Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  The Family We Make

SERIES:  Finding Family #2

AUTHOR:  Kaje Harper

PUBLISHER:  self-published

LENGTH:  360 pages

BLURB:  

At seventeen, Rick Albright left his home, his parents and even his old name, rather than pretend to be straight. But being on his own was hard. When his big brother Sam found him, and insisted on giving him a place to stay, he didn’t resist too long. Living with Sam is better than fighting just to survive, but it’s not easy to find his balance in a simple, small-town life, after his time on the streets.

Travis Brinkerhoff finally managed to come out in college, his second year anyway. It was the one bright side to losing his baseball scholarship and jock status. But without money for tuition, second year came to an abrupt end. He’s back in his small Minnesota hometown, and back in the closet. Travis feels like he’s trying to fit into a life he’s outgrown. If he’s going to survive, he has to figure out a way to be his own man, maybe even have his own man, without losing the family he loves.

When he left the Marines, Sam Albright wanted nothing more than to find his missing younger brother. Mission accomplished. Now he’s got an independent, possibly traumatized, openly gay young man on his hands, a girlfriend in a war zone overseas, and parents he has to lie to in order to keep the peace. Keeping it all together won’t be easy, but Sam has never backed away from a challenge

REVIEW:  

I probably should wait to write this. I’ve only finished the book like five minutes ago and normally I at least sleep on my review so that I have time to find the right words. But I think I might lose something if I let this one go for any length of time. I think this one might just need to be whatever is banging around in my head right now.

I just want to warn you guys that there is going to be a section of this review that is going to be heavy on the spoilers. I’ll make sure it is fully marked so if you haven’t read this book you can avoid it. And I advise you to, if you have not read this book yet. Not knowing what is going to happen is a big part of this book, and I kinda want you to enjoy all the anticipation–and, yes, the pain–as the characters experience it. It is part of what makes this book so damn good. So, avoid reading my spoilers, because I honestly want to talk about what happens in this book–I kinda have to–but I don’t want to ruin the story for you.

Oh…and another thing…I would advise that you read The Family We’re Born With, the 1st book in the series, before you read this one. It is only like 50 pages long (and free), but it will help set you up for this book. You might be able to read this book without it, but I wouldn’t.

Now, to the ((extremely) long-ass) review…

Escaping the hell of the streets should have been a good thing for Rick. And it was.  He now has his brother back, and he has food, and clean clothes, and a lot of things he would have probably sold his ass to have only a few weeks ago.  Rick has a lot to be thankful for…but some part of him is still that angry kid who left home because he couldn’t be both ‘son’ and ‘gay’ at the same time. Some part of him can’t trust that this isn’t just a dream that he is going to wake up from–or even worse, that it is reality. Because Rick Albright has lived in the real world, and it’s not so pretty.

Travis was this close to having what he always wanted. A chance to be out, a chance to be free. But then he got cut from the baseball team, lost his scholarship, and had to return back to Minnesota–and a small, cramped closet.  He loves his family, and they love him…but he doesn’t know if that is enough. If it will be enough when he tells them that he is gay.  Will twenty years of love and support still exist after he asks them to chose him over their church?

Sam has faced a lot in his life. War, near-death experiences, coming home to find that his kid brother has taken off for parts unknown. So Sam has faced a lot, and he has been strong thru it all. He got home, he survived, and he even found his brother–a little worse for wear, but alive.  Sam knows how to be strong. But he doesn’t have a clue how to handle a 17 year old kid who have lived almost the last year on the streets. Or who is gay. Or who is now falling in love.  But he’ll stick it out, because that is what he does. Because that is how he loves.

This isn’t the life any of these three guys expected. But then again, who expects buttfucking-cold Minnesota to be where everything finally starts to come together? Or where everything starts to fall apart.  But this is where they are, for better or for worse, and they’ll just have to make it stick–because this is the life they have been given, and this is the family they’ll have to make.

I don’t think I have the words to properly describe how much I love this book. Which seeing as I am having to write a review of it, is rather inconvenient.  This book…this book just is pretty damn near perfect. At least for me. The writing is so very damn good, and I lost count of how many times I lost track of the time or (oh fucking hell, I did it again…*runs off to rescue kettle from the stove*) how many times I forgot I had water boiling away in my kettle for tea.  This book sucked me in and stuck on me, like a rather inconvenient stain, when I tried to walk away. Even when I had to put it down to get some other reading done, this story, these guys, still had a hold on me. That doesn’t happen nearly enough.  Which is probably a good thing, really, since I don’t have the money to keep replacing my tea kettle.

There is so much I love about this book, that it is kinda hard to figure out what to say here–what needs to said, what needs to left out…I just don’t know. So I am going to ramble at you guys for a bit. Mostly because I can.

A lot of stuff has gone down in my family, as of late. My sister decided to come out as trans, and to say that it has upset a large portion of my ultra-conservative, extremely religious, family, would be a bit of an understatement. The thing is, they were so very kind about the way they went about hurting her. So polite, so nice. And it about damn well killed me, and I wasn’t even the one they were attacking.  So yeah, when Travis’ family found out that he was gay, and they were so polite about it, so damn quiet–no shouting, no recriminations or damnations to hell–just silent judgment, I got why it hurt. Because it hurts when your family chooses an idea over you. When they make you feel bad for them having to make a choice, when you never wanted to even ask them to–because you were always afraid of who’d they’d end up choosing.

It can hurt just as badly as them telling you that you no longer even exist for them. That they hate you. Because it is all the same, in a way. You have no idea how much I despise the phrase ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner.’ Because that is what they make you. You are nothing more than a thing, a ‘sinner.’ Not brother, or sister, or daughter, son, husband, wife, or friend. You become the embodiment of everything they hate, and no other part of you matters. So while Travis’ parents didn’t throw him out, didn’t yell, didn’t strike him or call him slurs, they hurt him all the same. And yet, you want to hope that it is better than all that. That the lack of hate in their voice means that there is hope. That given enough time they will see the truth.

There is so much hope in this book. About as much as there is hurt. A fine balance between pain and healing, between past and future. I don’t want to say that there’s a lot of angst in this book, because it doesn’t feel like agnst. It feels like life–good, heartbreaking life. And that you can cry but still want to push on, to know that even hope tinged with sadness is a good enough reason to keep going, makes this a great book. Because this book may know how to hurt you, but it also knows how to hold you together.

[MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!]

 

 

Now that I’m here, I don’t know exactly what I want to say. Feels like I could sum up this review in those 9 words. But here goes…

There is a reason that is book is five stars. Well, there are a lot of reasons, but the major one is this: it didn’t pull any punches. There are not a lot of books in this genre, or probably any romance genre for that matter, that deal with the issues of STDs. More specifically, HIV and AIDS.  Those are not words that easily lend themselves to to HEAs, especially when you get down to HIV and AIDS. There is no cure, only treatments to help manage the viruses, and when you want to wrap your book up in a nice pretty bow by the end of a couple hundred pages, having a character or two, infected with one of the big monsters hiding in the closet, is probably not the best way to go. But…sometimes it is. Not because it is easy, but because it is worth it.

Part of me didn’t expect Kaje to actually do it. I don’t know why, she clearly has the balls to do it–and do it right. But so very few authors take that chance. They might give their characters the ‘scare’ but not the scary reality of a positive test result. And sometimes I find myself annoyed that they back out at the last moment. It is not like I want characters to suffer (though I kinda do), it is that I want to see what they are capable of. What will they do now that they are faced with the terrifying and uncertain truth of life after the test?

Travis and Rick have to deal with an awful lot of stuff in their lives. Some good, some plain fucking awful, but I don’t think anything was quite as terrifying as trying to figure out who they were going to be, after that test. And I don’t think they were ever quite as strong as when they decided to fight together, instead of alone. Yeah there were moments when both of them wanted to run, to save the other the pain or because they didn’t know if they were strong enough. But they fought for each other, even as they fought with each other. And that is why this book is five stars. Why I would happily give it another five stars on top of that. This book does not take the easy road. It makes the characters bleed, it makes us cry, and it trust that we will make it to the end to see that the life these guys decided to make for each other was strong enough to face the storms that are going to be constantly on the horizons for probably most of their lives.

 

 

[YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A SPOILER FREE ZONE…PLEASE REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR PETS AND BAGGAGE WITH YOU AS YOU DISEMBARK. THANK YOU.]

I think the title of this book is perfect. The Family We Make. As I have grown up, it has become pretty obvious that sometimes it is the family we make, and not the family made for us, that is what matters in the end. I would not give up my mother, or my sisters and brother for anything in the world. They are a part of me, so deeply that I don’t know if I could live without them. But part of that is knowing that they will never ask me to be anything but what I am. They will tease me, and push me, and force me face some hard facts about my life–but I know down in my soul that they are it for me. They are family, out of blood and tears and threats of blackmail. And this family that these guys cobble together, out of lovers, friends, and random pieces of their kin, is probably stronger because it took so long to make it. No one is perfect, and they certainly all have their weaknesses, but they hold each other up in the way that families do. In the way they need.

These characters have flaws, all of them. Rick is abrasive and bull-headed, Travis is a bit too self-sacrificing, and Sam isn’t always perfectly supportive of everything Rick does in regards to his appearance or sexuality. But because of their flaws, you know that they are real. Well, as real as fictional characters can get. No one is perfect here, no one is just there to educate the viewership on the ‘right way’ to act or react to any given situation. They are flawed, and learning to live in a world and a life that is just as flawed. And so am I. So we are a good fit.

This book wowed me is so many different ways. It made the hard choices, it took the path less taken. It showed us a world that is not all glitz and glamour, but is also damn well worth living. It made me cry. And laugh.  Then cry again.  I don’t have the words so say how much I loved this book (despite what the length of this review might say otherwise), but I know that it touched me in a way so few books do.  Maybe it was because so much of it resonated for me, in my life at this moment, but I genuinely think that it is just one of the great books in this genre.

And that is all I have to say about that.

RATING:  

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