s real and gutsy, and therein lies the appeal here. This is all about loving these two guys and wanting to see how they’re handling their lives, the things they say to each other when the need is high. There’s a few info dumps about what has been going on that don’t read very smoothly, as well as some editorial glitches that hiccupped along the way, but I didn’t expect a whole lot from this self-published short. I wanted to spend time with Tony and Mac, and know they were going to be all right. That’s exactly what I got, with more than a few lovely moments to remember it by.
| Readability | 7/10 – Minor mistakes holds this back, though I love the guys enough not to mind too much |
| Hero #1 | 8/10 – His frustration bleeds through |
| Hero #2 | 8/10 – Caught in the prison of his creation, his angst is palpable |
| Entertainment value | 7/10 – Though I loved this melancholy glimpse into their lives, it didn’t have quite the flow to get me deep into the story |
| World building | 7/10 – It fills in holes, but I’m not convinced someone coming in cold would be able to understand the entire cast |
| TOTAL: | 37/50 |
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