Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
Get It On Amazon | Universal Buy Link | All Three Own Voice Anthos
About The Book
A queer Anthology that explores the romantic life and happy ever afters of gay men navigating the LGBT landscape. From small towns to big cities, each story shows that love is love, no matter the season.
Featuring Stories by Matthew Dante, Ryan Taylor, Joshua Harwood, J. Scott Coatsworth, RJ Peterson, Brent Archer, Kevin Klehr, Jole Cannon, Nathanael Starr Key, and Dan B. Fierce.
The Review
Well, well, well; this is not like your standard Hallmark Christmas stories. Much. A wide range of authors have created a diverse panoply of characters and settings, all around the winter holidays, as a backdrop for emotional discoveries and personal soul-searching. Really, the only thing they have in common is winter weather and the inextinguishable human need for love and companionship.
A Christmas Conundrum, by Matthew Dante
Two young men on their own meet by accident in a fumbled hookup and then again at a seasonal job in a toy store. Beckett O’Connell is drifting and desperate to prove himself to his older, tougher cousins. Riley, orphaned and trying to help raise his two younger siblings, has put his life on hold to be a parent. They end up competing for the same full-time job, but start to realize competing with each other is not going to make them happy. Plot quirks and opposites-attract set-ups make this a classic holiday rom-com.
A Taste of You, by Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood
Leo Weinberg and Michael Brewer haven’t seen each other since college, but they turn up in the same cooking class—one with a focus on Hanukkah recipes. Neither man realizes that the other feels that they have unfinished emotional business with each. Over the course of their cooking class they revisit their past friendship to see if there something there that matches their memories of each other.
Do-Over, by J. Scott Coatsworth
This was a personal favorite, because the sprinkling of magic was surprising and used to amplify an otherwise standard story structure. Alyn and Ricky are both lonely, but for different reasons. Alyn is an introvert with a little paranormal secret. Ricky is a flamboyant gay boy who’s lived on the streets and works as an LGBTQ+ youth center. After literally running into each other, each has to be willing to open himself up to the possibility of friendship and more.
Yule Meet Again, by RJ Peterson
Hollis Leighton and Burke Trainor are longtime best friends who decide to go on a gay cruise together. This is more Hollis’s story, as he gets to know the various men on the cruise, and especially Ronan Melanson, a high school classmate of Burke’s. Even as the two men begin to feel something more than passing interest, Ronan grapples with his own past and whether or not he can place his trust in a handsome stranger. A sort of classic Love Boat set-up with interesting characters and emotional exploration.
Frank’s Buon Natale, by Brent Archer
Kent Rossi and Frank Raleigh have a good thing going. When Frank accepts an invitation to join Kent’s big Italian family for Christmas for the first time, he learns a big lesson about the complexities of love and kinship. I particularly enjoyed this because of the Rossi family’s messy dynamic.
Letting Go of Connie, by Kevin Klehr
A gentle and intriguing study of a mild-mannered man named Peter who takes on his bold drag persona as Connie Dom. We see what happens when a big, bearded guy named Luke comes to one of his shows, and Peter has to figure out which of his personalities is the one Luke is really drawn to. I loved the idea of a man realizing that maybe the self he sees as dull might be more than he imagines.
A Cub for Christmas, by Jole Cannon
Miguel, a writer desperate to finish his novel away from the disapproving attention of his brothers, rents a cabin hidden far in the mountains. An unexpected snowstorm puts him in a ditch, and the big lonely bear Jacob who rescues Miguel suddenly changes the playing field. It’s a classic “two lonely guys lost in the woods” kind of story—but the characters are appealing and their slow-burn discovery of each other feels like a fairy tale.
Penance and Passion, by Dan B. Fierce
A slyly perverse spin on a Santa story, we have a young blind man, Hunter, and his naughty adolescent brother Chase. In this story, Santa is joined by Krampus, his demonic counterpart in Germanic folklore. When Chase is put on the naughty list for a very good reason, Hunter offers himself up to Krampus to spare his beloved little brother. It’s a kind of Beauty-and-the-Beast story, with an S&M flavor that’s not typical of holiday tales. The surprise here is that Krampus is not quite what we expect.
The Quinault Christmas Wishes, by Nathanael Starr Key
The central characters here are from the author’s earlier stories. Adam and Tanner have a long-term and long-distance relationship, which here has taken them to the woods of the Olympic National Park on a pre-holiday vacation. Both men are frustrated at the long-distance aspect of their relationship, but they have never fully discussed it due to trauma in Adam’s past. Not unlike the situation in Jole Cannon’s story in this collection, the setting of an isolated cabin in the woods becomes the ideal place to force introspection and conversation about difficult emotional topics.
4 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
