Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Mystic Man
AUTHOR: E.J. Russell
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 100 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 22, 2018
BLURB:
When a series of personal crises prompt risk-averse research librarian Aaron Templeton to apply for a job on the other side of the country, nobody is more surprised than he is. He nearly runs home before the final interview except for one little problem: he has no home anymore. He put his condo on the market before he left California and it’s already sold. Only an encounter with free-spirited Connecticut native Cody Brown at the Mystic Seaport Museum staves off Aaron’s incipient panic attack.
Cody loves nothing better than introducing newcomers to the great features of his beloved home state, and when the newbie in question is a rumpled professorial type with the saddest blue eyes on the planet? Score! The attraction between the two men deepens as they explore Cody’s favorite spots, but when difficulties arise and Aaron’s insecurities threaten to overwhelm him, will Cody’s love be enough to keep him in Mystic?
REVIEW:
Despite all commonsense telling him otherwise, Aaron Templeton is going to finally do something daring. He quit his job, sold his home, and moved across country to Connecticut…with only the prospect of a job waiting for him on the other end. Not even a guaranteed job either. It is the one time in his life he has ever been spontaneous and he is embracing it with all the fervor of someone who just realized what a monumental mistake they just made. With no safety net to catch him, Aaron has no clue how swift the fall, or how painful the drop is going to be once he lands down on the east coast. Though maybe his chance encounter with Cody Brown, Mystic Seaport Museum tour-guide and all-around free-spirit, might just cushion the blow.
I haven’t read a whole lot of the stories from this series. I’ve picked up a few from authors I already love, but haven’t gone out of my way to read every one that has come out. I mostly just decided to read this one because I had an empty slot in the calendar and it was short enough that I figured, why not?
And while I can’t say I was horribly disappointed with what I got, I have to admit that this was very much a middle of the road story. The characters were decently well written, if a bit bland, and I found enough of the scenes to engaging in some way or the other. I just couldn’t fight the feeling that there wasn’t a whole lot going on in this book. Aaron traveled cross country to interview for this teaching/librarian position…and yet it doesn’t really feature much in the story. It was more of a catalyst than anything else. Which is fine, but all the panic and uncertainty seemed to take a backseat to the relationship to a degree that it felt a bit undeveloped–leading to a fight that felt wildly out of proportion to Aaron’s reactions for a majority of the story previous to that point. The fight was very much a “oh god, we need a climax…um…um….FIGHT!” scene, which I am not too fond of. The anger and panic seemed to come out of nowhere, even when I knew exactly where they were coming from. A lot of the story up to that point didn’t really lend itself to that big of a reaction, so it felt a bit forced.
Also…the dialogue was very 50/50 here. Sometimes it was fine and worked well, but then other times it felt incredibly out of place and lacked a sense of reality that the rest of the story had. Part of this can be attributed to the kid in this story–Cody’s niece–being a bit too precocious for my tastes. She didn’t work for me, so the scenes with her in them didn’t work for several reasons, actually. But also Aaron and Cody can sometimes get a bit too over the top when talking about things, and it tended to kick me out of the story.
There wasn’t a whole lot here to keep my attention. I can’t say it was bad, but it had the bad luck to come right after a story I really loved, so the lack of anything to really grab me and hold me to my kindle definitely hurt this story. This story doesn’t have many things that will turn readers off, but I can’t say it is going to compel a lot of rereads either. Pick it up if you are a States of Love completionist, or enjoy random factiods about Connecticut.
RATING: 
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