Powerful Look at Life-Healing Love

Is it possible for a young man with emotional and physical scars and his deaf boyfriend to conquer their fears and make a productive life for themselves? Only with a lot of hard work and strength of will, J.P. Barnaby assures readers.

In AARON, the author illustrated how a traumatized boy can come part way out of his reclusive shell with the help of a loving and loyal friend. Five years after Aaron's attack and three years after Spencer befriends him, this sequel to AARON follows the young men as their lives are changing, both as a couple and individually.

As Spencer graduates from junior college and sells the software program he and Aaron have worked on together, Spencer agrees to move an hour away to Chicago and head up a team to launch the software for public use. This is a huge step for a guy born deaf who never thought he'd be able to move away from his psychologist father and live alone.

But Aaron, who was homeschooled after the attack that killed his friend Juliette and left him nearly dead with a slit throat, still has a long way to go to graduate. He is devastated that Spencer would even think about leaving him, much less actually move.

Just as Aaron's trying to get his head around the fact that the rock on whom he depends is moving, he learns the men who had assaulted him and Juliet have been caught. Now Aaron has to find the courage to testify against them, which means he has to bare his physical and mental scars to a judge and jury.

Read the rest of my review at The Romance Reviews.

Meeting the Father of the Bride

Cute meets are the order of the day.  L. B. Gregg's How I Met Your Father stretches the cute meet into sleaze territory and then treats the whole "I had sex with the father of the bride in the handicapped bathroom at the airport" as a joke.  But that's exactly what Gregg meant this to be.

Having read and reviewed about 55 gay romances in 2013, I thought I was fairly immune to immaturity and raunchy behavior in men, but Gregg's sketchy comedy left me scratching my head and wondering what was funny.

I guess this is another example of comedy being in the eye of the beholder.  The book, however, does go a long way to explain why American mating rituals and nuptials are a joke to the rest of the world.  With a promiscuous father and no mother to speak of, the bride in this particular book seems perfectly understandable marrying her college instructor, a former boy band member.

Believing that the currently happy couple have even a smidgen of a chance at happily ever after is beyond the bounds of suspension of disbelief.  If anyone does believe theirs will be a happy future, then anything is possible.  My only caution is to watch out for flying pigs.