Reviewed by Carissa
TITLE: The Nesting Habits of Strange Birds
AUTHOR: Charley Descoteaux
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 200 pages
BLURB:
All he ever wanted was to be a normal guy….
Phil Brask spends his days in the basement of his mentor’s Victorian home, converting legal documents into electronic format. When the pipe feeding the water heater bursts, Lee Redding arrives in the plumber’s truck and draws Phil away from the narrow focus of his computer and camera lens. Lee gives Phil hope for a life beyond the walls he’s constructed using the nesting habits of migratory birds and dense legal files, a guided tour through a world filled with romance and music…maybe even family. But there’s a reason Phil retreated behind those walls, why he panics at a simple touch.
Lee has a good life—working with his uncle and on his mother’s farm, playing bass in a horrible metal band, and hooking up when he pleases—but he’s always suspected something was missing. When he meets the hot photographer with the icy-blue eyes, he knows exactly what that something is. Phil isn’t like other guys, but neither is Lee beneath his carefree exterior. Maybe Lee’s the perfect guy to show Phil that everything doesn’t have to be done the hard way and “home” isn’t a four-letter word.
REVIEW:
This one is a bit of a head scratcher for me. On page almost everything is done correctly. You have complex characters, a nice plot, and plenty of twists to make it interesting. Yet I had a real problem connecting to the characters in this book. Or connecting to the book, at all. I’m not sure if I was just in a weird place in my head when I was reading this, or if there was some indefinable quality lacking from the pages.
Lee and Phil are seriously messed up characters. In a good way, I guess. Phil is showing the most trauma from having been abused, attacked, and tormented for a large portion of his childhood, but Lee isn’t getting off either. Ever since he came out, he has had to deal with some pretty intense homophobic bullshit in his hometown. In fact it is Lee’s issues that drive the story in this book, while Phil’s fear is a constant stumbling block for both of them.
I like that Phil doesn’t automatically get ‘fixed’ when Lee comes into his life. Like that his depression and touch issues still linger even when love enters the picture. I may be a fan of love-that-conquers-all, but I have to admit I have never felt that love-can-fix-all. It can help, but most problems don’t just evaporate into thin air once you find someone to love. And that Phil still had to deal with his issues, only with an added dose of guilt over how those issues were impacting Lee, is one of my favorite things about this book.
There were also some nice twists in the plot that I didn’t see coming–some bits of added suspense and terror that just made me want to keep reading even if I was already dealing with a sense of disconnect from the book. Lee’s accident was probably the most intense, but Phil’s breakdown and how that twists them both up, was very good as well.
Oh, and the sex was very good. If there was one thing that really tried its damnedest to hook me into the story, it as the sex scenes. They were very well written and extremely hot. I like how they actually meant something to the story though. With Phil’s issues creating so many problems–especially his fear of touch–I like how that impacted the sex. How it made things complicated and messy.
I do have one bone to pick though (and this probably has more to do with the genre on whole) in regards to the sex. I find very hard to believe characters who spout that whole ‘we don’t have to have penetrative sex to make our sex lives whole’ line, only to have them end up, in the end of the story, having penetrative sex as a way of showing how ‘fixed’ they are now. Honestly this book would have made it to four stars if it hadn’t included that last sex scene, because I would have been fucking impressed as hell that someone had actually stuck to their guns on that one. But no. They fucked. ‘Cause apparently they are all fixed now and shoving your cock-up someone’s ass is the best way to show that.
On the whole there is nothing inherently wrong with this book. And I am willing to admit that some of my apathy is just a funky head space, so maybe other readers will react differently. There is quite a bit to like about this story. I love to read books where the MCs are all kinds of screwed up, and the fact that it wasn’t an easy path to ‘better’ here, makes it all the better. I just wish I would’ve connected to the story, so it didn’t feel like I was reading about them, but like I was living it with them.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
I liked this book, but I was also disconnected to the characters, I think part of the issue was the style, the author did a great job of speaking in Phil and Lee’s voices, but those voices are kind of disconnected from the world around them, and I think the reader too.