Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Tea
SERIES: A Cup of John #1
AUTHOR: Matthew J. Metzger
PUBLISHER: NineStar Press
LENGTH: 322 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 7, 2019
BLURB:
John only went into the cafe to have a brew and wait out the storm. He didn’t expect to find love at the same time.
And it really is love at first sight. Chris is like nobody John’s ever known, and John is caught from the start. All he wants, from that very first touch, is to never let go. But John is badly burned from his last relationship and in no fit state to try again. When Chris asks him out, he ought to say no.
But what if he says yes instead?
REVIEW:
After a month, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this story. But I’ve got to write this review at some point, so I guess I’m just going to have to force myself to come to some sort of a conclusion. On the whole…I liked it enough to recommend people read it. Especially if Metzger is one of your favorite authors. His skill here with creating stories and writing characters is on par with his other works. And despite the length of the book, it did keep me interested the whole way thru. I don’t regret reading it. I just happen to find myself not entirely sure that I would ever want to revisit it, either. This isn’t a Sex in C Major, kind of a book–one that had me enthralled, but exhausted and wary of recommending it, by the end. And it isn’t Big Man, either–which ended up being by far my least liked story by this author.
Tea sits in this nebulous place of I don’t know. Which, let me tell you, is a horrible place from a reviewer’s perspective.
On the positive side, I am genuinely pleased by the wide swath of characters that Metzger brings to life in each of his book. John and Chris, despite sharing a few characteristics with several of Metzger’s other main characters, nonetheless stand as unique creations in their own right. John is this big burly electrician–but who is also soft-hearted and scarred by his last relationship–and Chris is trans, and blind, and having to deal with a life frequently interrupted by epilepsy. This connection is near instant, and despite the fact that those kinds of connections really don’t work for me, I did enjoy watching their relationship grow past that initial point of contact.
Yet because they went from zero-to-sexy-bedroom-talk in a second flat, I had a really hard time connecting to them. They were just so on whenever they were together and that kind of constant banter and flirting is something I have a really hard time connecting to. I liked them as characters, and I grew to like them as a couple, but man was it a long road to get to the point where I was fully invested in seeing them make it together.
And then there is the Other Thing…which is a bit of a spoiler. So what I’m going to do is say that for everyone wanting to go into this story spoiler-free, my general feelings about this book are that it is worth reading. It is not my favorite of Metzger’s work, but there is a lot there that is worth sticking around for. And if you don’t have my general dislike of stories with near “love at first sight” elements, then I think you will end up enjoying it a lot more than I did. There is however something that gets revealed in the first fourth(ish) of the story that might end up being a make-it or break-it moment for some people. It has to do with abuse and betrayal…just maybe not in the way that you might think. That is about as far as I can go without spoiling things too much. If you really need to know keep reading. For everyone else, this is your SPOILER WARNING…
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So near the beginning of the story it is made pretty clear that some messed up shit went down between John and his last boyfriend. And it is also clear that it left a rather lasting impression on John and his ability to trust. We come to learn that John’s ex had been cheating on him–or, really, that his ex had been cheating on his fiance with John. Whatever way you cut it, there was massive amounts of betrayal to go around. So far, so good. Or, horrible. Whatever. Then we find out that in order to get out of the hot water his so rightly finds himself in, the ex accuses John of some rather awful things: stalking, threats, rape. All utterly unpleasant and completely false. John gets pulled in by the cops, even his own family starts to doubt him. It is all absolutely devastating to John. As you could imagine. And despite the fact that he is never charged, it is a life experience that will probably haunt him forever.
And on one hand…it was a very effective. It changed things up, made the story more interesting, and I can’t deny that on some level I liked that it surprised me.
But on the other hand…I can’t get passed the somewhat uncomfortable feeling that the world we live in doesn’t really need another “false rape allegations” subplot added to the quagmire of our already fucked-up existence. Even if this a thing that does happen in real life (and despite how much it angers me, I am willing to admit that it probably does), this is fiction and everything that happens in it is put there, and so can equally be pulled out if the harm done outweighs the artistic merit.
Yet on the third hand…does denying it a place in fiction really help anything? Stories not having this element are not going to make it a thing that doesn’t happen in real life.
On the yet other…well, you catch my drift…if it helps in any way to foster the idea that we shouldn’t believe people when they come forward with allegations of abuse and rape, I’m not sure I can get behind that.
As you can see, I quite conflicted. I can see both sides of the issue, but after weeks of having thought on this I am yet to come down on one side or the other. It was done well, and with–I feel–the best intentions…but it still makes me bloody uncomfortable. I have no clue where to go from there. Like I said earlier, it is a good story, but if I ever am able to pin down my thoughts on this aspect of the book, I will be fucking surprised.
RATING: 
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