Provincetown Romance Turns to Purple Prose

While I was at the Romantic Times convention, this review of Jacob Z. Flores' latest, When Love Comes to Town, ran at The Romance Reviews:

In the 4th Provincetown romance, Flores falls under the spell of purple prose and Family Week at the gay resort.

Brody O'Shea, last seen as Teddy's boyhood lover in When Love Gets Hairy, is the odd man out as family and friends gather for the marriage of Zach and Van whose romance was central in When Love Takes Over.

Brody is particular about who he will love, but not with whom he shares a night of sex. His parents left him with a skewed image of marriage, so as Brody has worked his way through the Provincetown offerings, he's kept a list of the things he wants and doesn't want in a partner. At the top of his list is a man without children.

Eric Vasquez, a cop who two years before lost his husband, is bringing his daughter Mattie to his cousin Van's wedding from a small town across the state of Massachusetts. When Eric gets there and sees how many of Van and Zach's friends are paired up, he misses his husband who died in an accident even more.

But as the odd men out, Brody and Eric are paired up more and more as the wedding plans come together. As they do, both come to change their minds about what they thought were important considerations: Brody finds he likes Mattie and has formed a bond with her, and Eric realizes that his husband would want him to go on living, not pining for the rest of his life.

Jacob Z. Flores' mix of humor and fond depictions of what initially seem shallow men who end up showing amazing depth is at the forefront of this novel as it has been in his others.

Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

The P-town Chronicler Checks In

Jacob Z. Flores, author of three light, frothy P-town gay romances, takes on bears and bear culture in his latest, When Love Gets Hairy.  In his first two novels, Flores made Provincetown sound pretty formidable with hordes of randy gay guys roaming the sidewalks and beaches searching for Mr. Right, but imagining the same scene with bears, who take up a lot more space, becomes nearly frightening.

Fortunately, the bear of note, Teddy--bad jokes, Mr. Flores, ugh!--is too nice and kind to be scary.  His romance counterpart, non-bear Nino, however, is a little more challenging to like.  And the love of Teddy's life is about as deep and likable as a sidewalk puddle.

But no matter.  Flores isn't going for an in-depth psychological study of his gay men, especially in P-town where fun and anonymous sex are the names of the game.  It's the time of year to let one's hair down and during Bear Week, there's a lot of hair around.

Fun And Love

When fun and games turn into fun and love, a vacation after a breakup veers into love in Jacob Z. Flores' When Love Takes Over, reviewed today at AAR.

Flores delves into all the craziness of Provincetown, Mass, in this flamboyant look at getting away from it all.  Zack is distraught over being dumped, so he heads to a resort he finds on the back of a gay magazine.  There he meets porn super-bottom Hart Throb (aka Van), whom Zack doesn't recognize presumably because he doesn't watch online porn.  Right.

That's only the first of moments where I didn't believe.  Fortunately, Flores is a good enough writer and his writing style is light enough that it was easier to go with the flow than over analyze all the plot twists that rivaled a Coney Island roller coaster.

Although the subject matter is deeper than the writing style, readers who are lying on a beach hoping to get the perfect tan can spend enough enjoyable hours reveling in the antics of P-Town inhabitants and visitors to fill out a lazy day.  A few alcoholic beverages and a passing parade of beautiful young bodies might even cover over the plot holes that would otherwise make a reader's brow furrow.

So lie back and enjoy this book on its own terms.  The cover says it all: Relax.