Reviewed by Dan
Content Warnings: This book contains references to, and or descriptions of, rape, sex slavery, pedophilia, extreme sado-masochism and snuff films.
TITLE: Café Blue
AUTHOR: J. Carter Swift
PUBLISHER: SDJ Publishing
LENGTH: 178 Pages
BLURB:
On a rainy night at Café Blue, Ayden Munro meets Nikolai Bortzov, a young Russian caught in a nightmare. Both lives will never be the same. Ayden, a writer, is pulled into the dark world of human trafficking, where teenage boys are bought and sold. Café Blue brings together a cast of saints and demons, and the story these characters interact to tell is a story of love and obsession, a story of perversion and murder. Inventive and intense, the reader is given no quarter as the narrative weaves in and out of heartbreakingly sweet moments, and moments of heart-pounding suspense.
REVIEW:
I try to never read the “blurb” on a book before I read the book itself, because I hate spoilers of any kind. That said, I’m about to rave about this book, and might give some spoilers. So I’ll start by saying this book would get more than 5 stars if I had that capability, and I highly recommend you read it. If you don’t like spoilers, now would be a good time to leave the review.
Ayden Munro is a young and highly successful writer of straight romance novels. While gay himself, his models for romance have always been his parents, so he is sticking to what he knows. The formula is working well, as his first book isn’t even published yet, but he already has a contract for the sequel and rumors of a huge contract for a follow up three book series.
Ayden’s life changes one dark and rainy night while he is sitting outside Café Blue in the Boystown neighborhood of Chicago. A beautiful young man runs up, and after gazing into Ayden’s eyes, throws his arms around Ayden. The boy is on the run from someone in a large black Mercedes, but runs off before Ayden can help him.
The boy is Nikolai Bortzov. Nikolai is a Russian trapped in a nightmare as the blurb states. When Nikolai’s mother was killed in an auto crash, his father hung himself and Nikolai was sent to live with his grandmother and uncle. The uncle however was a pedophile and immediately started raping Nikolai. When his grandmother found the uncle on Nikolai, she dropped dead of a heart attack and the uncle was arrested and sent to jail (where he was later castrated with a soup can lid). Nicolai was sent to an infamous orphanage in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he was sold into sex slavery for somewhere around $500 US.
Nikolai’s life since has been as a kept whore in Chicago. He is very beautiful and his “clients” are some of the wealthiest men on the planet. But he is still a slave, controlled by some evil underground types. Ayden and Nicolai will run into each other again, and when they do, sparks fly. They are fated to be together, but how do they get past the evil that has Nicolai in its clutches?
There are a lot of subjects in this book which might push some folk’s buttons, so I’m going to mention them. There are references to and descriptions of snuff films, where young boys are raped, beaten and eviscerated. There are references to other rapes. There are several murders. There is pedophilia. There are references to sex slavery. And there is evil incarnate in one of the background characters. All tough subject matter items, but it is definitely worth the read.
I very, very much enjoyed this book. It has aspects of romance, but also mystery and a ton of suspense. While reading, you just sense that evil hasn’t released its clutches from Nicolai’s life and I know that I spent the entire book turning each page with trepidation as to what was going to happen next. I did not foresee a sub-plot revealed near the end of the book related to another background character and Ayden’s family, so was totally surprised.
As I said above, I’d give it more than 5 stars if I could. I very highly recommend it. For anyone who has read the author’s other book that I just reviewed, “Stories of the Boy with the Yellow Socks”, be forewarned, this is a 180 degree shift from that book! I can’t wait to read further works from this author.
RATING: 
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