Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Out!
SERIES: The Shamwell Tales #3
AUTHOR: J.L. Merrow
PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing
LENGTH: 322 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 19, 2016
BLURB:
When the costs are added up, will love land in the black?
Mark Nugent has spent his life in the closet—at least, the small part of it he hasn’t spent in the office. Divorced when he could no longer deny his sexuality, he’s sworn off his workaholic ways and moved to Shamwell with his headstrong teen daughter to give her a stable home environment.
His resolve to put his love life on hold is severely tested when he joins a local organization and meets a lively yet intense young man who tempts him closer to the closet threshold.
Patrick Owen is an out-and-proud charity worker with strong principles—and a newly discovered weakness for an older man. One snag: Mark is adamant he’s not coming out to his daughter, and Patrick will be damned if he’s going to start a relationship with a lie.
Between Mark’s old-fashioned attitudes and a camp, flirtatious ex-colleague who wants Mark for himself, Patrick wonders if they’ll ever be on the same romantic page. And when Mark’s former career as a tax advisor clashes with Patrick’s social conscience, it could be the one stumbling block they can’t get past.
Product Warnings: Contains historically inaccurate Spartan costumes, mangled movie quotes, dubious mathematical logic and a three-legged pub crawl.
REVIEW:
Book three of The Shamwell Tales brings us back to the small British village of Shamwell, and all the characters that populate it. We met Patrick back in Played! and now we finally get to see the man who will sweep him off his feet. Or, well, who will make a right hash of the whole deal. Still, they get to their happily ever after eventually, so it is not all bad.
Mark and his daughter have moved to Shamwell in the (desperate and probably not all that thought out) hope that a new location will help curb some of Fen’s burgeoning criminal interest. Mark wouldn’t also mind if full-time care of his daughter might help fix what years of absentee fatherhood helped wreck. But with his determination to keep himself firmly in the closet, and Fen being a 14 year old girl, there is not a lot of bonding to be found.
The relationship between Fen and Mark is one of the real highlights of the book. It uses all of the tension between the two characters without ever getting annoying, all the while letting the love between Mark and his daughter grow without turning either of them into people they really are not. Fen is a teenager with a chip on her shoulder, but she is also a good person. She has a bit of growing to do, but even if she goes about things the wrong way you can tell that she at least intends her deeds to be for the good of those she cares about. And Mark, despite his rather shambling efforts at parenthood is desperately trying to be the type of person his daughter can look up to.
Which he may not always succeed at, seeing as his more personal relationships–with David and with Patrick–leave a bit to be desired. A lot of it comes down to the fact that he is older than these guys, and that age difference means a lot more to him than it will ever probably mean to them. It is easier to deal with when the issue is raised with David, since Mark doesn’t really care for the man like that, but with Patrick, when they are both trying to come to grips with their pasts and their futures, it becomes a bit of a mess. Patrick can’t really get why Mark is in the closet when Fen is so clearly ok with differing sexualities and gender identities. Mostly the age gap becomes a giant road block, hard to get around because neither of them get why it should matter till everything is falling apart.
I like how this played out in the story. How it wasn’t the age that became the problem, but the experiences that those years gave to Mark that Patrick never had, that created the problems. A lot of the times it seems like in these situations it all comes down to a number, but in reality the hard part of these relationships is more about the meaning of those numbers and not the gap between them.
It would be hard to say that I have a favorite series by J.L. Merrow, but if I did this would probably be it. Or top three or something. It is just such a great series and each book, and the writing, characters, and stories make these something I truly look forward to reading. The secondary characters were given real attention and even if some of them never get their own book, it is almost inconsequential because you can almost feel their stories beneath the stories of Mark and Patrick, or Tristan, Connor, Robert, and Sean.
This story was a lot of fun to read and I am hoping that the next one (and please gods let there be a next one) will be coming out soon(ish).
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