AMERICAN DREAMER, first in the Dreamers series by ADRIANA HERRERA

AMERICAN DREAMER (Dreamers #1)
ADRIANA HERRERA
Carina Press
$7.75 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No one ever said big dreams come easy

For Nesto Vasquez, moving his Afro-Caribbean food truck from New York City to the wilds of Upstate New York is a huge gamble. If it works? He’ll be a big fish in a little pond. If it doesn’t? He’ll have to give up the hustle and return to the day job he hates. He’s got six months to make it happen—the last thing he needs is a distraction.

Jude Fuller is proud of the life he’s built on the banks of Cayuga Lake. He has a job he loves and good friends. It’s safe. It’s quiet. And it’s damn lonely. Until he tries Ithaca’s most-talked-about new lunch spot and works up the courage to flirt with the handsome owner. Soon he can’t get enough—of Nesto’s food or of Nesto. For the first time in his life, Jude can finally taste the kind of happiness that’s always been just out of reach.

An opportunity too good to pass up could mean a way to stay together and an incredible future for them both...if Nesto can remember happiness isn’t always measured by business success. And if Jude can overcome his past and trust his man will never let him down.

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My Review: I gained at least 15lb reading this book. Nesto's food truck needs to park here on the beachside lots so I can eat there every day.

Author Herrera is a dab hand at using Spanish in her mainly-English text in such a way as a monoglot will get what was said, a bilingual reader will get the feelings of the speaker, and both will be able to feel involved and invested in the story. It's a tricky thing to accomplish.

It felt to me as though the main issues in Jade and Nesto's relationship were...details. Not superficial, understand, but the kind of things couples have to negotiate as time tugs them in different directions. Nesto needs reminding that Jude needs his time as much as the food truck does; Jude needs reminding that Nesto is focused and so needs reason to focus on him.

I stepped away from the vehicle, taking a long look at it. Emblazoned on the back was the logo for my business, OuNYe, Afro-Caribbean Food in huge bold black font on a red background. The black and red contrasted with the flags of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica painted over the entire truck. To name my business, I used a word from the Yoruba language. Which had been spoken all over the Caribbean by our ancestors, the West Africans who were brought there as slaves. Ounje is the Yoruba word for nourishment, and I’d decided to play a bit with things and put the NY right at the center.

You know the kind of stuff, it's happened to all of us who are not terminally single. It's not that it's inaccurate, but it arose really fast; we sped through the getting to know you phase a wee bit less lingeringly than I think is ordinary.

I'm pretty sure Nesto knows what Jude needs from him but is Jude clear on it? We're reading Nesto's PoV so I wasn't all the way sure...though it's obvious Jude knows he'd be a fool not to make a real family, away from the rigid, rejecting Evangelicals who raised him,right by Nesto's side. He's experienced the darkest side of the Murruhkun Dream, its eager hatefulness at those it deems not good enough; Nesto lives the anti-immigrant, racist bit daily; they're in tune already on this, but still need to work out their harmony. Very much what makes real couplehood so much fun, so much work, so deep a reward when it's done, to build.

A romance with its flaws. but those are minor; a love story it's easy to invest in; and a food-based novel that ought to come with recipes...or an online ordering app.

RIPPLES & WAVES: A Queer Retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid

RIPPLES & WAVES: A Queer Retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid
L.A. WITT
self-published
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Colin Everroad should be dead, but after his lobster boat founders during a violent storm off the Maine coast, he wakes up on a beach. He’s cold, but unscathed… with strange memories of a face he can’t conjure and a voice he doesn’t recognize.

No one can explain it, but a friend suggests Colin was saved by one of the mer. Except the mer don’t exist. Do they? But… that face. That voice. Someone was in the water with him. Someone saved him. If not a mer, then who? And whoever it was, Colin wants to see his face.

Lir broke protocol by rescuing a land person, but he couldn’t just let the man drown. When he disobediently resurfaces to see his beautiful land man, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forbidden to leave the depths again.

One clandestine visit turns into more. Soon, Colin and Lir are meeting at the shore as often as possible, and the connection between them deepens. The only problem is that neither can live in the other’s world. Or can they?

Then Lir finds a way for them to be together, but only for a little while… and at a cost. As time grows short, they have to choose: does Lir return to the sea and never see Colin again, or stay forever with the man he loves in a world that will never love them?

Ripples & Waves is a modern, queer retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

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My Review: A world in which merfolk are real is clearly not our reality. It's a fairy tale, a story HC Andersen invented to explain what love between dissimilar-background and -culture people would cost them...and how that cost was exacted on the partner who did the moving.

I'm glad someone thought to make this over into a queer retelling. It applies more thoroughly to queer couples than even straight ones. Colin regaling Lir with the awfulness of humans to same-sex couples wasn't exaggerating too much.

Why Colin needed rescuing in the middle of a storm at sea isn't interrogated at all until practically halfway through the text. It's a funny choice to wait so long. Once Lir saves Colin in defiance of all the rules set by his people, he appears not to suffer much in the way of consequences. Well, the sea is *immense* so it would be tough to effectively track him...but there are eyes everywhere and a merman meeting on the regular with a landman wouldn't strike any observer as ordinary.

The desire to, shall we say, be with one's love object is a powerful imperative indeed. In the source tale, the Sea Witch offers the little mermaid the same choice as Lir receives from her in this version: a potion that lasts three days, but costs you your voice. A more perfect metaphor for cross-cultural love matches I've never heard of or read: you lose your native language, your familiar cultural references, and your automatic responses make no sense whatever in the new world. It's like being queer in straight spaces. You'll never ever be one of them; they'll know it, you'll know it, so no one's ever really at ease.

These real-world subtexts are largely absent from Author Witt's retelling. It bears down hard on the sweet, loving, needy side of the story. Lir and Colin are required to make changes with life-defining consequences, seemingly very much without angst. I'm not going to criticize that heavily because this is a fantasy novel. If it were set in a realistic world, I'd have some scathing comments to make on that storytelling lacuna.

On the count of holiday escapism informed with enheartening vibes of love conquering all, this novel gets my hearty endorsement. On the count of repurposing an old heteronormative tale to be queer, it gets croons and warbles of delight. It's Yuletide...ditch reality for a world where men come out of the deep ocean to find you for true love.

DOUBLE LIFE: Portrait of a Gay Marriage From Broadway to Hollywood, so heartening that these men loved so long and so well

DOUBLE LIFE: Portrait of a Gay Marriage From Broadway to Hollywood
ALAN SHAYNE & NORMAN SUNSHINE (foreword by Mike Nichols)
Open Road Media
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Gay marriage is at the forefront of America’s political battles

The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a fifty-plus year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising, and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century. At the same time, they share inside stories from film, television, and media featuring the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Truman Capote, Bette Davis, Robert Redford, Lee Radziwill, and Frances Lear.

Double Life is a trip through the entertainment world and a gay partnership in the latter half of the twentieth century. As more and more same sex couples find it possible to say “I do,” the book serves as an important document of how far we’ve come.

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My Review: Do I need to say that this is, by its nature, a cautionary tale about what's at stake if you and I do not resist, now and for the future I can see?

Well worth reading for those interested in the entertainment and art world from 1950 to 2010. Well worth reading for any queer guy who thinks "I can't have a solid committed love when the world is what it is." They did, and it was even more repressive then than it is now.

Well worth reading for anyone who enjoys hearing stories from happy people's lives.

Don't fail to listen to your old gay uncles as they tell you their stories. I promise you, from bitter experience, you will never regret listening anywhere near as sharply and painfully as you'll regret not asking.

A document of a time there are far too many in this vale of tears who want to drag us back into. Why is that bad? Read the book and find out, as well as have yourself a good long laugh...these old guys, they lived them a life. And they did it together. In spite of troubles, in spite of things not ever being perfect, they laughed at it all. Together.

Sixty years of life together. They met and set up home together when I was a toddler. How do people do that? Read the book and find out.

There's nothing for you in the past? Read this book...you'll find yourself everywhere. People in love are grappling with all the same questions of boundaries, appropriate expressions of feelings, what about jealousy, regardless of time and place. We're all very much the same. The variations we all have from one another are less fundamental than the haters will tell you they are.

This is a fun read by two men who, like any longterm couple, finish each others' thoughts, In this case they do it in alternating chapters. I think anyone who likes relationship stories, gossipy memoirs, or carefully non-prescriptive models for relationships will batten on this read.

SORCERY & SMALL MAGICS, charming queer love story in a magical fantasy world

SORCERY & SMALL MAGICS
MAIGA DOOCY (The Wildersongs Trilogy #1)
Orbit Books
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Desperate to undo the curse binding them to each other, an impulsive sorcerer and his curmudgeonly rival venture deep into a magical forest in search of a counterspell—only to discover that magic might not be the only thing pulling them together.

Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics.

He can summon butterflies with a song, or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Such minor charms don’t earn him much admiration from other sorcerers (or his father), but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face. Which is why Leo vowed years ago to never again write powerful magic.

That is, until a mix-up involving a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime nemesis, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and an absolutely insufferable curmudgeon. The only thing they agree on is that getting caught using forbidden magic would mean the end of their careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. But Grimm casts spells, he doesn’t undo them, and Leo doesn’t mess with powerful magic.

Chasing rumors of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws alike. To dissolve the curse, they’ll have to uncover the true depths of Leo’s magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and—much to their horror—work together.

Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.

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My Review: Forced proximity/mismatched temperaments/social class disparity stories are almost always going to frustrate me. No exception here.

The young men are in that magic bubble of time where all the world's new, fresh, and exciting, the education you're receiving in class is only part of what you're learning, and everything is still possible. Great start, then. Add onto the plus side being queer isn't any kind of issue in this milieu. I'm going to say the quiet part out loud: Magic curses are as good an explanation as any for the reality of human desire. (Which, incidentally, is not consummated...a lot like Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunners series, you're not getting a HEA or even HFN in this story.)

If that's a dealbreaker for you, this isn't your best investment of eyeblinks. I was on the bubble about that aspect of the story, but I'm willing to go with it because I like these boys. Carping, whiny brats that they are, they're also tentatively figuring out the limits of their magical powers (a stand-in for real-life capabilities and drive for success, with the same drawbacks and problems we all face) as they each need the other's innate skill to complete any magical aim. If there's a better metaphor for a successful love relationship, I don't know of it.

Leo, our PoV character, is privileged and gifted beyond his comfort zone in his branch of magic. He's a chatterbox and uses words beautifully. It's a great way for him to distract others from the huge depths of his talent. Grimm is aptly named, as he's learned from a hardscrabble beginning that resolute focus on results is The Way To Succeed. They're excellent complements for each other's strengths.

Why, then, was I frustrated by the story I'm clearly enjoying? I don't like the implications of forced proximity. "Forced" is always going to trouble me. The feelings developed in forced proximity are, well, forced. Like forcing a plant, the result is at best an attenuated version of the unforced thing. I mistrust the trope because life has taught me not to trust forced feelings for long.

I'm sure, though, that others feel differently. I'm also sure that the book's ending is not placed where it is for no reason or simply by chance. Author Doocy understands the material she's working with. Her skills are very much congruent with the material's focus on the communication these young men are learning to give and receive. So I will set aside my unease in the face of my trust in her storytelling skill.

Again I remind romance readers that this is fantasy first, romantic fantasy to be sure, but romance-novel endings are not included. Much to be praised, and much to enjoy, so recommended reading.

A FAMILY, MAYBE: Two Dads, Two Babies, and the Court Cases That Brought Us Together makes a #PrideMonth point: happiness takes work; is everywhere you plant it

A FAMILY, MAYBE: Two Dads, Two Babies, and the Court Cases That Brought Us Together
LANE IGOUDIN
Ooligan Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A gay couple's quest to adopt their foster kids in the early 2000s becomes a spiral of legal, political, and personal challenges.

In his candid and emotional memoir, Lane Igoudin shows the human side of public adoption as he and his partner Jonathan seek to adopt their foster daughters from the Los Angeles County child welfare system. Desperately wanting to be fathers, they enter into a complicated legal process that soon becomes a tangle of drama-filled birth parent visits and children's court hearings.

Lane and Jon spend years not knowing whether they will be able to officially adopt the girls, or if the county will reunite the sisters with their birth mother, Jenna, a teenager in the state's custody herself. The stress of the foster-to-adopt process, compounded with the mounting, nationwide struggle for LGBTQ+ equality, erodes the sense of peace in Lane and Jon's home.

Still, the girls attach themselves deeply to their adoptive parents, while their dads do all they can to give them the best lives possible. Heartwarming moments with the kids and relatable first-time-parent woes become bittersweet as Lane realizes how much he and Jon have built—and how much they could lose. A Family, Maybe is a moving story about dedication, heartache, and love.

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My Review: Two gay dads chronicle the formation and formalization of their family. The men made a deeply responsible, generous choice to enter the foster-to-adopt system, thus ensuring they'd be in the toils of bureaucracy the rest of their lives. I expect there are many who quail before this prospect and, if a family is as much of a priority for them as it was for Lane and Jon, go the surrogacy route.

Massive kidos to you, gents, for staying the course. The bureaucracy, the sisters's biomom, the darkening clouds of great-haters' rage at gay men making strides towards having all their rights...all keep the emotional pot merrily boiling away as we read on. That was not, in any way, guaranteed. We know from the start that the family is intact. I think the ups and downs of building that family is nothing short of amazing as a survival story. These two have my mad respect for surviving their ordeal while being solid, loving, involved dads to their two daughters. I don't envy those young womens' future partners because the models for commitment they carry in their minds are going to be very hard for others to reach.

The one thing the whole family can count on is that they will be loved and supported from within, come what may.

A story of the power of commitment and caring that belongs on your shelf/Kindle. It is not some sort of revelation of beautiful writing but it is a tale not to be ignored. I feel energized by hope and happiness after this read.