Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Shotgun 
SERIES: Coda Books #7
AUTHOR: Marie Sexton
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 260 pages
BLURB:
Part of the Coda Series
As a young man, Dominic Jacobsen already suspects he’s gay, and he gets all the confirmation he needs when a rich boy from out of town climbs into the back seat of Dominic’s GTO. One night with Lamar Franklin is all it takes to convince Dominic he’s found the man of his dreams. Unfortunately, that one night is all he’ll get before Lamar returns to Tucson.
Fifteen years later Lamar returns to Coda, Colorado, after ending the latest in a string of bad relationships. He’s alone, depressed, and plagued by late-night phone calls from an unidentified caller. Lamar’s ready to give up when he comes face-to-face with his past.
Since he was seventeen, Dominic has dreamed of a reunion with Lamar, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready for it now. Facing small-town rumors and big-family drama is bad enough, but Dominic won’t risk losing custody of his teenage daughter, Naomi. The only solution is to make sure he and Lamar remain friends and nothing more. Clothes stay on, no matter what.
It seems simple enough. But for better or worse, Lamar has other ideas.
REVIEW:
Lamar and Dominic meet as teenagers and have a bit of fun one evening. They smoke a little pot, fool around in Dominic’s GTO, and make some great memories, but that is all it will be. Lamar is visiting his cousin and returns to Arizona the next morning. Dominic lives in Coda and that’s where he’ll stay.
Fifteen years later, we see these two as men now, and both are messed up. Lamar has moved to Coda, after a bad breakup in Dallas, having nowhere else to go. He’s a teacher and has seen that Coda had a job opening, he gets the job and rents a house from his Uncle. He is a mess. Depressed, nearly suicidal, heading toward drinking too much, just barely getting himself up to go to school. Dominic is better, but still a bit of a mess. He’s been married and has a teenage daughter, submerging his sexuality and giving in to his family.
Lamar has been getting some harassment, after only a few weeks in town. He’s not sure if it’s a student or a fellow teacher, but one morning his car is vandalized. He gets it towed to a repair shop, unbeknownst to him, owned by Dominic’s family. Dominic figures out who Lamar is and they reunite at the school as Dominic picks up Lamar. Lamar is relieved to see a familiar face, one he has dreamed about over the years. Dominic is shocked to say the least. He had dreamed about Lamar for years as well, but neither had a way to find the other.
This gets us to the main plot of the story. Two things are going on. Lamar is being stalked and harassed by someone. After his car was vandalized he called the police, and Matt, from previous Coda books shows up. Matt offers help, but mostly helps by introducing Lamar to the gay community in Coda. All four of them. So someone is targeting Lamar, who had literally just moved back. I have to say I didn’t like this storyline much, and when we find out who the bad guy was, it made no sense to me. It didn’t work for me at all. But it does provide some stress and background to the continuing saga of Dominic and Lamar.
The other part of the book is obviously the story between the two of them. Dominic is so far in the closet he poops mothballs. He wants a friend, but wait, he wants sex. No… he wants nothing to do with Lamar. He promises to never abandon Lamar, then 3.5 seconds later he does just that. Not just once, but twice. Lamar brings some issues to the mix as well. He has some serious abandonment issues, and can’t take no for an answer. He pushes Dominic way too fast, way too soon, then gets pissed when Dominic freaks. At times I liked them together, when they were becoming friends and building Lego Star Wars crap together, or spending time with Naomi (Dominic’s daughter) but most of the time I wasn’t convinced they were right for each other. Even by the end of the book I wasn’t sure they should be together.
So I had a hard time with this book. I’ve never been disappointed by a book written by Marie Sexton, and I’ve loved every other Coda book. But I just didn’t love this one. I didn’t dislike it, but it just wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I really hate to say that! I didn’t like the stalking drama, it felt fake to me, and I didn’t get why the person who did it, well, did it! There were some sweet moments between Dominic and Lamar here and there, and a couple of nice sex scenes, but that wasn’t enough to carry the story for me. I would say the writing was good, as far as the technical side of it, good flow, good dialogue, things like that. It was the plot that I didn’t particularly like.
I’ll say it was an ok book, but not great. If you are a fan of the Coda series, you should probably read this one, the characters from previous books are in it which I did really like to see. But it’s not as good as the other books. If you haven’t read the other Coda books, this could be read as a standalone story, the other characters are in it, but not knowing who they are would not affect this story. I would recommend reading the other books though, they are fantastic.
RATING:
BUY LINKS:
“Dominic is so far in the closet he poops mothballs.” – oh I love you, Vicki!!