Rating: 3.5 Stars out of 5
Cole Weston returns home to find his boyfriend and first love, Rory Schneidmiller gone without a trace. Cole is devastated but he gradually puts his life back together and finds love once again in his now husband, Tommy D’Amico.
In the blink of an eye, twenty years pass for Rory and he can’t help but want to see Cole because in his heart Cole is his love but as he comes to realise circumstances have drastically changed for Cole.
Cole finds himself faced with an impossible quandary, what will he do?
I am really not sure of my rating for this book. This is one book in which I am pretty sure a rating can’t truly reflect what I think of the book. It was pretty out there. I don’t even know if I will able to articulate the absolute chaos of thoughts that I have after finishing this book but I guess I have to give it a try.
When I started the story, I had already read the blurb, as I suppose most of you would have as well. The blurb reveals most of the story. So, when you get down to reading the book you would know almost everything. You know where the story is headed after all I picked up this book to know the answer to that question at the end of the blurb, the choice between an idealized and passionate first love and the comfort of a long-term marriage. But, the truth is almost 85% of this book is setup, it is the story behind the choice or in better words, how the choice even came to be. While in hindsight, maybe there isn’t much of a dilemma between these two choices but while I was reading the first 85% of this book I couldn’t help but hope things would hurry along to the real question.
The dilemma that Cole faces is one that almost no one will face, but theoretically, he does face the dilemma. Now the choice depends on a lot of factors, even if he was in an unhappy marriage, Rory would hardly be the best choice, they are more than 20 years apart in age, it would be really difficult to account for his presence and why he looks 20 years younger than he should be and moreover there are going to be a lot of people interested in finding out why, so really the only thing Rory has going for him is that Cole might still be hung-up on Rory after all this time which he is, as the book amply demonstrates and which I felt was the only thing the setup of this book really wanted to achieve. To inform us that Cole still loves Rory and believes him to be his true love. Because what the setup fails to do is give us any substance of the kind of relationship Rory/Cole and Cole/Tommy share we just see the end of one and the beginning of another. In fact, I was so disconnected from these two relationships that the letter Rory writes to Cole feels like a different beast altogether and I still can’t conceive that this letter was written by the Rory we have come to know.
Also, there are obviously things that Cole is hiding from Tommy, we never do get to know how Cole deals with that particular minefield.
There are also aliens in this book. I was a little surprised by this, God knows why but even knowing the premise of this story the whole close encounters of the third kind thing caught me off-guard and I have no idea how I feel about the use of extraterrestrials in this book.
Well, this story gave me a lot to think about but I don’t know if it managed to answer it’s own question. I didn’t quite agree with the ending of the book. I can’t fully reconcile with Rory’s decision which appears to hinge completely on Cole’s.
The story is engaging and the setup doesn’t bog you down too much but definitely allows you to really get to know Cole and Rory. It raises a lot of questions and speculations but all in all, it truly is an interesting read.
Cover Art by Reese Dante. I liked the cover it tends to evoke just the kind of response that the story does though there is an almost criminal overuse of white dots on the cover.
Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Dreamspinner
Book Details:
ebook, 220 pages
Expected publication: August 14th 2018 by Dreamspinner Press
ISBN139781640801585
Edition LanguageEnglish
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 