Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Distant Swimmer
AUTHOR: Jacob Cheyenne
PUBLISHER: JMS Books LLC
LENGTH: 121 Pages
RELEASE DATE: January 21, 2017
BLURB:
Shy and scholarly, long-distance swimmer Ryan Zwick thinks he’s the only gay member of the college swim team. He keeps his head down in the showers, and his head in the books the rest of the time.
But when a sporty new transfer student joins the team, Ryan feels a surge of hope. Sexually inexperienced and looking for love, fellow swimmer Blake Gossens is everything Ryan wants in a boyfriend. But what is Blake’s game, exactly? And just how straight is he?
Blake seems to be more interested in Ryan’s best friend, Marissa, leaving Ryan to go back to secretly checking out his teammates in the pool. But Ryan keeps getting mysterious messages in his dating app from a stranger who seems to know a lot about him. Could this messenger be Blake? Or someone else?
When bad weather hits unexpectedly, Ryan is forced to confront his real feelings toward Blake, while opening up to the stranger by his side, eventually giving in to his wildest fantasies — and his heart.
REVIEW:
This book fell into my lap when someone else at Love Bytes didn’t get to read and review it. I’m kind of glad it did. It was a nice lazy Sunday read that kept me entertained for a couple hours. The characters were fairly well developed and in the case of the main character, Ryan Zwick, I felt we got enough development. Some of the side characters were less fleshed out, including his best friend Marissa, but she wasn’t central to the story so got less page time. Also, as the story went along, I didn’t really like this Marissa person. She reminded me of the ‘spiteful girl (or guy)’ that probably everyone has at one point known in the real world. You know the type. Smile to your face and stab you full of holes when you turn your back. When she outed Ryan to his new team member Blake, so that she could then hit on Blake, I lost interest in her. She was pretty hateful to her ‘best friend’ from grade school on. It didn’t really ring true for me.
There were a few other things with the story that are pushing my rating down slightly. While I really liked most of the characters–even Blake up until a point–there were some parts that didn’t work as well for me. Primarily some of the cheesy lines. There is one spot where Ryan is putting on a condom and it says he rolled it down over his ‘mighty tool’. I laughed out-loud, sorry, the author had already determined that Ryan’s penis was average, and the line just fell flat. There were some others, but I won’t belabor the point.
Overall, it was a good story, and ended up with an HEA. I liked the slight mystery of who the other guy on the hookup app was, and it helped move the story along. Like I said at the top, a good lazy Sunday read. I’d call this one as ‘good/average’ on our rating scale. I would definitely read something else from the author in the future.
RATING: 
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