M/M Anthologies

A Lucy Review : The Forever Kind Of Love by LA Bryce

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Rating: 2 stars out of 5

You never forget your first love … especially when they cause you pain. Chase thought he was doing the right thing when he left Liam years earlier, but when he finds out he was wrong, it might be too late. The trust they once shared may be past the point of repair.

The Forever Kind of Love is a story of second chances that asks the question — is a good reason enough to wash away the years of hurt it caused? Chase comes home from the military ready to start his life with Liam. But he discovers Liam’s life has already started without him. Is there a place for him in it? Is the possibility of more pain worth the risk for Liam?

If that isn’t hard enough, they only have the week Chase is on leave to come to terms with their future. Can they find forever in seven days?

First off, the blurb is a little misleading.  “…when he finds out he was wrong, it might be too late.”   A bit inaccurate, since Chase’s plan from the beginning was exactly what he did.   He never thought he was wrong, he just never bothered to consider things from Liam’s point of view.

I was worried when I started this book due to the length.  While I love second chance tropes, I also need enough time and detail to make me want them to get back together and to really understand why they were apart.  Forever Kind of Love is only 44 pages long and I didn’t get what I needed to make the story work. 

Chase and Liam were in love, telling each other they were in love, and then Chase just up and leaves with no word, no message, no nothing for four years.   Now he’s back and expecting Liam to open arms wide, take him back and then move the life he’s built in Chase’s absence to be with Chase, because Chase hasn’t left the military, which is where he went.  It’s not really clear why the first four years were a turning point because even though Liam works for Chase’s mom at her art gallery, where he also shows his own art, Chase has never asked about Liam.  We know this much because he was surprised Liam was showing his art work at the gallery, as well as not knowing that Liam no longer lived with his dad.  No one knew about Chase and Liam back then, so Liam didn’t discuss it with  mom either.

“And now it was time to finally go home and get his man.”  He just shows up at his mom’s, where they happen to be throwing a party for Liam.  He didn’t even do the courtesy of a phone call, a message, nothing.  Then he is so shocked with Liam’s reaction because really, he didn’t bother with how Liam would have felt.  “Just what? Explain what you were thinking? You didn’t think enough of me to explain at the time.”  “Chase took a deep breath.  This wasn’t going the way he planned.”  There were so many WTF moments for me but I continued on, waiting for the groveling to happen.  Which didn’t. 

“Again, he’d known Liam would be mad about him just leaving, but he’d hoped that after four years some of that pain would’ve subsided.”  What???  How does the pain subside when now Liam is faced with Chase, who has done absolutely nothing to make things better. Add in that it is really Chase’s mother who does the explaining to Liam and Chase gets no respect from me.  Let’s also mention that throughout the book, Chase NEVER ONCE says he is sorry to Liam.  Liam says sorry a few times but never Chase.  Liam is still expected to give up his job, his house, his friends, his relationship with Chase’s mom as his boss, and with a day or two to decide, just move on.  Chase doesn’t grovel at all during this time and for two days just mopes but makes no effort to clear up the mess he made.

The ending, which is supposed to make us feel good about them, just made me more aggravated with it.   This is where the length of the book really worked against the author.  We don’t get the sense at any point that Chase really loved Liam.  Yes, the high handed reason for leaving (who knows why in four years he couldn’t be bothered to reconnect) is supposed to be for “Liam’s sake” but communication is more important and there is none. We are told that he loves Liam but nothing shows that he does.  There needed to be more time between his return and the inevitable magical rekindling.  “Did he really have a picture of Liam jumping up and proclaiming his undying love?  Even after all Chase had done to hurt Liam?  Yep, Chase did.  Maybe I also needed to see how they were four years ago to make it seem like Chase really did love Liam and wasn’t just claiming him, as he says. 

This is my first time reading this author and while this story absolutely was not for me, I would give her another try with a different type of story line.

Cover art, showing a naked male torso with dog tags, is simple but effective.

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | JMS Books

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 1st edition, 44 pages
Published March 2nd 2019 by JMS Books LLC
ASIN B07NVZ8HJD
Edition Language English

Is Sci fi/fantasy a Favorite of Yours? Check out the collection of stories in Spells & Stardust by J. Scott Coatsworth (giveaway)

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Spells & Stardust

J. Scott Coatsworth has a new queer sci fi/fantasy anthology out: Spells & Stardust.

Spells & Stardust is Scott’s first anthology – eight sci fi and fantasy shorts that run the gamut from regeneration to redemption.

The Bear at the Bar: A gay fish out of water tale with a pinch of magic.

Tight: What happens when your lover disappears in midair?

Morgan: The year when everything changed.

Re-Life: What if you were reborn in a strange new future?

A New Year: They met every eleven years. And each time, Hank’s life changed.

Repetition: What if you wanted to go back in the closet?

Gargoyle: Sometimes you get what you deserve. Sometimes it happens on All Hallows Eve.

Avalon: A few bright moments in the sun, stolen from outside time.

Most of these stories have been previously published in various anthologies and journals. This is the first time they have all been collected in one place.

Get It On Amazon

Giveaway

Scott is giving away a $20 Amazon gift card with this tour. Enter via Rafflecopter:

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Unique Excerpt – From “Re-Life”

The taxi from the Re-Life Clinic dropped out of the sky onto a raised landing pad. It alighted twenty feet above ground level like a giant dragonfly. The door lifted, and Eric looked out uncertainly. “The hostel?” he said.

“Down the ramp, on the left,” the taxi told him in a suave, gender-neutral voice.

He clambered out, dragging his shiny duffel bag along, trying hard to ignore its ever-changing ripples of color. It epitomized the gaudy nanotech that seemed to be in everything here. He’d just completed his six-week orientation and rehab at the Clinic. It had taken four weeks just to get used to this new body they’d grown for him using his own DNA. It still didn’t feel entirely… his.

It was finally time to get out into the world. The long weeks of rehab had chaffed at him—he was itching to explore this strange new city, Safris. He couldn’t wait to take a look around and see what had changed. And though he had nothing but a few personal belongings and a credit on his account, he was young and healthy again.

The cancer that had killed him half a millennia earlier was gone.

It had been utterly strange to open his eyes in the clinic for the first time, after he’d had himself frozen on the off chance that someone, sometime in the future would be able to cure him. It had also been traumatic, processing the loss of everything and everyone he had once held dear.

He’d spent a week straight crying and morose, sitting in a dark room and counting all the things he’d lost. All of that is behind me now. I hope.

He looked around. There were few people about, most of them standard-form. The buildings were so unlike those back home—they thrust upward at strange opposing angles, and they went up and up and up. Like the carry sack, some of them changed colors as he watched, and he was half-convinced that one of them moved.

He fought down his panic. It was perfectly normal to feel out of place the first time out, his counselor had told him.

Maybe so, but it was also painful.

He missed many things: Levis, trolley cars, Wild Cherry Pepsi, and the smell of sandalwood.

But he missed David most of all.

Author Bio

Scott lives with his husband of twenty five years in a Sacramento suburb, in a cute little yellow house with a brick fireplace and two pink flamingoes out front.

He inhabits in the space between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into science fiction and fantasy by his mom at the tender age of nine, he quickly finished her entire library. But he soon began to wonder where all the queer people were.

After coming out at twenty three, he started writing the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Crown Books. If there weren’t many queer characters in his favorite genres, he would will them into existence, subverting them to his own ends. And if he was lucky enough, someone else would want to read them.

His friends say Scott’s mind works a little differently than most – he makes connections between ideas that others don’t, and somehow does more in a day than most people manage in a week. Although born an introvert, he forced himself to reach outside himself, and learned to connect with others like him.

Scott’s stories subvert expectations that transform traditional science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something different and unexpected. He runs both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark.

His romance and genre fiction writing brings a queer energy to his stories, filling them with love, beauty and power. He imagines how the world could be – in the process, he hopes to change the world, just a little.

Scott was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and his debut novel “Skythane” received two awards and an honorable mention.

Author Website: https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com

Author Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworth

Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworthauthor/

Author Twitter: https://twitter.com/jscoatsworth/

Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8392709.J_Scott_Coatsworth

Author QueeRomance Ink: https://www.queeromanceink.com/mbm-book-author/j-scott-coatsworth/

Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/J.-Scott-Coatsworth/e/B011AFO4OQ

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