Genre: Contemporary, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay, Bi
Reviewer: Scott
Get It On Amazon | Universal Buy Link
About The Book
Denny: friend.
Denny, who sleeps in threadbare tees that smell like his cigarettes, who coats his arms in the guts of engines, who kisses like he’s sampling you, scenting you, until you forget that there are things you can’t afford to forget.
Denny: with benefits.
It’s not dating. You’ve both done enough of that. You’re both stuck in this town, you’re both going nowhere, but at night, you have each other. It’s sex. It’s an arrangement. It suits you both.
Denny: yours.
Tonight, the lie shatters. Denny Wyatt is so much more than friend, than lover, than any one word. But you’d better speak—better find the words—or he’s gone.
The Review
I picked up Standard Candle with the expectation that it was smut – you know, the kind of book where tab goes into slots b and c, repeatedly and graphically.
It’s not that. Not at all.
Don’t get me wrong. This novella is sexy as hell. And erotic? Fuck yes. But it’s anything but smut.
Standard Candle takes place over the course of one evening, charting the path from fuck-buddies to true love between longtime friends Avery and Denny. It starts at a party. Denny and Avery always go home together if they don’t go home with someone else, and it’s always been casual.
But this time something is different.
When Denny leaves with someone else, Avery drives to his house, and is shocked to find the one man Denny has loved – his ex Mike – at his house. Avery spirals, and nothing will ever be the same between him and Denny again.
Standard Candle is told in second person, which makes the story feel more close and intimate. And oh, all the glorious little details. Denny, who smokes, smelling less smoky than usual because maybe he quit for Avery. The details make the story.
Lindsey is a master at charting her characters’ vulnerability, and this story has a raw emotional nakedness that makes Avery – and Denny as seen through Avery’s eyes – seem both shockingly real and emotionally appealing. We feel their pain, their uncertainty, and their mutual longing as they navigate their unspoken love for one another, and it drags us through an emotional roller coaster that leaves us as satisfied as if we were the ones making this most intimate of connections.
Not at all what I expected, but way better.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Scott is the founder of Queer Sci Fi, Liminal Fiction, and QueeRomance Ink, and a fantasy and sci fi writer in his own right, with more than 30 published short stories, novellas and novels to his credit, including two trilogies.
