Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  A Change of Tune

SERIES:  Change #1

AUTHOR:  J.M. Cartwright

PUBLISHER:  Loose Id

LENGTH:  254 pages

BLURB:  

Johnny Rayne has had enough — enough of being at the top of the rock music industry for the last decade, enough of constant touring and recording. He wants something more — something very different. Moving to a farm in West Virginia, Johnny runs smack into Sheriff Virgil Grissom his first morning in the mountains.

The sheriff challenges Johnny in a multitude of ways — with overt machismo, disdain for Johnny’s musician past, and all-around know-it-all-ness. The two men clash continually, and Johnny resists succumbing to the sheriff’s brash charm until Grissom forces him to admit some very basic truths.

One: Johnny’s definitely attracted to men. Two: Johnny’s definitely attracted to Grissom. And three: Johnny’s definitely going to enjoy every moment of it.

REVIEW:  

(There is a section of this review that might get a little curse heavy. Just so you know. I’m not sorry, but if that doesn’t float your boat, you might want to skip that section. I think it is pretty obvious which one it is.)

Life in West Virginia sure is different than the one Johnny Rayne lived as frontman for the band Storm. But after years of the fast paced craziness that comes with rock-star fame, he is more than ready for the slow days and nights in Ransom County.  He is going to relax, maybe find a new direction for his music, and try to build up a place that a family–his family–could happily inhabit.  When the domineering and unrelenting Sheriff shows up at his front door, he didn’t think that he might just have found the first piece of that family he has always wanted.  Mostly he doesn’t think this because Sheriff Grissom in a major pain in the ass.  But he sure does turn Johnny’s crank something fierce.

At about halfway thru this books I had the feeling that this review was going to come out sounding a lot like “it’s not you, it’s me.”  By the end I was sure that it was more a case “it’s you, it’s me, and let’s never speak of this again.”

I remember really liking this book when I first read it years ago, and was happy to see that the new edition come out.  I have some rather fond memories of this book (first fisting scene I’d ever read) and was looking forward to seeing what Cartwright had changed in the story.

To be honest, after reading this book I kinda wish that Cartwright hadn’t changed so much.

My biggest issue is Grissom.  This one is falling into the “it’s me” category.  I don’t like possessive, my-wish-is-your-command, assholes (with the exception of some BDSM situations).  And while Grissom was hardly a wilting flower in the first edition of this book, here his asshole-meter is cranked up to eleven and ¾.  I just could not stand him.  At all.  There was something in the way he was originally written that balanced his he-man attitude with a sense of caring for Johnny.  Here, for the majority of the book, he comes across as thinking that Johnny is less a boyfriend/lover and more a possession that he needs to pee on to make sure that his territory is properly marked.  Gershwin had better manners–and he is a fucking dog.

(And on that ‘fucking’ note: Grissom has no right to just walk into someone else’s house and order them to stop cursing—for a rather stupid reason of ‘we don’t do that here’.  Fuck that shit! Johnny is a grown man.  People curse, it is not the end of the fucking world, asshole.  I get not wanting to curse around the kids, but where does Grissom get off thinking that he is the profanity police? Manners–learn some, shithead.)

And can I just say that I am never ok with a dude breaking into another guy’s house, so that he can get laid.  I don’t care if you are the Sheriff.  I don’t care if you think you are the shit.  I don’t even care if you think the other dude will be fine with it after you fucked him the shower.  You don’t have the right to break and enter just because you want to get your dick wet.

*puts head on desk and breathes*

Ok.  Probably best to leave that there. I could rant about Grissom for a while, but no one wants my angry rants to go on for three pages.  And there is a good chance that if this is not a pet peeve for you, you might actually like Grissom.  Maybe.

In the “it’s you” category, I have some issues with the pacing of this story.  This edition isn’t very much longer than the first, but for some reason, there were chunks of the story that practically reduced my desire to be awake to zero.  The biggest offender is the last quarter of the book.  The big issues have been almost all handled by then, and there is only, arguably, one real thread that needs to be tied up (Johnny’s coming out), but still it keeps going. On. And on.  And on.  I get wanting to show life with the kids, and how it affects their lives, but a lot of that could be condensed or left to the imagination.  (There might be an element of my dislike of children coloring my opinion here).

There were some things I really did like.  I think the rewriting of certain sections (or taking them out in their entirety) did a lot for tightening certain aspects of the story.  And as always, I loved the inclusion of the animals.  Dogs may not be my favorite, but they were just so adorable here.  The secondary characters were also really well done.

I think my problem is that every time I came close to being drawn back into the story, Grissom would pull another of his Lord-of-the-Manner impressions, and all I wanted to do was stab him to death with a spork.  And the fisting scene, which I absolutely loved with the entirety of my frantically beating heart in the first edition, lost a lot of its appeal here.  I just think that fisting isn’t something you spring on a dude without ever talking about it before.  It felt like it was simply another way to mark Johnny as his territory, and not a hot way get them both off.

The rating on this one is going to be a bit skewed since I’m trying to temper my personal dislikes against what this book would get in less peeved hands, but while I found parts of this enjoyable it lost something in the translation between the first edition and the second.  I didn’t connect at all with it, and was hoping for so much more out of this book.

RATING:

BUY LINKS:

Loose Id

Amazon

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