A Romance about Getting a Heart

J. P. Barnaby writes gay romances that tug at the heart and the tear ducts.  Her latest A Heart for Robbie is more subtle than her previous books like Aaron and Spencer, but no less affecting.  My review of Robbie went live today at All About Romance, and here's a preview of it:

In this poignant story of love and determination, Barnaby details the anguish and hope a new father goes through when his son is born with a heart defect.
 
When young adult novelist Julian Holmes learns that his newborn son has a life-threatening heart defect, he is immediately plunged into the confusing world of donor lists, medications, and possibilities.

While Robbie waits for an available heart, Julian meets hospital insurance administrator Simon Phelps, who unlike Julian, is obsessively closeted. Although the men feel an immediate attraction, their current lives seem to preclude any kind of relationship. Julian is too worried about Robbie and his chances of survival while Simon is on the edge of conflict of interest by going out with the author. But despite the obstacles to their getting together, they reach out, finding solace that helps them stay sane in a stressful situation.

As she did in her previous books, author Barnaby presents a compelling and sympathetic character in Julian, whose loneliness manifests itself by his talking to his fictional characters and seeing them as his best friends. Fortunately, Julian's family and his college best friends provide the needed support even though they realize what he really needs is love in his life.

Simon grows believably in this book, from a man so closeted that he's afraid to befriend a man to someone who steps up and out when he's most needed. He, like Julian, is an adult who knows he needs to make big decisions and while fearful, takes necessary action, thinking more about Julian and Robbie than himself.

Read the rest of the review at All About Romance.

Hospital Tales Enliven Romance

I really enjoyed Jake Wells' A White Coat Is My Closet as much for the stories about the children that the surgeon who's wearing the white closet tells as much as the coming out of the closet story.  I just wish that Wells had had a better editor.  There was a lot of repetition in the novel that distracted from Wells' wonderful points about being a doctor and about being accepted for who one is.

At first I was skeptical about reading this book especially since the first chapter or so are grizzly.  I had two C-sections and reading about someone in danger during childbirth and the resulting C-section isn't really something I would have sought out to read.  Fortunately, the rest of the hospital tales are about children which was marginally easier to take.

I've had five major operations in my life, so my view of hospitals is a little skewed.  One operation was an emergency one held during a nurses' strike.  That was a particularly grim hospital stay as anyone could imagine.  Another operation went wrong and the surgeon found himself over his head in complications or so I found out after the operation when the surgeon nearly refused to see me, and his staff spilled the beans.

So reading a book, even a good one, about hospitals and surgeries was difficult.  However, Wells' smooth writing style helped me get through the rough parts without too much angst.