Reviewed by Elizabetta
TITLE: The Boy Who Belonged
SERIES: Boy, #2
AUTHOR: Lisa Henry & JA Rock
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: 219 pages
BLURB:
Twenty-one year-old Lane Moredock finally has a normal life. Six months after he was wrongly made a suspect in his parents’ Ponzi scheme, he’s settled down with his older boyfriend, Derek, and is working and attending school. But his happiness is threatened when his mother launches a Christmastime PR campaign to help appeal her prison sentence, and asks introverted Lane to be part of it.
Derek Fields has his hands full taking Santa photos, bird-sitting his sister’s foul-mouthed macaw, and helping Lane prepare for a television interview neither of them wants him to do. As he eases Lane through his anxiety, he worries that Lane sees him as a caretaker rather than a boyfriend, and that their age difference really does matter. He and Lane compensate for the stress in their lives by taking their D/s relationship to new levels–a relationship that Lane’s mother insists he should be ashamed of.
As Christmas draws nearer, the pressure builds. Pushy elves. Snarky subs. A bad fight. A parrot in peril. How the hell is Derek going to give Lane a perfect Christmas when the Moredock legacy threatens to pull them apart before the new year?
REVIEW:
Already the title had me hooked. I remember well the Lane of The Good Boy, completely abandoned and betrayed by his crook parents. Left with such deep feelings of inadequacy and vulnerability. Really, the damage they had inflicted on him had begun long before they had been caught for their Ponzi scheming. Long before they implicated him in their crimes.
It’s six months later but Lane has a big hole to climb out of. He reminds himself that he’s worthwhile, worth loving, Derek proves it to him everyday. But the doubts and self-loathing remain.
While this isn’t quite as pulling as the first book — it’s mostly more of the same between Derek and Lane — it still has the good bones of a deeper character sketch. There’s more of Lane fitting into his skin, coming to terms with who he is and finding value in himself. And it’s interesting to see Derek still wrestling with his feelings of ‘residual revenge’ at having been swindled by Lane’s parents, and balancing that with Lane’s need for domination and punishment. And then worrying whether he’s a substitute parent. It might seem that he walks a thin line, but it’s clear that Derek has grown to love Lane deeply. The main tensions in the story are whether Lane can ever become an equal partner to Derek, he is sometimes so lost in his self-doubt. Also, Lane’s mother, Laura, makes an appearance as she tries to control Lane’s life from prison.
I like reading the progression and seeing how Derek and Lane make it work with a special kind of loving (and there are all sorts of hot tricks in Derek’s sex bag: wax/breath/puppy play, sounding, spanking, anything’s game. At times reading such intimacy really feels like an intrusion). It’s fitting that this culminates in the Christmas season, a time that is full of upheaval — good and bad. Derek, with Erin, Christy, Ferg, and Brin have made a family for Lane where he finally feels that he can belong.
Oh, and Mr. Z is even more funny and evil that ever before.
RATING: 