Reviewed by Dan

TITLE:    Rites of Passage

SERIES:   Courtlands, The Next Generation #2

AUTHOR:     Cat Grant

PUBLISHER:  Cat Grant Books

LENGTH:     251 Pages

BLURB:

Adulthood sucks.

With college graduation behind them, Seth Thompson and Bilal al-Mansoori enjoy their last carefree summer. But the perfect future Seth’s envisioned since high school—moving to New York to pursue a career as an artist—doesn’t appeal to city-phobic Bilal. A job offer allowing Bilal to remain in upstate New York drives a wedge between them, and Seth’s family’s well-meaning interference doesn’t help at all.

A trip to the UK for Bilal’s sister’s wedding offers a chance to get back on the same page. But their holiday is abruptly cut short when the unthinkable happens…

And Seth faces the very real possibility that he may never see the man he loves alive again.

REVIEW:

I need to start with a warning for the squeamish. There are sections with M/F and M/M/F in this book, since the parents are the original Courtland triad from the previous series. If vaginas make you queasy, then you might need to skip some pages. Don’t however, skip the book. It is well worth reading, particularly if you’ve been a fan of the previous series and this one, as I have.

Ms. Grant has brought us the continuing story of Seth and Bilal. As many of you might remember, I gave you reviews on the novella, In From the Cold, and then book one in the series, A Year in the Life, (which was an expansion of that novella into a full novel). Now we’re back with the guys having just graduated from Cornell. They are ready to move on into their respective careers, Seth as a very promising young artist, and Bilal as a chemical engineer.

First though, they need to travel to the UK for Bilal’s sister’s wedding. She, like Bilal, has vowed never to return to Iran, the land of their father. After their British mother died, their father uprooted them from their life in Oxford and dragged them to Iran. Both were unable to reconcile themselves with the religious extremism they encountered there and when they went overseas to school, both vowed never to return. Bilal especially can’t return. They hang gay men in Iran, or more recently thrown them from rooftops.

Why does the extremely homophobic fellow Iranian from Bilal’s past at Cornell suddenly show up in Manhattan when the guys are waiting for their flight to England? Who is the strange woman that Seth finds in the family penthouse?

When they arrive in the UK, things seem odd, but they play them off as unimportant. To be honest, I wanted to jump into the pages and shake them. They totally ignore Seth’s second dad’s warnings. Before you know it, Bilal is grabbed. Will they ever see each other again, or will Bilal end up back in Iran, being hung or thrown from a building?

One note…I totally didn’t suspect the identity of the strange woman, and was unhappy with her final outcome, but that might just be me.

Enough teasers. If you’re a fan of Cat Grant, this book should be on your “to be read” list. I highly recommend it, vagina included. I recommend you read A Year in the Life first for continuity and character background. My review of that book is here. Enjoy!

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

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