Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Sink or Swim
SERIES: Anchor Point #8
AUTHOR: L.A. Witt
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 340 pages
RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2018
BLURB:
When need meets fear, can two very different men find common ground?
Alhazar Bukhari spent his Navy career in the closet. Now he’s retired, divorced, and hungry for the love he’s never had a chance to experience. He tries to put his faith in Allah to bring the right man into his life, but it’s hard to be patient after all this time.
Chaplain Dylan Pedersen spends his days counseling Sailors, and his nights with men he doesn’t know. Months after finally escaping an abusive relationship, he’s terrified of anything more than a physical connection. Maybe it’s a sin, but he’s too lonely to not let men into his bed, and too scared to let them into his heart.
When Alhazar’s civilian job brings him aboard the USS Fort Stevens, and his daily prayers bring him into Dylan’s chapel, the chemistry is instantaneous. Sex and friendship quickly evolve into more, but Dylan’s too haunted by his recent past to be the man Alhazar wants. Alhazar needs love, Dylan needs time, and if they can’t find some sort of balance, they’ll sink before they ever have a chance to swim.
REVIEW:
I think Sink or Swim, book eight in L.A. Witt’s Anchor Point series, might have been the one I was looking forward to, and dreading, the most. I have a fascination with how religion is presented in queer novels–mostly due to having grown up highly religious–but I also find them at times to be a bit trying to read if the author doesn’t care to or satisfactorily present religion as nothing more than a spittle-spitting rage monster in a pulpit. Which is not completely unfounded, but a bit reductive and not at all a true representation of what religious people–of all faiths and/or denominations–can act like. I have found, though, that Witt’s various religious characters have always had such a genuine feel about them. They are people I can relate to, not just because they remind me of people I grew up with, but because they can also remind me of how I use to be and act. For better and for worse. I have also really liked the idea of having the two MCs of this book from different faiths. Dylan Pedersen being a Christian Chaplain on one of the ships at the base, and Alhazar Bukhari being a Muslim man who works as a civilain contractor on the ship.
And the faith aspects actually turned out to be one of my favorite parts of this story. I think the way Witt presented them as honest about how their relationships with their two faiths were flawed at times, is perhaps the most recognizable representation of what my faith was like. It made it incredibly easy to connect with them as they talked to each other about their sex lives, their occasional drinking, and their attempts at keeping to prayer–but not always being able to. And it doesn’t make value judgement about them failing in these things. They don’t angst about being a bad Christian or a bad Muslim because they are not perfect. They recognize that they probably will never be perfect, but the attempts to be a better person are just as important. Even as someone who is now an atheist–and one that is not particularly fond of the religion that he left behind–I can admire that. The thoughtful and realistic way that these two characters are presented made the scenes built around their faiths to be a real pleasure to read.
I did go back and forth on the whole issue of Dylan’s past, though. On one hand, I think it was well written. While his abusive ex didn’t get a whole lot of page time, his presence was certainly felt in the way his treatment of Dylan echoed through all parts of his life even now. Dylan still second-guesses himself about relationships, still can barely bring himself to leave the base less he run across the asshole. I also like how Witt chose to characterize the ex, not as a physically abusive person, but one whose constant attempts to pull Dylan down and apart verbally was just as traumatic as if he had spent the last couple years causing physical injuries. For reasons I will not go into, this kind of abuse is something I have a special contempt for, and I like when it is presented as the truly harmful and damaging thing it is.
Yet, I could have lived without Witt making Dylan physically confront his abuser. I really don’t like when that happens in stories. Maybe it bugs me so much because it happens so often when abuse is a sub-plot, and so part of me is tired of the predictability, but it can also be that I find conflating healing from abuse with confronting the cause of the abuse, extremely dangerous at times. In some circumstances it might be helpful, but there have to be just as many times and situations where confronting an abuser can end up with the person getting injured if not killed. It worked out for Dylan, which is good, but I’m not sure that his arc over this subplot would have been any less satisfactorily concluded if he was able to find a place of peace without it. If he had come to the realization that his life didn’t need to be dictated by the actions and reactions of this one douche, and that telling him to fuck off–while immensely satisfying for both Dylan and the reader–wasn’t what he needed. That his healing didn’t need to be dictated by his abuser, but by letting go of the part of himself that needed to hang on the the reactions and desires of the man who hurt him.
This book ended up being pretty much on par with the other books in this series. The chemistry between the two is incredibly good, the sex is a lot of fun to read, and the way that characters and situations are handled gives an every present sense of reality that has made every one of these books so easy to dive into. If you are worried about how religion is handled in this, I would say give it a try, you might end up surprised by these two guys. They are relatable and honest in a way that I don’t find very often, especially when the characters are religious.
RATING: 
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