SANTA DADDY, kink romance for celebrating the holiday

SANTA DADDY
KEIRA ANDREWS
self-published (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Mall Santas aren’t supposed to be hot!

Hunter is hopelessly adrift after college. He’s still romantically inexperienced, can’t find a real job, and has no clue what to do with his life. Desperate, he returns to his humiliating old gig as an elf at the Santa's Village in his hometown's dying mall.

Enter the sexiest Santa ever.

Twice Hunter's size and age, lumberjack Nick makes Hunter tingle. Too bad he's super grumpy and intimidating. Years after the tragic death of his partner, Nick has his beagle and long, hard days on his Christmas tree farm. That’s plenty. But he can’t refuse a loyal friend’s plea for help and finds himself filling in as Santa. Despite Nick's attempt to stay aloof, the beautiful, anxious young man playing elf brings out his long-dormant daddy instincts.

Then a surprise blizzard traps them alone in Nick’s isolated forest home. Will they surrender to the sizzling spark between them and find the release and comfort they crave?

Santa Daddy is a sweet and spicy holiday gay romance from Keira Andrews featuring an age gap, m/m first times, role playing, Christmas romance feels, and of course a happy ending.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: Spicy indeed! Eww-ick homophobes strongly cautioned.

Workplace romance that would get both guys canned (!) in 2025, with an age gap that would cause serious high-volume tuttage from the puritanical purseylipped posse of pisspots who decide these things for other people. I trust my strenuous exercise of kindness and diplomacy is masking my real feelings from their gaze or further contumely will head my way.

Those tedious persons dispensed with, we'll now enter the chatroom.

These men are insta-lust bonded, as a novella's limited size demands, and believably so to me, as they're each in very needy stages of their lives. Nick's lost a partner long enough ago that he's past the rawness of fresh grief. Hunter's out of school, transitioning to adulthood and as astrologers say, "void of course." He's casting about for what to do now, and meeting Nick plants the seeds of a future he realizes he wants. Nick, as Santa, is incongruous being so majorly studly and not a little grumpy of affect. Te saving grace for Nick is the way Hunter brightens his world. It's a little uncomfortable, he's told himself he's a hookups-only kinda guy, but Hunter...gets under his skin.

Of course he can't show that to Hunter. He presents himself as cold and judgmental. He's ready to be more but this is who he's been for so long that, well, the mask became the man.

Hunter's not having it. He's hot for the body and convinced there's a volcano under the snowpack. He's excited by the domineering way Nick chastises him for being late to work...he's got his kinky side...and wants a bit of the heat he feels coming off their mutual interest.

Generally daddy kink needs more room to develop than a novella. It works better if we see the men settling into their roles in the lifestyle, see them negotiating their needs from each other and finding the balance point between love and desire. That's something that's rushed through...dare I say past...in Santa Daddy.

I think this is a good chance to say these guys were made for this kink, they were just waiting for the right partner to come along. Nick even has moments, like in Ghost, where his dead partner urges him to let loose and live again. It's creepy to the materialists, but I see it as his own emotional system communicating his real feelings using imagery he'll trust to be truthful and safe.

You're getting a good, happy-results holiday story and a nicely smexy package it's wrapped inside, with most all Keira Andrews stories. This one is a good example of a shorter-than optimal version.

THE BOOK OF DAVID, powerful evocation of the grief of losing your love

THE BOOK OF DAVID
JEAN-LUKE SWANEPOEL
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A gut-punch record of what remains when an imperfect relationship between two men comes to an abrupt and tragic end. A tender exploration of longing, memory, and regret, and ultimately of love at its messiest.

When Leon Jonker meets David Hale, David is naked on a San Francisco beach. Six months later, they meet again and begin a relationship which will end with David’s death.

Leon, unsung novelist, retreats to South Africa and there attempts to write David out of his system. But falling in love with David—loud, vulgar, and uninhibited—was easier than falling out of love is proving to be. The firsts, Leon discovers, come to mind much easier than the resentments, the recriminations—the rest.

There are two sides to the story of every relationship, and somewhere in between lies the truth.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: There aren't only two sides of any love relationship, there are multitudes...people who love you, hate you, all the points on the spectrum between those poles all invest in some version of the narrative you're living. I think this slender work of queer relationship fiction operates from that reality.

We spend time with the men as they collide on a nude beach in San Francisco (David's nude, so ipso facto it's a nude beach), Leon there from his native place in queer-unfriendly South Africa after his parents emigrate from there to California, and sparks fly. The lust is immediate; love comes (!) later. Or is it just agreeable sex between lonely men...is it love from Leon to David, from David to Leon, all these things in turn?

A short novel of a turbulent interconnection told by Leon mostly, with bits and bobs from David's journal. It's raw, it's honest, it's complex. I like all of those characteristics in my gay fiction. Us queer men are often flattened in affect to our genitals and organs. Thee guys aren't a standard couple, David being twenty years younger than Leon. This resonated with me. David coming from a very different background to Leon did as well.

Leon processes his grief at David's death...not a spoiler, it's there throughout the story...right in front of us, really truthfully and in the fits and starts I know so well from my own life lived in grief. We don't expect to be sent on a spiral into our past, but *wham* some invisible-to-others Thing happens and it's time to process the loss. Again.

Jean-Luke is a Goodreads connection of mine. This is the first of his three (through May 2025) books I've read. I feel sure I'll enjoy his other work because this slender book made such a good impression on me. I love being able to recommend books by people I've known for a good while; it's fun to say, in honesty, that someone I know (however slightly) has made a fine story out of the pain and loss of Life lived in love.

I will say that the dislikable Leon as the main narrator was not always agreeable, though I understand the choice. Even the spikiest hearts give love, it just looks a little weird sometimes. But a full fifth star was not possible on the back of that minor quibble.

DECEMBER 2021 HOLIGAY ROMANTIC READS!

HIS HOLIDAY CRUSH
CARI Z.
Entangled: Brazen (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Workaholic attorney Max Robertson is one meeting away from making partner at a big NYC firm when his best friend calls and guilts him into coming back home for Christmas. But there’s a reason he hasn’t been back to Edgewood for a decade—too many bad memories. The plan was to go for just one night, until a wild deer and a snow bank wrecked everything.

Former Army Sergeant Dominic “Nicky” Bell is the new guy on the Edgewood police force, so of course he drew the short straw and is stuck working the night shift. But his evening gets turned upside-down when he gets called out to a wreck in the snow—and it’s his one and only high school crush, looking even sexier than he did back then.

When they both end up stranded together at Dominic’s house, sparks start to fly and Max isn’t sure what to do. But everyone deserves a present this holiday season, right?

ANOTHER ELF-GIFT! LUCKY OLD ME.

My Review: Six foul w-bombs. Six. Fie on this, this plague this dreadful and cornball and unnatural act! Real, actual ball-having testosterone-producing males do not w-i-n-k at...anyone, really, except the very, very young.

Still. The story. I am not against a good, solid iteration of an evergreen plot. Here we have one of those stories that's been Hallmarked and Lifetimed until we know it by heart, and that is why we consume them. It is comforting. It feels *right* to go all misty and dewy when reading about young men who are just figuring it all out, fighting battles that were passed down to them or were inflicted from without by force majeure. They are really, honestly like that, after all. And the young men here are good souls trapped into confining boxes by histories and expectations they didn't agree to accept.

When Dominic sees Maxfield for the first time in many a year, he is right back to his teenaged crush on his big brother's bestie. Said bestie is clueless...the decade between fourteen and twenty-four is a lot longer than almost any other...and just flirts with the hot young cop helping him out of the snowbank his BMW slid into as he's on the way back to the hometown he fled.

When the hijinks do eventually ensue, it's not a moment too soon. Like almost halfway through the book before they get down to business. Now...that's not a *bad* thing, there's the whole "best friend's little brother has plutonium in his underpants" issue, but good lawsy me! One thing I'll give the author, she didn't exactly stint once the ice was broken. (And this is one of those NO STRAIGHT PEOPLE reads.) She even deals with the issue of PDAs several times, in several different situations; that was refreshing to me. All too often it seems as though there's a simple, blanket response to the issue, it's okay or it's not. I've never known anyone with that blanket an approach to that complex issue. It's refreshing to read something where it's multi-layered.

Being out was a big deal for me. I’d never ask a guy to come out, but I wouldn’t go into the closet to be with someone. Not that I was thinking about the future. At all.

What also feels good to say is that the way the author breaks the OMG-conflict-therefore-run-away issue both men have came in such a realistic way. Just...flat-out blurting it. "I'm sorry, I fucked up, I really really want us to work on problems and there I went and did the wrong thing, and..."

Before I could say another word, Max reached out, grabbed my jacket, and pulled me into a kiss. It was a cold, awkward kiss—our noses were freezing, his lips were chapped, and my mouth must have tasted like too-sugary frosting. But damn. It was still the best kiss I’d ever had. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer, warming him as best I could, welcoming him against my body. He could stay there forever, as far as I was concerned.

I think there's nothing more real than the response of "shut up and kiss me" when someone's just given you their entire heart on a platter, yours to hurt or heal. This is a category romance. We know the choice before we get there. That's why we came on this ride! But so often the response to the resolution of the scariest thing you can do is...not very realistic. Sappy, soppy words, or a long, loving look...nope. Men are action-oriented. Feeling something? Do something about it!

So, yes, I ended up happy with the read. I'll definitely read another one from Author Cari Z. I'm sure she's got other good stuff to say, and her grasp of the actual workings of men sexing up other men is superior to many. That she made the effort to give them both serious thoughts about the what, the how, and the why of each act was a big point in the story's favor.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CABIN FEVER
BRIGHAM VAUGHN
Two Peninsulas Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: It may be cold outside, but inside, the temperature is rising.

When grad student Kevin Taggert goes home with his best friend for Thanksgiving, the last thing he expects is to drool over the guy’s dad.

Forty-eight-year-old Drew Freeman would love a relationship, but he never expected to find it with his son’s best friend.

When a last-minute change of plans leaves Drew and Kevin alone in a cabin the week before Christmas, the heat between them is too much to deny.

Although they promise it’ll only last the week, every day that passes brings them closer together. When Christmas Day arrives—along with Drew’s son—can they salvage the relationship and the holiday?

THIS WAS A GIFT! THANK YOU, SWEET ELF.

My Review: An age-gap romance about a divorced dad falling for his son's best friend is an automatic "yes" from me. We all like seeing our lives on the page, don't we. And goodness knows the existence of romantic stories with older men as objects of desire are most agreeable to my over-60 self.

Kevin smoothed his hand over Drew’s stomach. He didn’t have a six-pack or anything but his abs were solid and firm under his hand. Perfect.

What makes this story a success is its refusal to play into either the trope of the hot-young-stud seducing the older guy or vice versa; the connection the men feel is more like what I experience with my own Young Gentleman Caller. Talking and laughing and enjoying time spent together is so much more important than sex because there's just so much more of it.

Kevin lay back in Drew’s arms with a contented sigh. Had he ever had moments like this before? With anyone? Sure, the setting didn’t hurt. A warm, cozy cabin with a crackling fire and glowing Christmas tree had a hell of a lot better ambience than the dorm rooms or shitty student apartments where he and his ex had spent most of their time.

Given the sex scenes aren't extended, and they are pretty clearly signaled therefore easy to skip, I'd give a guarded mmmaaaybe to straight people. The men are fond of each other and quite willing to kiss but if THAT bothers you what on Earth are you doing around me anyway?!

“I wouldn’t have dreamed then that I’d be marrying a man and that my parents would welcome him with open arms.” {said Drew}

“A hot younger man at that,” Kimberly {his ex-wife} teased. “Well done, you.”

Well done indeed. Satisfying read for the fluffy season.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

KISS ME AT KWANZAA
L.L. BUCKNOR
Beaten Track Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: squeaks to a four-star rating of five by the hairs on its...nose

The Publisher Says: Coworkers and cubicle mates, Ishmael "Ish" Cutter and Adan Flores might come from different backgrounds but they have a good number of things in common. The biggest one? They each have a secret crush on the other. This holiday season they are both single for the first time in thirteen months. No boyfriends or clingy ex issues - maybe it's time for Adan to make his move? He formulates the perfect plan and invites Ish over for his family's Kwanzaa feast...but will he have the courage to make the first move or will this holiday season be one to forget?

I RECEIVED THIS AS A GIFT FROM MY FRIEND RONI! *SMOOCH*

My Review: What can you do when you're work-cubicle mate is so hot you want to mate with him every time you see him? Say yes when he invites you home for Kwanzaa, of course. He's not from your kind of family...who had no issue with you being gay, of course, but complete freakout city when you showed up with a nose piercing, and the tattoo sleeve...!

“So that means you’re free on the twenty-sixth?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Would you like to come over? Meet my family? Celebrate the first day of Kwanzaa with us?”

Ish’s stomach dropped at the question. Wasn’t it a big step to meet the family?

But Adan's family barely notices except his little sister who wants you to Notice Her and his littlest sister who, when you admitted to liking unicorns, invited you to her next (sixth!) birthday (mostly so you'd bring cake). Oh, and his hawt Marine older brother who, um, is hawt...is it hot in here...?

It's an exuberant and messy and vibrant way to spend a half-hour and a buck. Not steamy but very endearing. BUT THERE IS A PROBLEM: Four w-bombs in under 2,500 words.

Twenty-four-year-old men do not w-bomb each other.

But there's a lot to be said for exuberant, loud, silly fun. If you're in line somewhere you'd rather not be, download this story for a lousy buck and grin your way through the wait.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO KARAMU
CY BLANCA
Dreamspinner Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$1.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A Story from the Warmest Wishes: Dreamspinner Press 2018 Advent Calendar

Grant Cary, a twenty-eight-year-old grad student, has let his Kwanzaa shopping go to the very last minute. In his rush to get home, he quite literally bumps into Will Sheritan, a fortysomething software developer, in the elevator. But luck favors (or curses) the adventurous, because their elevator shuts down due to a blackout. Grant and Will learn about each other’s pasts and find more than just a casual interest.

Will has never celebrated Kwanzaa, and he’s reluctant to enter into a relationship, but exploring a new tradition—with a new friend—might brighten his lonely holiday. And if Will accepts Grant’s invitation to join his family for the Karamu feast, Grant might get his Imani gift early.

I GOT THIS DELIGHT FOR YULE FROM MY FRIEND RONI. *SMOOCH*

My Review: Cute low-steam teaser...straight-people safe. Be sure to bring your sense of humor.

Add to that one of the sexiest men I’ve ever seen—who’s probably as straight as the straightest arrow ever conceived—just so happens to be the sole occupant of this malfunctioning upright coffin. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest day of my twenty-eight years of life. Hold your applause. There’s bound to be more in store for y’all.

Whatever you're expecting, white people, put it down. Just go for the ride with Will Sheritan & Grant Cary. Trapped in an elevator on Christmas Eve, these men get awkward, flustered, sad, mad, and together in a half hour.

Not to sound too stalkerish, but his {hands} are some of the softest I’ve ever felt. Seriously? What kind of moisturizer does this guy use?

“Grant,” I say. Will sort of scrunches his brow. There’s something on his mind. I’m pretty sure I know what it is before he even says anything.

“You have a last name to go with the first?” Here we go. Well, may as well get this over with. I let out a harsh sigh, then say, “Cary. Grant Cary.”

“There now. That wasn’t so hard, right?” Really, that’s it? No sense in pushing the matter.

Better for being funny as heck. Best for being unwilling to overexplain, to clue you in...you get no info dumps here. What you do get is a happy story about sad people making each other feel better than they felt before they met. An act of Kuumba, an act of Imani, a start not a stop.

“How does anyone expect to get respect if they don’t intend to give it themselves?”

“I know, right?” I say. (Let’s just ignore the fact that the pitch in my voice went from a respectable tenor to animated chipmunk.)

Say it louder, for them still in the back.

BRIARLEY, M/M Beauty & the Beast retelling, & HOW TO CATCH A VET, small-town M/M series romance

HOW TO CATCH A VET
ANA ASHLEY
Self-published
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The first thing I learned at Vet school was to always expect the unexpected.

Well, I sure never saw Santiago Torres or his adorable Great Dane coming.

Santi is everything I’m not. Tall, confident, overbearing, and if I’m to believe his advances, he’s also very experienced in...well, you know what.

I always play safe, but it’s time to ditch the v-card. We couldn’t be more different, but that doesn’t matter because this is just a one time thing.

I’m not going to want more, right?
I’m not going to fall for him, right?

How to Catch a Vet is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series and features an opposites attract story between a virgin and a player, a Great Dane with a tendency to rescue- read kidnap- other people’s pets, and a small town like no other.

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT. THANKS, ANONYMOUS ELF!

My Review: Author Ana Ashley was brand new to me, but this entry is in a series of connected gay romances that wasn’t at all new...it’s the sixth in an all-from-one-town trope of small-world-building interconnected stories. In this case it’s called “Chester Falls, Connecticut.”

An Army veteran and a small-town veterinarian from the same little town get tangled up...literally...in a meet-cute that got my smiles. Hot guy falls for ordinary one works, too. The fact that it’s in an interconnected series detracted a little bit from my enjoyment because I didn’t get the in-jokes; the way they’re presented I couldn’t miss them being in-jokes. I definitely think the author relies on them being familiar more than is entirely wise.

It's worth mentioning that Santi's got a very real medical condition. It's very interesting to see it used in this way. He's going blind due to Retinitis pigmentosa, a very odd and specific irreversible sentence to a long disabled life for this vigorous, active studly man. It's a very surprising and, to me at least, humanizing choice. The perfect Godly Studly Hottie is changing into a somewhat more dependent, instead of dependable, man. It's a guarantee that he will be making big, big changes in everything about his life. I love the fact that he knows this; he sees (!) that he needs to make changes now instead of being forced to later; and he elects to offer his heart, for the first time in his life, to a regular, good, decent man. I do think it was a good choice. I don't think it was as impactful for me, this reader, because I'm starting the series at book six.

I do mildly recommend the read though with the reservation that there are eight (8) w-bombs and none of them were in any way needed to make any kind or sort of point about the characters doing it or having it done at them.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BRIARLEY
ASTER GLENN GRAY
Self-published
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: An m/m World War II-era retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

During a chance summer shower, an English country parson takes refuge in a country house. The house seems deserted, yet the table is laid with a sumptuous banquet such as the parson has not seen since before war rationing.

Unnerved by the uncanny house, he flees, but stops to pluck a single perfect rose from the garden for his daughter - only for the master of the house to appear, breathing fire with rage. Literally.

At first, the parson can't stand this dragon-man. But slowly, he begins to feel the injustice of the curse that holds the dragon captive. What can break this vengeful curse?

I KINDLE-BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM MY FRIEND TEAL. THANK YOU!

My Review: One thing no one tells you about being an adult is that there are no unmixed emotions.

None.

The world is so much harder to navigate without Certainty as your guide, either that you...or your leaders...are Right, Correct, Blessed By Gawd; or that you are damned, doomed!, hopeless and irredeemable! because that is also freedom from the murk and misery of figuring it out step by step, bit by bit, holding as much of a candle as you possess to illuminate annihilating blackness.

What They also fail to mention is: that blackness, the awful weight of it, the airless suffocating relentless gravity? That is the presence and substance of Them, the expectations and blames and angers and recriminations...black is the presence of all colors, weight is the sensation of gravity from so much mass, like a black hole.

White is what you see when there is nothing there. When you scrub off, slip out from under, refuse to pick up their shitty, rotten-souled, stinking cruelty, you lose their weight and your eyes clear the darkness...but unrelieved white is blinding no less than pure black.

So learn this, grasp it, hold it up in front of yourself like a sword: There is no purity in the real, honest world. There are no unmixed emotions. And that is how you learn to navigate and identify the places you are safe. They have your mix of black and white, they match the colors you've chosen and blended, the ones that give your eyes the right shine and your heart the right lift. Drop the purity filters, learn how to see in as many shades between black and white as you can find.

When you will dare anything, anything at all, for someone else, to save them and create the world they want, you are closer to that clarity than at any other time.

You'll never be so brave, so sure, so certain of your actions, as when you rise to serve the ones you love. Nothing, literally no thing, can stop that purity...except nasty old Reality. And that's why we need stories like this one.

Why, I suppose, we need all stories...they provide endings when dank, dismal Reality insists on hauling up the fucking Sun again to glare at you and highlight your crow's feet and shine blindingly on your bald patch.

But sometimes, in the gray place your shadow makes, comes that voice: "did you make the coffee?"

So do it again, Hero.

DAMNATION SPRING, true-life tale of the cost of living in a cheap, disposable world

DAMNATION SPRING
ASH DAVIDSON
Scribner
$28.00 hardcover, available now

PAPERBACK AVAILABLE NOW! Only $17.99.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 32ND ANNUAL READING THE WEST BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION! Follow the link to vote for it.

Rating: 3* of five

A BEST BOOKS OF 2021 – FICTION SELECTION FROM BOOKPAGE!

The Publisher Says:A stunning novel about love, work, and marriage that asks how far one family and one community will go to protect their future.

Colleen and Rich Gundersen are raising their young son, Chub, on the rugged California coast. It’s 1977, and life in this Pacific Northwest logging town isn’t what it used to be. For generations, the community has lived and breathed timber; now that way of life is threatened.

Colleen is an amateur midwife. Rich is a tree-topper. It’s a dangerous job that requires him to scale trees hundreds of feet tall—a job that both his father and grandfather died doing. Colleen and Rich want a better life for their son—and they take steps to assure their future. Rich secretly spends their savings on a swath of ancient Redwoods. Colleen, desperate to have a second baby, challenges the logging company’s use of herbicides that she believes are responsible for the many miscarriages in the community—including her own. Colleen and Rich find themselves on opposite sides of a budding conflict that threatens the very thing they are trying to protect: their family.

Told in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, Damnation Spring is an intimate, compassionate portrait of a family whose bonds are tested and a community clinging to a vanishing way of life. An extraordinary story of the transcendent, enduring power of love—between husband and wife, mother and child, and longtime neighbors. An essential novel for our times.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

"Ask any of these guys. You won’t find a guy that loves the woods more than a logger. You scratch a logger, you better believe you’ll find an ‘enviro-mentalist’ underneath. But the difference between us and these people is we live here. We hunt. We fish. We camp out. They’ll go back where they came from, but we’ll wake up right here tomorrow. This is home. Timber puts food on our tables, clothes on our kids’ backs. You know, a redwood tree is a hard thing to kill. You cut it down, it sends up a shoot. Even fire doesn’t kill it. Those big pumpkins up in the grove, they’re old. Ready to keel over and rot. You might as well set a pile of money on fire and make us watch."
–and–
“The real timber’s gone,” Lark said. “What’s left, ten percent, including the parks? Two thousand years to grow a forest, a hundred years to fall it. No plague like man.”

There isn't a lot to argue with in this novel. The positions are made clear as glass, the townsfolk of the story are innocent of any wrongdoing except not wanting change and the corporate interests are extracting value from the land, the timber, and the people with no slightest regard for the costs.

This ain't rocket science. You know whose side you're on from the jump.

What price innocence...the townies aren't idiots, it's clear that their corporate masters pay them pittances to do dangerous jobs. They love those jobs, they love the life it affords them. So why the hell should they bitch if someone else lives fancier than they do? Ain't like they'd want to live like those folks do, even if they had all the money those folks have. So keep the trees fallin' and the pennies rollin' in.

The personal costs? Well, omelets ain't ever come out of whole eggs, have they. That's the way life is. Except...when you step in front of a woman who wants kids, you'd better be *well*armored*indeed*. Colleen wants babies. She's miscarried eight times! Her sister's had healthy ones, and with a man you'd have to be kind to describe as "grossly unfit." It clearly ain't her body....

And here's my problem: The pace of the novel is, to put it politely, magisterial. The language is limpidly clear, if a bit less than inspiringly lyrical. But the gender politics are awful. The conflict between husband and wife over her screaming NEED to mother a brood, her apostasy to community values (and with a man she has a history with! that gets what feels to me like a pretty insignificant amount of play) because her uterus hasn't popped out healthy babies, squicked me out. I hate it when women in stories play the Mother Card and get away with amazingly nasty shit (see my outraged shout about Gone Girl), unlike Colleen. But basically I don't care about Motherhood. It isn't necessary for you to reproduce yourselves, straight people, the planet's already working itself into a fever to get rid of us. So using it, as Author Davidson does here, as a reason for Colleen to do something that (objectively) is good but will end the way of life these people want to live, shouldn't be framed as "she did it for her babies to be born."

Listen, I don't think what mega-corporations do to the world is laudable, and they do it for the vilest, most selfish reasons. I'm right there with you on the "make it stop" front. But don't play "Sacred Motherhood" on your cards or you'll lose any serious argument for them to be held accountable. NOT being a mother is the responsible choice for all women. The only people who are carryin' on about having more babies are the white supremacists, and we need a lot fewer of them stat.

On balance, three stars was what I could muster, and I felt pretty questionable about that last half-star. The book's set in 1977. We already knew the cost of overpopulation then. The "Zero Population Growth" movement was organized in 1968. It's still a damned good idea. But Sacred Motherhood is used as a primary motivator to positive action in this story, and that sits wrong with me.

The ending wasn't particularly satisfying, after all we've been through; but there not being anything dramatically wrong with the structure or the writing (apart from there being too much of it) I couldn't bring myself to downgrade it. But it wasn't an easy decision. Three...that is, on Amazon's debased scale, a bad rating. I think it's a perfectly fine rating, a perfectly fine read got a perfectly fine rating, and I didn't beat it up beyond its just deserts. That will have to do.