Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Sand-Man’s Family
SERIES: Wild and Precious #3
AUTHOR: CJane Elliott
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 125 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2016
BLURB:
When Sandy Nixon’s conservative Catholic parents discover he’s had sex before marriage, they are furious. But when he blurts out he’s bisexual, they go ballistic. After they threaten him with conversion therapy, Sandy does what many queer kids long to do—leaves his homophobic parents in the dust. He moves in with his Uncle Phineas and Phineas’s partner Cody in Portland, Oregon, and is finally safe to be himself. Sandy misses his siblings, though, and decides to visit his former home in Rockford for Thanksgiving. On the train, he runs into Jade Byrne.
As the only out gay kid in their Catholic high school, Jade has stared down homophobes while being fabulous in the school musicals. He’s crushed on Sandy for years. But he’s made sure never to show it, even after they had a onetime hookup, because Sandy’s the good Catholic kid, the altar boy, and the apparently straight athlete—all the things Jade isn’t. Traveling back to Rockford together sees the start of a month of adventures, a blossoming attraction, and a chance for Sandy to learn what it means to have a family that hurts and to choose a family that heals.
REVIEW:
I hadn’t got the chance to read the previous books in this series (though I am pretty sure I own at least one of them) so I was a little worried that I’d be hopelessly lost when I started to read this. Luckily, while I can clearly see where the other books might tie into this one, it does a decent job of standing alone.
We start the story out with Sandy traveling back home by train so he can be with his family for the holidays. With him are his uncle and his uncle’s boyfriend. Sandy has been living with them for almost all of the last year, ever since he ran away from home after coming out as bisexual to him staunchly Catholic parents (who were all ready to send him to a pray-the-gay-away camp). While on the train he bumps into Jade, an old high school…well, not friend, but certainly crush. Let’s just say the feelings were mutual and not at all dead yet. But while this new relationship looks like just the ticket for Sandy, he still has to deal with all the stuff he left in his old hometown. And dealing with family is never easy.
Despite not knowing the background to some of these characters, I found it was relatively easy to slip into the world. The characters were well written and I really liked that they all seemed to fit together, despite some of their major differences. I may not know a whole lot about Catholicism, but having been raised in a very Christian home I got a lot of the same lectures that these guys went thru. It was something easily recognizable, even if some of the traditions and terminology was a bit different.
This is not a very long story, but it did a good job of packing everything in with just the right amount of emphasis to make it work. I wasn’t particularly in love with the series of flashbacks in the beginning (I just don’t care for flashbacks at all, so big shocker there) but once those stopped it was an easier read for me. I’m not sure what was going on with Date, but if I had to guess it was there because he might be getting his own story. It certainly had that feel to it. As it was, that subplot felt a bit unfinished.
My one big problem here is that I did not feel the whole Jade/Sandy thing at all. Partly because of the way it was written, Jade did not get a whole heck of a lot of page time. It was harder to connect with him, than some of the other characters. But also because Jade had moments of insecurity about their (what, day-old?) relationship that seemed a tad ridiculous. And also a smidge bi-phobic. It wasn’t enough to put me off totally, but clearly enough to make it harder for me to cheer this whole relationship on.
(It didn’t help that I felt more chemistry between Sandy and his ex, than I did between him and his current beau, either.)
So while I enjoyed the family aspects of this story quite a bit, the romantic parts felt a bit dry. It did make me want to know more about Sandy’s uncle though. He seemed very interesting.
RATING: 
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