Title: Loose Snow
Author: Julia Talbot
Length: 10,200 words (42 pdf pages)
Publisher: Torquere Press
Genre: m/m contemporary
Rating: B
Blurb:
Jack and AJ had a thing once, but Jack wasn’t ready to settle down. They still work together at the Forestry Service, seeing each other every day, but the situation comes to a head when Jack encounters loose snow out on the trail, and gets caught in an avalanche. Will AJ see things differently after Jack’s brush with death?
Review:
The blurb here pretty much explains things. Jack and AJ still work together despite having had a brief relationship. That relationship and what went wrong is something you get little snippets of as the story progresses. Jack is young, 25 and has that carefree feel to the character. He decides to take AJ’s Jeep (AJ controls who gets to drive which vehicles) and you can tell that Jack is getting great delight in “stealing” AJ’s Jeep. He’s now regretting how things ended with AJ, but he’s upbeat and a happy guy despite that.
However when the avalanche catches him and the Jeep in its path, everything changes. Thankfully Jack was able to pull his locater and AJ manages to find him, but it’s very close to the edge and Jack very nearly dies. AJ and their coworker Edna take turns watching over him in the hospital they are so afraid for his health. It seems Jack talks in his sleep as well, telling Edna way more information than she ever wanted to know about him and AJ. After he’s released, Jack and AJ have a sexual encounter, but Jack reacts badly and figures AJ is just feeling guilty because he nearly died and AJ storms out in frustration.
I rather liked the conflict between the two. It was a misunderstanding, but not the BM, just how people can have trouble communicating what they really mean, with assumptions made and frustration and those things that happen to normal people, especially people who are a bit afraid of getting hurt so tend not to just put everything on the table. I also found the information about the avalanches and how ill Jack was from the hypothermia interesting, coming from the prairies, a blizzard is more my style than an avalanche. Their coworker Edna was great too. She reads trashy novels and was there as a friend, but didn’t interfere with them in any way.
I enjoyed this story about relationships and how they can be complicated and messy but people can change. It doesn’t tell you how long ago the break-up happened, but it seems to have been quite a while, when Jack was a younger and immature than he is now. It’s a good character driven story, rather than any great outside force affecting the story, although Mother Nature is a catalyst for them.
I almost read this the other day, but I ended up reading something else instead. Looks like a solid entertaining short, so I’ll be sure to read it. There’s been lots of avalanches too lately, at least there’s been more exposure. But I did hear that because of the snow in the Northwest, they’ve been having a lot. Scary!
It was a cute story, just two guys trying to work it out now that one has matured.
Avalanches scare me. The odds of surviving is really very slim and I can’t imagine being buried alive and knowing the end is coming. Ugh.
I’ve always been really really fascinated by mountaineering (btw, an extreme sport that I haven’t seen in m/m, I’d love to read an m/m mountaineering story), but avalanches really scare me too. I think it is the idea that there’s nothing you can do to help yourself. Well, unless you have one of those inflatable bag thingies and are quick thinking. Still, chancy at best!
Sounds like a good read!
It was a good one, not over sweet, nor overly angsty with some interesting info about avalanches and I liked their female coworker.