Title: Brass Knuckles and Silk Sheets
Author: Vic Winter
Length: 5,400 words
Publisher: Torquere Press
Genre: m/m contemporary romance
Rating: C
Blurb:
Rich kid Swift runs into a trio of thugs walking home one night, literally, and they’re planning on taking their pound of flesh in retaliation. Before they can really go to town on him, though, a homeless man comes to his rescue.
Wanting to return the favor, Swift invites the man, Foster, back to his place for a shower, a meal and possibly more. Can these two seemingly disparate men find common ground in each other?
Review:
Swift is walking home quite late at night when he is accosted by a group of man and dragged into an alley. Rescue comes in the form of homeless man, Foster, who Swift brings home for a shower and food.
This was a nice little story which suffered a little from being too condensed for the romantic story to work for me. Swift is a sweet little guy who comes from a rich and influential family but prefers the simpler life of living alone. He is rather naive but that worked in his favour for me, and also allowed some of the way the story develops to seem realistic. I liked that Swift had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth and that he was hands on and liked cuddling. I also liked that Foster seemed to be genial and not mind when Swift says things that might be considered insulting. We are told Foster’s story but not much else about him, and given that Swift is the narrator, Foster remains a bit of a shadowy figure.
The story fast forwards through time quite a bit, telling rather than showing us about the developing friendship and feelings that the pair develop. This was my main gripe about the story. The initial set up made me like the characters but I felt I was cheated a little out of seeing them together except for the inevitable sex scene. I found that I wanted to know more about their backgrounds as well as what they liked to do in bed and we didn’t get that in the story because there wasn’t the space for that sort of development.
This wasn’t a bad story and would be a great quickie for when you have a spare few minutes. I think I’m just finding myself increasingly frustrated with stories that provide great characters but fail to capitalise on that. Hence the C grade. Or maybe I’m just turning grumpy in my old age!
Well, if you’re grumpy then so am I! It must be the overwhelming volume of stories that seem to have a beginning and end, yet no middle. I feel a bit cheated to whenever I read them. I always feel like I was so close to a good story! It makes me even more peeved
Yes, exactly, Cole. I often feel that way too, like the story could have been special but it turned out to be just OK.
Hmm. Grumpiness abounds. It is frustrating when you are just told “oh yeah and they are happy now”. What? How? Especially if there is a rather complicated start and I’d say a rich kid taking home a homeless guy is rather complicated. Oh well.
The set up wasn’t as complicated as you would think because of how Foster came to be homeless, but still I would have liked to have seen their friendship grow rather than just be told that they became friends.
Yes, exactly, Cole! Where is the middle?! Where is the stuff that gives the story some substance?!
Didn’t you know, Chris that the substance is supposed to be the extended sex scene
? After all, that’s all that readers are interested in, isn’t it? Or at least it feels like that sometimes. I get frustrated that some publishers think that all readers want in a short story is 20% plot and 80% sex.
Definitely grumpy!