British-isms abound in Charlie Cochrane's Second Helpings, in which family and a stiff upper lip limn the limits of public discourse.  Here's a snippet of my review that was posted on All About Romance today:

A father and son move on with their lives after the deaths of their spouses when a former classmate of the father reappears with her grown son in this very British gay romance.
   
Stuart Collins is pleased but a little stunned when his father Roddy starts dating Isabel Franklin, a widow he'd known years ago in school. When Roddy suggests Stuart start dating again, Stuart isn't quite sure he's ready to move on after his partner Mark died in a car accident the year before.

But when Stuart meets Isabel's son Paul, who's concerned his wealthy mother might be hooking up with a gold-digger, he's attracted to the man but put off by the suspicions his salt-of-the-earth father might be conniving for Isabel's money. As they hash out their parents' attraction and its possible outcomes, Stuart and Paul form a bond and then relationship that slowly melds into a love affair.

Of the two, the heart-broken Stuart is the more sympathetic at first, but as Paul gradually sheds his over-protectiveness for his mother, he too becomes a delightful young man. In fact, they share a passion for science, Stuart being a forensics expert whose cases often depress him, while Paul is a research scientist for a petrol company.

During a major part of the book, Paul is pining for Ben, a man he met and thought was going to be his life partner in the United States. Ben was supposed to find a job in Britain and join Paul there to start their new life. But Ben seems to have disappeared from view. So while Stuart is trying to come to terms with Mark's death, Paul is struggling with whether he should act on his attraction to Stuart or try to reconcile Ben's phone and computer silence as just a misunderstanding that can be explained.

Both men attack their problems in a mature, very subdued British manner; neither is given to over-emotional outbursts.

Read the rest of my review at All About Romance.

British Vignette Not Enough for Memorable Story

An excerpt from my review of Out in the Sticks by H. Lewis-Foster that was posted today on The Romance Reviews:

This slim mundane vignette brings two men together, but doesn't explore any new ground as far as romance is concerned.

Thirty-three year old British lawyer Adam Sibden moves from a modern apartment in Nottingham to the charming, thatched Sage Cottage in the village of Sharpley after Roger, his partner of five years, proves to be a philanderer. When he has car problems, Adam visits a garage owned by Jim, who'd taken over the business from his father.

They get to know one another through visits to the local pub where they often share pints with Jim's pals. One snowy night, however, when Adam has a flat tire and calls Jim, they completely connect and commiserate on their bad luck in finding love up until they found each other.

Because the story is so short (23 pages), neither Adam nor Jim are very developed as characters, and their backstories of having partners and losing them are so typical as to be bland, this novella never becomes even a little bit memorable.

Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews.

Love and Angst in Britain

I can't image having a sister hit by a car and losing her identity the way Lyddie does in Sue Moorcroft's Is This Love?  Being the younger sister and witnessing a bright older sister regress to having the mind of a child for the rest of her life must be unusually difficult.


As the oldest sister in my immediate family and the oldest cousin on my father's side of the family, I've seen death come too many times among my contemporaries.  While death takes a chunk out of one's heart, the hole is less painful as the years pass although it never goes away.


But to see someone regress like Lyddie did in the novel, I'm not sure would be as easy to reconcile.  Lyddie's sister Tamara in the novel seems to be a saint in how she helps her parents work with Lyddie and how she keeps from getting totally frustrated and angry with her older sister.  I'm not sure I could step up and be as accommodating as Tamara.


Perhaps the real story in the novel is how yoga helps Tamara, who is an instructor, live life without having to run into a nearby green space and yell.  Maybe as my daughter has been telling me for years, yoga really is the answer.