Reviewed by Donna
TITLE: Better Late
AUTHOR: Lazuli Jones
PUBLISHER: Clarian Press
LENGTH: 72 Pages
RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2018
BLURB:
What do you do when you’re in love with your daughter’s boyfriend?
Mark is a fifty-year-old French literature professor. He ‘came out’ several years ago, but has never really tried to have a relationship with a man since the dalliance with a male colleague that led to his sexual awakening and a split from his wife. Now living alone, except for times when his daughter, Gemma, stays over, he decides the time is right to try his hand at relationships, encouraged by his brother, Garrett. Mark’s few attempts at dating don’t go terribly well!
And then Gemma announces she has a new boyfriend. Andy is thirty-one, a dancer who totally ‘gets’ him, and even finds his jokes hilarious – and, the more time Andy spends with him, the more Mark finds himself falling hopelessly in love.
Should he try and hide his feelings, throwing himself into dating? What else is he to do? He’s Gemma’s dad! And Andy can’t possibly feel the same. Can he?
REVIEW:
This was a cute short story with zero angst and plenty of sweetness.
Mark is a fifty-year-old gay man whose sexual experience consists solely of heterosexual encounters and one lone kiss with a male colleague. That kiss was all it took for him to end his marriage years ago, but since then he’s existed in a state of celibacy. He has no idea how to go about meeting someone at his age. The clubs are full of hot young men, who he feels no attraction to, and the blind date his brother sends him on is rather disastrous. To be honest, he has more luck accompanying his brother to heterosexual speed dating, even while busy convincing the ladies that he has a rather unnatural obsession with cheese. Then he meets his daughter’s new boyfriend, and he discovers the attraction that has previously been missing.
Mark was a rather interesting character that the author did a good job giving us a feel for. While he has the obvious maturity of his years, he has a confused sort of naivety as he attempts to navigate a dating world that he has no clue about. I liked Mark and was attracted to his story.
Unfortunately, I don’t think his story could be sufficiently told in so few pages. This is no straight forward “meet and romance”, there are complications here in the form of Mark’s daughter Gemma, and the rather extensive age gap between Mark and Andy. While I enjoyed this story, and was interested in this story, it felt incomplete. There was no real opportunity to know Andy, who came across as much younger and inexperienced than his age would indicate. We didn’t get to experience the turmoil of this seemingly odd couple falling in love. While the plot didn’t necessarily need angst to give it some weight, it could have done with some extended emotional scenes to make the reader feel the uncertainty.
But enough with what this book isn’t. What it is, is light and amusing. The characters are playful and it does make you happy when Mark finally gets his guy. It’s a quick easy read if you have a free hour or two.
RATING:
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