Reviewed by Tammy
TITLE: Orientation
AUTHOR: Rick R Reed
PUBLISHER: JMS Books
LENGTH: 249 pages
RELEASE DATE: 25 March 2017
BLURB:
A novel about reincarnation and love
Christmas, 1983: Robert is a young man tending to his soul mate Keith, who is dying from AIDS. Robert tries valiantly to make this a special Christmas, but loses the fight late Christmas night.
Christmas, 2007: Robert ventures out and finds a young girl about to fling herself into the waters of Lake Michigan. He rescues her, and the two form a bond forged from familiarity, and even love. Neither understands it, since Jess is a lesbian and Robert is gay. But there’s more …
Jess begins having strange dreams, reliving key moments she couldn’t know about in Keith and Robert’s life. They begin to wonder if their feelings might be rooted in something much more mystical than a saviour/victim relationship.
As the two move toward each other, Robert’s younger lover Ethan plots the unthinkable. His crystal meth-addled mind becomes convinced there’s only one way to save himself: Robert’s destruction.
There’s a murder attempt … salvation … redemption …
And a new love is born.
First Edition published by Amber Quill Press, 2008,
Second Edition published by Wilde City Press, 2016.
REVIEW:
I don’t know about you but I believe in reincarnation. As we all know reincarnation is when someone’s soul is reborn in another person.
Robert lost his soulmate Keith to AIDS on Christmas Day, 1983. You have to remember this is when AIDS was first discovered and next to nothing was known about the disease. Robert and Keith only had a year together. Their connection was immediate, they became inseparable after that first meeting as they knew they were meant to be together. Robert nursed Keith on his own for the entirety of his illness.
24 years later and Robert is in a pathetic excuse for a relationship with Ethan. Ethan is a drug addicted young man who used to be beautiful, with naturally muscular body with wavy black hair. Robert knows that Ethan is cheating on him just as he knows that he’s addicted to drugs. What Robert doesn’t know is that when Ethan has a hit of Crystal Meth he becomes just as addicted to sex, raw sex, with as many men as he can have. What Ethan doesn’t want to admit is that he has contracted AIDS yet he still has unprotected sex with as many men as he can get. The last straw comes when Robert overhears Ethan making plans to meet another man on Christmas night. After waiting all night for an Ethan that wasn’t coming home, Robert goes for a walk. As he walked around the lakefront Robert comes across a young woman crying, about to drown herself in the lake. Jessica’s girlfriend has left her and she is about to lose everything because she doesn’t have a job and can’t pay her bills. When Robert talks Jessica into going with him back to his place to get dry and warm, he can’t for the life of him work out why.
 The more Robert talks to Jessica the more he sees bits and pieces of Keith in her. Things Jessica says, the way she says them, the way she talks. The more time they spend together the more Robert comes to love Jessica, not a sexual love as Jessica is a lesbian and Robert is as gay as the day is long! As they’re working out exactly what is between them, Ethan has a drug induced epiphany, he must kill Robert so he can get the insurance money to buy all the drugs he wants. After Ethan’s failed attempt to kill Robert, Robert has him put into an institution to try to get him clean and sober.
Orientation is all about love and all the guises it comes in. It doesn’t matter that Robert and Jessica are both gay, they both have acknowledged that Jessica is the reincarnation of Keith, Roberts soulmate and that Robert was pulled to the lakefront that night to rescue Jessica. Both Jessica and Robert find their own personal “happy place”, together but not “together”. I urge you to get you copy of Orientation and curl up on the lounge and have a read!!
RATING: 
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