Mel Spenser

Andy and Nick are getting ready for their first Christmas together. Nick is in decorating mode, while Andy and his twin sister are planning the family holiday party that has traditionally been held at Andy’s house. Since everyone will be converging there, arrangements have been made for Andy’s college age cousin, Ryan, to stay with them for the holidays.

Ryan’s lifelong friend, Scott will also be coming into town. The two college kids haven’t seen each other since leaving for college, and when they get back together, they find out some things have changed. For one, Scott is gay. Ryan’s reaction to his friend, coupled with the commotion of coming out, make for an interesting holiday for everyone. Will Nick and Andy get their life back when Christmas is over?… (más)

This is probably the most “ordinary” gay paranormal romance I have ever read; when you deal with werewolves and full moon and mating rituals, well you are expecting for the story to be a bit unrealistic, for sure not to be almost a pictorial journal of your modern gay man.

At the beginning of the story Brian is just dumping is cheating boyfriend. Brian is a bit of an oddity among his friends, all party boys always searching for the last flavour of the month; Brian wants a long-term relationship, a steady boyfriend, commitment and exclusivity included. So when he is offered a 5 weeks job in rural Arizona, he takes it as a chance to break up with Sam, the cheating current boyfriend, and clean the field for when he will come back home to West Hollywood, Los Angeles, maybe then it will be the good time to find his Mr Right.

Brian is not expecting to find it in Arizona; Angel is up to his name: young, pretty and petite, he has also a clever mind to top a fine little body. Unruly dark curls and sexy tattoo in enticing places, Angel is Brian’s wet dream comes true. At the beginning the slightly younger man (29 against 22) seems not interested in Brian, but then it comes out that Angel is simply not experienced in the love games: he is still a virgin, to men or women alike. Apparently, even if now Angel is studying at Caltech, near Los Angeles, having spent all his life in a small town where he was the only gay guys deprived him of a lot of chances. Then maybe the little detail that Angel is a werewolf and he will undergo his first shift once he will have sex, well maybe dumped his mood to try it with the first one passing near him.

While I clearly understand what Brian finds in Angel, and why he is interested in the guy, I think Angel was more interested in having the experience and less with whom, at least at the beginning. I had the impression that: a) Angel was at home, same small town with no gay men in the neighbourhood b) Angel had really nothing to do for all the summer c) Brian was there and willing.

There is indeed a bit of rush from Brian’s side, wanting to touch home as soon as possible, and almost trying to bind Angel in a relationship without even the guy knowing it. Even if not so young in age, Angel is indeed young at being in a relationship, and he would be probably happy to have boyfriends like relationship more than committed partners. Until they are alone in the woods, there is really no difference between them and what they want and it’s interesting to see them amidst the gay community of WeHo: Angel is a fish out of water, and suddenly the age gap between Brian and him is wider, probably even more than what is actually. The little interlude in the WeHo community is nice, and it gave you the idea of how an apparently good relationship, with all the premises to work, can be easily destroyed if partners don’t talk.

In all of this you are probably wondering how Angel being a werewolf influenced the event… that is what I said at the beginning, it didn’t. Actually the whole werewolf thing is only accessory to the story, and it’s really downplayed; Angel could have been a werewolf or anything other that made him a little out of ordinary, and it would have been the same. Even the whole “virgin” waiting to be “unleashed” with sex thing was only a nice accessory, and nothing really out of the world happened when Brian finally debauches the “angel”.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603701451/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (más)

Rover is an apparently perfect love story with an unexpected turn, and truth be told, the turn does good to the story itself since otherwise it would have been too perfect.

Patrick is mourning the loss of his lover Douglas; it's more than a year that Douglas is dead in a car accident but Patrick has not yet got over it. He is still living in the city where Douglas wanted to live, far from Patrick's relatives; he sold their home but he has still the expensive car Douglas bought for him and the cabin where they spent almost all their holidays. Patrick is not doing anything to forget and if not for a nightdream during which Douglas tells him to move one, he would have continued like that. All right, now he had decided to move back to Houston where is family is, but, truth be told, it's not exactly his decision, it's once again Douglas' decision that Patrick blindly follows.

In Houston he meets Sean, a 26 years old boy who is still living as a college student while trying to end his degree. Sean is the typical South Californian boy, all surf and tan, but he had a bad experience in the past. His family sent him to live with a gay uncle and his partner, hoping they would had been a good example for him. And so it was, and now Sean is still again on the right path, but he lost some years; that is basically the reason why, even if between Sean and Patrick there are only eight years of difference, it seems much more. Sean is still trying to decide what he wants to do in his life, and instead Patrick feels as he saw too much and now he wants to be quiet and comfortable, maybe yes, still mourning his lover.

Despite being younger and evidently the lesser 'steady', not in a financial way than in expectation for life, Sean takes the lead of the relationship: he asks Patrick out, he initiates the first sexual encounter, he is always the one to suggest things. True, Patrick is ready and eager to follow, but I believe that is the wrong approach with him. Little by little we start to discover a different side of Patrick, and also a different point of view on his relationship for Douglas. Douglas himself, the perfect dead lover, was really not so perfect, and even if he was completely different from Sean, the same like him he was the leader in their relationship.

Here is the turn of the story: Patrick tends to lie down with his partner, he tends to blend on the background letting them shy. Everything can be perfect if you are a rising star, if the light you emanates is strong enough to overwhelm the lack of sparks from Patrick's side. And maybe, if you fall in a comfortable routine, you can even continue like that for forever. But Sean is wise enough, despite the age, to understand that like that, Patrick is slowly dying inside; Patrick never talks about his interests and he is so used to be all alone with himself, that he also stopped to ask for other people's ones. What the reader at the beginning thought to be a wonderful and nice love story, is little by little shattered by the lack of communion: Patrick and Sean are perfect in bed, but out of it, what do they have? Patrick doesn't know almost anything of Sean, and Sean, so wrap inside his trouble, and yes, maybe even a bit selfish, that selfishness given by the young age, realizes that also him knows very little of the real Patrick.

It was really interesting to see how the author first built an ordinary and nice love story, and then destroyed it in a bit, like an house of cards that was built from the start upon unsteady fundamentals. But don't worry, this is, after all, a romance...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603706755/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (más)