Trying to Heal while in College? Not Happening for Me

Having taught at a junior college for many years, I've watched college students come and go.  Most of them have baggage, some heavier than others, but all burdened by something.  Stress is usually at the top of the heap, but often the stress is compounded by some other bits of baggage that the students struggle with as well as cope with their homework and labs.

In Left Drowning, author Jessica Park pours on the baggage and then wants readers to know that the teens with heavy emotional scars are still passing their classes, turning in their homework, and generally being successful students.  And as a former English composition instructor, I'm not buying it.

Understandably, Blythe, the main character, has emotional scars from surviving the fire that killed her parents.  Compounding that, Blythe feels guilty for ruining her brother's sports career because she dragged him out of the burning building over a piece of glass that impaired his leg.  All of that I can understand.

What I don't believe is that the reclusive Blythe, who hasn't gotten any help from extended family or friends, is still passing her classes.  In my experience, even students with less baggage than Blythe fail their classes and need help before they can concentrate enough to become successful.

That a group of equally scarred students bring her into their group is no surprise.  But that they all turn out to be successful students is.

I wish this fairytale were true.  But my experience is that it's just a fairytale, and these college students might just as well wait for their pumpkins to turn into coaches as to believe that angst equals passing grades.

Fear on Halloween

Had to laugh today when the editor of All About Romance (AAR) ran my review of Fear which she said she couldn't resist for Halloween.

Fear, however, isn't a funny book at all since it deals with the physical and mental abuse of a gay man by his partner.  Getting some one with low self-esteem extricated from an abuser is neither easy nor fun, which is why Kendrick's book is so hard-hitting.

If you or someone you know is being abused, please get help from:

• Day One
• Safe Horizon
• Gay Men's Domestic Violence Project
• The National Domestic Violence Hotline

or your church, synagogue, temple, nearby hospital, or the police.

Don't let fear take over.

The Wine Is Missing a Backbone

I love the premise of Syrah, a gay romance in which the owner of a wine store and a restaurant manager get together.  And the cover to the novel is lovely.  I just wish a reader didn't have to go through page after page of the manager acting like a scared kid who was willing to knuckle under to abuse for no good reason.

Romances, at least for me, are about strength and courage.  Doesn't it take both for people to unwrap their hearts and put them in their hands for someone else?  When someone says, "I love you," isn't the person taking a leap of faith that the recipient of the declaration won't stomp all over the heart and fling to back to the declarer?

So reading a romance in which one of the protagonists refuses to stand up for himself when it's within his power to do so is off-putting for me.  I understand if the protagonist has undergone years of abuse and needs a hand getting out from under that abuse.  But when the protagonist is an adult male who knows he's being offered verbal abuse and does nothing to change his life (get away from the abuser) and then ignores the help of his friends and potential lover, then my sympathies wane.

Syrah had so much potential.  In fact I haven't seen any other gay romances set around the wine world.  I just wish the book's protagonist lived up to its heady promise.