Rating: 5 out of 5 stars ★★★★★
It’s 1986, and what should have been the greatest summer of Nate Bradford’s life goes sour when his parents suddenly divorce. Now, instead of spending his senior year in his hometown of Austin, Texas, he’s living with his father in Warren, Wyoming, population 2,833 (and Nate thinks that might be a generous estimate). There’s no swimming pool, no tennis team, no mall—not even any MTV. The entire school’s smaller than his graduating class back home, and in a town where the top teen pastimes are sex and drugs, Nate just doesn’t fit in.
Then Nate meets Cody Lawrence. Cody’s dirt-poor, from a broken family, and definitely lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Nate’s dad says Cody’s bad news. The other kids say he’s trash. But Nate knows Cody’s a good kid who’s been dealt a lousy hand. In fact, he’s beginning to think his feelings for Cody go beyond friendship.
Admitting he might be gay is hard enough, but between small-town prejudices and the growing AIDS epidemic dominating the headlines, a town like Warren, Wyoming, is no place for two young men to fall in love.
I have a weakness for Marie Sexton, she is the one who wrote one of my all time favorite characters in the mm genre (Cole from the Coda series). She’s awesome at communicating emotions and a master at writing and plotting activities. She’s left me speechless more than once.
This time around too I have no words to say how much her new release, Trailer Trash, sucked me into its world, leaving me breathless and sleepless. The characters she created were all (unsurprisingly) someone I could soon relate with and love ’till the end and more. Someone I could easily become best friends with.
The story took place in the 1986 in the middle of nowhere.
It’s August, Cody and Nate meet outside a gas station where Nate tries to buy a pack of cigarettes although not eighteen yet and then gives one to Cody. It’s the start of a new relationship. An ostensibly impossible and not recommended friendship between two young men so different from each other but with a beautiful future to share.
Nate’s parents just divorced, he would have preferred to stay in Austin with his mum but he had to follow his dad to a new town. He is planning to stay here only one year, graduate and then leave. School starts in three weeks and he’s looking for someone to hang with. He is frustrated, there is nothing to do in this town, apart from Cody.
Cody grew up in the wrong side of the town. He lives in a trailer with his mum who works as a waitress, they struggle with money a lot. He has nothing in common with the new boy and he already knows he’s going to lose Nate as soon as school starts and Nate will meet the cool guys. What he doesn’t know is that Nate doesn’t like these cool kids, they are surely similar to him than Cody but there is too much sex, alcohol and drugs and Nate doesn’t fit in all of this.
Nate and Cody are socially the opposite. But they fit amazingly together and the strength of unknown and unexpected feelings will bring them together again after a tragedy wrecked Cody’s life.
I connected with these great MCs from the start, I felt all their emotions in my soul. It wasn’t a surprise, because I already knew the author’s qualities, but I shared a deep care and respect for some of the secondary characters too, especially with their parents and the lovely Logan. He is the only one who had never avoided Cody, on the contrary he offers him to work for his family as a dishwasher. Logan is the first to support Cody whether he is gay or not. He is the best friend anyone would want.
The story hurt a little in some moments, seeing Cody so lonely, Nate’s struggle with his newly discovered sexuality to the point of forcing himself to like girls, the name calling from the other kids, and so much more, tragedy not excluded. All of these gave me a perfect ending. I couldn’t ask for something more. Of course being greedy, I’d love to have a sequel, something set in the present, thirty years later.
I think it’s clear I loved Trailer Trash, it’s emotional, deep and well written, it felt very realistic to me and I want to highly recommend it to everyone.
The cover art by Jay Aheer is marvelous and I’m appreciating this artist style more with every cover I see.
Sales Links: Riptide Publishing | ARe | Amazon those links to follow
Book Details:
ebook, 340 pages
Expected publication: March 21st 2016 by Riptide Publishing
ISBN 1626493952 (ISBN13: 9781626493957)
Edition LanguageEnglish
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 