Review:  Ice Around the Edges by Mary Calmes

Rating: 3🌈

Ice Around the Edges by Mary Calmes is a perfect example of how a story written years ago (December 2010) and re-released just doesn’t hold up in present times.  At least not without making some major changes and narrative length. 

I’m a fan of Calmes and her characters but this storyline is full of elements that demonstrate how certain aspects of a relationship has changed over time.  Things now that raise flags and are considered warning signs for a person weren’t really well known fourteen years ago. Or elements that would have factored into contemporary romances.

The basic story is that this couple broke up because one of them, the one who had the most money and wealthiest family heard his father and grandfather arguing over his “friend” saying he wasn’t good enough.  So without further information or arguments on their behalf, the rich son , Dixon Bain, immediately broke up with the other man Evan Kano, and never saw him again. Years pass. 

Evan goes on to live a full and eventful life. Gets shot, ends up hospitalized. He’s handling it well and responsibly. But out of nowhere comes Dixon, steamrolling Evan with plans for Evan to immediately leave Chicago, his apartment, go to NYC, etc. After no contact with Dixon in years. What follows is a prime example of what’s now termed “love bombing “.

Doesn’t leave when asked. Hides in a room. Brings his mother with him to make excuses while the person is fragile in a hospital bed.  Honestly, more flags. 

There’s some honesty here but very little. The story itself is only 62 pages.

Had Calmes rewritten it, extended the narrative to include time for these men to explore who they had become  after all this time? Give the men and readers a chance to see and relate with the story and men as they reconnect as adults with new experiences and maturity.  That would have given this the missing depth and relevance that it’s lacking. 

Instead the story we or they got here is the one from 2010.  There was a lot of potential to update this but it didn’t happen. 

Read it because it’s by Calmes and you just read everything of hers. 

Buy Link

Amazon.comhttps://www.amazon.com › …Ice Around the Edges – Kindle edition by Calmes, Mary. Romance …

Blurb 

Evan Kano’s life is on an even keel until the night he’s shot at the homeless shelter where he works. The resulting turmoil is not caused by a bullet but by a blast from the past: Evan’s first lover has returned to visit him in the hospital and deliver some big news.

Ten years ago, Dixon Bain walked out of Evan’s life because he thought his family didn’t approve of him having a male lover. But Dixon has discovered that what he thought he knew could not be further from the truth, and now he’s returned to claim the only man he’s ever loved… if he can melt the ice around the edges of Evan’s still-wounded heart.

2nd edition, previously published December 2010.

• Publication date: October 25, 2024
• Language: English
• Print length: 62 pages