Brief Encounters

Title: Hot Hands
Author: Erica Pike
Length: 10,902 words
Publisher: No Boundaries
Genre: m/m contemporary romance
Rating: B+

Blurb: For weeks, college student Casper has been the victim of sail-by goosing and groping. The problem is that Casper would very much like to get more than groped by those wonderful, big, hot hands. With a journal full of clues, he sets out to discover who his mystery groper is. However, he may be in serious trouble once he discovers the ominous identity, and it’s not because of the light bondage the groper seems to prefer.

Hot Hands is the first of five in a series of short stories. Each story is independent of the others and each covers a deep issue. Hot Hands focuses on the effects of high school bullying for being gay.

Review: Casper, like so many kids gone off to college, finally feels free to be himself for the first time in his life. After spending his years in High School being constantly bullied by the same group of guys, he still finds it hard to come out to people, or open himself up in any way. As a consequence, he remains a virgin and hasn’t yet gone on any dates. Then, a man with large, confident hands begins to grope him in public, always finding a way to sneak away before Casper can see him. The mystery is tormenting Casper. He starts to feel a kinship with the anonymous man, one that leads to obsessive note taking over their encounters as he tries to puzzle out Hot Hands’ identity. Slowly, the groping lasts longer, then becomes quick blindfolded pleasures in dark corners and empty rooms. Casper is always blindfolded and restrained as he narrows his list of suspects. What will happen when he finds out who Hot Hands really is?

I love a good mystery that isn’t about dead bodies There’s something that is so satisfying about trying to puzzle out the clues with the characters, and in this story it was fun to imagine which guys were Hot Hands and why. When the groping escalates to blindfolded encounters, the power imbalance was a bit of a turn on, even if a bit scary when you really think about it. Casper is someone who has been through quite a bit of pain in his life, and the mystery gives him a game to focus on, and a way to connect with another man that he’s been unable to do on his own. Though it makes sense for Casper to be a virgin, I wish that he hadn’t been, as that took away a bit of the fun for me thinking that of all people, he deserved better treatment for his first time, no matter how much he enjoyed it.

Quite a bit of the story is very serious. Casper is a changed person after enduring so much torment throughout High School, and it has a great impact on the story. I thought that the consequences of bullying were written well and employed well into the mystery aspect of the story.

I will say that I’m still not sure if I actually like Hot Hands that much (the character) and I would have liked to see what happens after the resolution of the story. Still, that is my own personal curiosity and wouldn’t suit the story; it ended at the right time. I found one inconsistency in the text (confusion about his time in HS), but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story.

I’d definitely recommend this story. It is an interesting premise that took me a bit by surprise and immediately captivated me. I really liked Casper and sometimes his situation, both past and present, broke my heart. This is the first thing by Erica Pike that I’ve read, but I’ll definitely read more B+