Brief Encounters

Title: Driving Me Crazy
Author: L.M. Brown
Length: 9,140 words
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Genre: m/m contemporary comedy romance
Rating: C+

Blurb:
They say that people in love do crazy things. Brandon Walker can certainly relate.
Lusting after Lee Cooper, his sexy driving instructor, isn’t the most sensible reason for failing his driving test for the third time and when he discovers the damage he has inadvertently done to his instructor’s reputation and business, Brandon knows that he is on his last chance.

After persuading Lee to give him one final course of driving lessons Brandon makes it his priority to figure out if the spark he feels between them is one-sided or whether he can persuade his sexy instructor to move their lessons from the front seat of the car to the back.

Review:
This short had a lot going for it, especially in the fun and lighthearted tone to the writing. It tells of Brandon who is deliberately failing his driving tests so that he can continue to have lessons with the sexy Lee. Lee is beside himself, and also feeling a little defeated, that his pupil keeps failing and so decides to find out why.

I’m going to start with the things that didn’t quite work for me with the story, because if it wasn’t for these niggles I might have rated the story higher. Firstly, the premise was a little thin. Brandon is spending lots of money on failing his test and having extra lessons, but I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just ask Lee out rather than waste all that time and money. If I’d been Lee I’d have been a bit more pissed about being messed about by Brandon than he was. The second thing was just a little niggle. Lee’s car is full of rubbish in the back and junk in the boot. This seemed very unprofessional and didn’t fit with the idea of him being an ambitious and up and coming driving instructor.

Other than those niggles then this was rather a fun story with a nice sense of comic timing. Brandon comes over as slightly manic at times but that works well with the context of the story. The opening sequence where Brandon fails his test builds nicely into something slightly edging on the too silly but is reined in again when we move onto the romance aspect. I found myself laughing, especially at the end where there’s another amusing situation for the pair. I also liked how the roles were swapped towards the end with Lee casting aside the more sensible role.

Overall, this was a bit of a mixed story. If you’re in the mood for something a bit daft, then it should work for you. I wasn’t so keen on the occasional lapse in realism which is why it ended up with a grade C+.