3.5 stars.

I'll read just about any historical gay story I come across. Enter A Summer Place by Ariel Tachna and Captain's Surrender by Alex Beecroft.

A Summer Place has a beautifully done cover, elegant, captivating. It's title invokes a consistent, interesting tail. Captain's Surrender sounds like it might be a little too erotic, S&M, probably not much storyline and the cover is cheesy - photoshopped models layered over palm trees and a snippet of a ship, with the title with way too many photoshop type effects covering up the photos.

Completely typical that Captain's Surrender turned out to be a well thought-out tale with a great storyline, lots of angst, love, sea battles - you might even call it epic. While A Summer Place tried but failed to live up to its design. Not that it was bad, it was a decent book, however, a little CLUE on the back cover that it's a historical
tale would have been nice. Not everyone loves a historic tale like me.

Barring cheesy cover graphics, Alex Beecroft must have done some serious research on colonial naval warfare. I've read many a sea tale and there were terms in this book that were new to me. Life on the ship was totally believable as was how to captain such a vessel. What got me the most were the two main characters. They were so different,
you'd almost think two different people wrote each part, because sometimes it's hard to write a convincingly well-crafted opposite without it sounding overly contrived. At first I didn't like the head- hopping chapters, but looking back, it was good to know what everyone was thinking. It truly ended up rounding out the story, however, at
the start of the book, I thought there was a little too much attention paid to Emily. I got over that.

All in all, Captain's Surrender came alive. It's way up there on my list of favorite books. Definitely a keeper.

A Summer Place had a slower pace, it was more of a historical CSI (and I'm not sure I ever realized what time frame we were in) and the characters weren't quite as likable.

Can I confess you something? When I was young I saw and re-saw the television fiction inspired by the journal of Laura Ingalls Wilder, about a family leaving in a farm near a little town. The period was the end of the nineteen century and every day I saw a tale of good feeling and love.

All right, reading A Summer Place by Ariel Tachna I have had the feeling to see another episode in the fiction. She has a way to decipte the little community that reminds me the characters I have loved. The town sheriff, the widow, the bank's clerk, the owner of the store department... Only the town doctor is not of the crew to complete the cast!

Philip is the 27 years old blacksmith of the town. He is homosexual. Not that he has claimed it loudly, but his last lover has dumped him in front of all the city to being murder some day after in a way only a homosexual could be. And now the town sheriff, and old friend of Philip, thinks he could be the next victim and ask Nicolas, an outlander who comes every summer to the island to overseeing the building of huge cottage for rich people, to hire Philip and takes him far away from the town.

Nicolas agrees, even if he has some doubts: also him is homosexual, and has always hidden his sexual preferences during his summer work in the island. But being this near to the handsome blacksmith could be a problem, moreover when other victims are found and the two, Nicolas and Philip, are forced to live in the same house.

I don't know about the strictly correctness of the setting, I only know that the feeling that has left me this novel is of a 'thought' novel: it's not only a way to let us read of two men making sex. Really it could be a contemporary novel as a historical one, but I have liked the little glimpse Ariel Tachna has given us to this little community.

Both Nicolas and Philip are strong characters, maybe Nicolas a little to dominant than Philip, but I think it's a right characteritation: a blackmith and a builder cannot be two magnolies...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0979504848/?tag=elimyrevandra-20