Reviewed by Taylin

TITLE: Sweet Temperaments

AUTHOR: Tonwand North

PUBLISHER: Self-published

LENGTH: 146 pages

RELEASE DATE: September 25, 2019

BLURB:

Lewis Fraser is in trouble. He’s fallen hopelessly for eccentric recluse Christopher Wright. But the man won’t even say good morning to him! Yet no matter how many times he tries to break his one-sided attraction, one look from Christopher and his heart is racing all over again.

Struggling to hold the threads of a friendship together, Lewis highly doubts there’s any parallel universe in which Christopher and him are in a relationship! But he’s still determined to melt the ice and get to know him better. What Lewis doesn’t realise is that Christopher Wright intentionally avoids others for a reason. How will he handle Christopher’s secret?

REVIEW:

The moment Lewis sees Christopher, he knows he’s in trouble. The man doesn’t interact with anyone, and only minimally with the person he shares an office with. Nevertheless, Lewis is on a mission to thaw the frozen wall that exists around Christopher. He tries talking to him, annoying him, ignoring him. A few times he comes close to giving up, but there is something about Christopher that keeps Lewis going back.

Christopher is a precise character. He arrives to work precisely on time, he has lunch, coffee, and goes home at the same time each day, too. When it’s sunny, he sits on the same bench, well away from other people. Otherwise, he sits in his car. His existence is designed to keep everyone else at arm’s length. There’s a reason he lives like it, but Lewis chips away at his carefully constructed walls.

This is a lovely story told in the first person entirely from Lewis’s viewpoint. He details his life from the moment he met Christopher – frustrations and all. From there, the pace ebbs and flows, depending on the period being described. Some elements contain a lot of detail, such as his mission to find a human side of Christopher and the consequences of discovering the man’s secrets. Other features are as good as skimmed over, months and years can pass in a few paragraphs.

I was extremely entertained by the way Lewis tries to train Christopher in social niceties. He is very much the yin to Christopher’s yang. But I was also impressed by the way the author keeps Christopher true to himself. Even when Lewis succeeds in his mission, and Christopher shows the other side of himself. The man remains cold to others. When Lewis discovers Christopher’s secret, the saint card wasn’t played – I like the way he dealt with it.

Technically, the story isn’t perfect. There is extensive use of independent body parts. E.g. the term ‘my eyes narrow’ is used. This without the use of a qualifier, such as, ‘as if of their own violation’ the eyes are classed as acting independently, which is a technical no-no. I get what is trying to be said, but the gaff remains. It should have been written, ‘I narrow my eyes’. The story is littered with this type of thing.

Technicalities aside, Sweet Temperaments was a story that I laughed, smiled and cried at. While I’d have liked to see more show in the writing than tell, that is a preference personal to my reading. Others may be cool with it.

This isn’t a story where one character has problems, and the other doesn’t. Both have issues to deal with. Some family orientated, some not. They simply deal with them differently. While not every reader would have dealt with them in the same way. Lewis and Christopher, deal in a way that is right for them – or rather the author believes is right for the characters.

RATING:

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