E-Book, 300 Pages
Adult/ Contemporary/ LGBT
By: Chip Pons
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2
“Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign or weakness nor a lack of faith, it is the price of love.”
Usually when the phrase “separate art from artist” is mentioned it is due to a good art by a not very good person. In this case, It is kind of the opposite. The author as far as I know is a very kind and nice person and I can’t say the book was bad but I can’t either shower it with praise just because of that. I am always trying to stay unbiased and objective in my reviews (And as a human I can’t always succeed) so that’s what I am going to do here.
This is Pons debut novel so he should be cut some slack but there were parts where you could tell it was that. The problem with knowing the author is that it feels I was reading something highly personal that I should not be reading like his own journal. The story follows Will Cowen who is getting a new publishing job and the new manuscript he gets to work on will change his life forever specially that he has to work with Graham Austin who he falls for so hard. This is an LGBT story by a man which is a rarity so I get why people do like it though.
The characters themselves are well written, I liked Will & Graham, I liked Klair and her BF and I loved the families. The things that did not work for me was the very fast romance -Although I believe it is based on the author’s real life story- the idea that Graham is cold and it is more of a telling rather than showing that.
The writing is okay, the description and prose are good and it has a good flow that when I started it I finished 30% without even realizing it. The thing that did not work for me was the dialogue because it felt so unnatural. I was like “Do people talk like that in real life?” and it just felt like things influencers would say to get more love online most of the time.
The plot is a bit vague till the end of the book which I believe was the best part because it gave more depth and substance to a cute romance. There was a lot of discussion about healing and families and it was great. Most of the threads are closed but I was bothered with the fact that Garaham’s brother thread was left hanging without much closure.
Summary: It was a fluffy romance that was easy to read and spend a few hours. I would not say it is a life changing book or one that will stick with me for a long time because of some of the debut mistakes that were there. The dialogue was my biggest problem but the characters and flow were very good. I am happy for Pons for publishing his debut and hope his next books are even better and more successful!
The book prescription 