Reviewed by True
TITLE: Mystery Dance
AUTHOR: Richard Natale
PUBLISHER: Blazing Heart Publishing
LENGTH: 226 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 15, 2024
BLURB:
Richard Natale’s new novel, MYSTERY DANCE, is a story of second chances and our capacity for forgiveness.
Two young men meet and are immediately drawn into a rewarding and meaningful relationship. Then, a few years in, as they prepare to marry and start a family, the couple is torn apart by a spectacular breach of trust. Though neither fully recovers, they rebuild their lives and, separately, become single parents.
One Christmas Eve, they are accidentally thrown together again and forced to confront the damage they’ve inflicted. But is reconciliation even possible when their lives have changed so drastically in the interim?
REVIEW:
This is the story of Gerald and Nico, it’s from both their perspectives, it’s about their lives, their joy, hurt, grow, their work, and the connected people within their circle.
Ten years ago they had a long-lasting relationship, that blew up terribly.
Gerald never found what he had, he has only flings, through and app he meets the younger Lyle. They have a quicky and it’s done. Only, they keep hanging out with each other. They become friends, with benefits, no strings.
Lyle invites the bit lonely Gerald to join him and his sister’s family for Christmas.
At Lyle’s sister, Gerald got the shock of his life.
His ex is there.
Alternating between past and present, we get insight into both their lives and their view of what happened.
There’s so much hurt and anger. To just become on speaking terms was already a big deal.
Watch them because dang, what follows was something else!
Their characters are well-crafted and consistently portrayed. Perfectly imperfect and that made them both interesting people.
Their relationship had a foundation, they didn’t dive into it blindly, maybe even too calculated but hey I’m not judging. Nico, the planner he is, found it was time for a serious relationship, when he saw Gerald he knew he could be the one.
Nico tightly managed their lives, and it was time for the next step.
It was that particular step that broke them.
Back to Christmas Eve… they have a lot to overcome, they lived their own version of what happened.
The author has a different way of expressing their perspectives than I have experienced so far, and therefore a quite different kind of experience. There’s maybe more story about them separately than them being together. For this journey, it was quite suitable. There are some amazing secondary characters!!
Some parts are extendedly written, other parts slightly. The emotional parts were for me not that palpable, still, it was more than enough. Don’t expect a passionate relationship. Do expect a slow process (years) of healing, forgiveness, second chances, profoundly introspective thoughts and constructive communication.
It was an amazing narrative, I was intrigued, their journey was baffling, it felt real, raw and honest.
Thank goodness, in the end, there’s a lot more hope for the future.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
[…] Reviewed by True […]