Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Somebody Nice!
AUTHOR: Raine O’Tierney
LENGTH: 18,564 Words
STORY PROMPT: Dear Author,
NewYorkDating.com Profile
Name: Danny Age: 35 Location: New York City Sexuality: Male seeking Male Looking for: a nice person! Who loves dogs! And children! About Me This is Danny, he is a very nice person and he is very funny, but I think he is lonely. He helped me when my mom wanted to sell me to a reality show and now I live with him and I wanted to do something back for him so I want to find someone for him, because he has only me and Bunny, that’s his dog, who is really big. And I’m 7 years old and Danny is 35, which is really old, but that doesn’t matter he looks younger. Miss Portwood, my teacher said I need to say what Danny likes to do and he likes to walk with Bunny and work out and play football with me and Bunny and he works also, I think he is a police officer or something, he has a really cool car! And he has a ring in his nipple, which I think is really ouch, but he says people like it. I don’t understand why but Danny says I need to be older but I’m already 7.
Hugs, Melissa
REVIEW:
When we (the amazingly insightful reviewers of Love Bytes) decided to make Sundays feature days for the Love’s Landscapes stories I was very excited to see a story from Raine O’Tierney pop up so soon from this year’s offerings. This is the second story I’ve reviewed by this author and the third of her stories that I’ve read, so I had a fairly good idea what to expect.
And I wasn’t disappointed.
Danny is cop whose life revolves around his foster daughter Melissa. He rescued Melissa from a bad situation years ago and has been trying since then to adopt the little girl. Although Danny is bisexual he’s never actually dated or had sex with a man before, not because he’s hiding or unsure but because it’s just never happened. He’s always dated women in the past, until he met Milo outside Melissa’s school.
Milo is a very shy, semi-closeted librarian who works at a private school. The bravest thing he ever did was muster up the nerve to let Danny know he would be interested in a date. The trouble is, now the two men are kinda sort of maybe dating but Milo is scared of Melissa finding out and ruining the relationship between Danny and his daughter.
Then we have Melissa herself. Seven years old and so set on finding Danny a girlfriend she drafts a personal ad for NewYorkDating.com to attempt to help him out. Unfortunately, or maybe it’s a good thing, she’s not allowed to use the internet unsupervised so she enlists the aid of the school’s helpful librarian, Mr Swaisbrick (aka Milo the sort of boyfriend).
Children in stories? You probably either love em or hate em and nothing I write now is going to change your mind. It can go either way for me. I think you can usually tell the authors who actually have their own children or are around children a lot. For a seven year old fictional child, Melissa was surprisingly not too annoying. She had enough spunk to skate the line of making me want to push her off her bike and laugh but that could just be the mother in me coming through.
In case it’s important to anyone there’s pretty much no sex in this story but to be honest that’s usually a plus in my opinion when it comes to short stories that aren’t erotica. This story is absolutely all about sweet rather than sexy and if you’re on the look out for a quick, cute, free, read that will leave you feeling happy then I totally recommend Somebody Nice!
RATING: 
LINK: Goodreads
Oh, I love it that you’re reviewing these free stories in the Love’s Landscapes series. Very pleased to see this here–thanks for sharing your review with us!