Title & buy link: Because It’s True
Author: Mari Carr
Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs
Publisher: Samhain
Genre: M/M contemporary
Length: Novella (64 pages)
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
A guest review by Leslie S
Review summary: A tedious read with one-dimensional characters and no conflict.
Blurb
Jacob James falls for Rodney the moment the New York City cop crash lands into his far-too-predictable ranch life. The sexy city slicker is everything a lonely Wyoming cowboy could ever dream of. When Rodney is shot in the line of duty, however, their off-the-charts attraction turns unexpectedly cool. Jacob offers the only thing he has left – friendship.
All Rodney can think about – besides his cowboy lover – is getting back to his job. But what good is a cop who can’t fire a gun? While he’s grateful for Jacob’s support through months of gruelling physical therapy, how can he offer anything more when his own future is so uncertain?
When he’s finally cleared to return to work in New York, Rodney thought it would be the happiest day of his life. Except reaching his goal means leaving Jacob behind… and a future he never thought he wanted. Until now…
Review
This may well be the shortest review I’ve ever written for Wave’s site. I picked this book up because I wanted to read about a hot cop in a town mouse/country mouse set-up, and the promise of a black character sold it to me further. Wow, was I disappointed.
For a start, that blurb is completely inaccurate. It’s not so much a blurb as a ‘Previously, here’s what you missed on this show’. I was expecting to read about the culture clashes and compromises the two men had to make. I was expecting lots of humour and sexy wrangling between the cop and the cowboy. Instead I got a massive amount of info-dumping about something that doesn’t even happen on-page in this book, and then the rest of the story takes place in the space of less than 24 hours as Rodney and Jacob get together, have sex, and resolve the flimsiest of excuses that might have caused conflict, but which didn’t at all. And that’s it.
It took me two weeks to read this book. I kept putting it down after a couple of pages. The two main characters blurred into one – there’s so little characterisation that I kept having to go back to check which was the cop and which was the cowboy, and in the end I didn’t care. There’s no sense of place, so although the story is set on a ranch, it could be anywhere. At least half the book is taken up with the sex scene, but it’s pretty much ‘insert tab A into slot B’ sex, made more tedious by the fact that the characters are so one-dimensional. The writing is competent but the prose is so turgid I found myself re-reading lines and wondering what the editor was thinking. The whole book just feels like it’s been phoned in. God knows I’ve read some bad books over the years, but this is the first time I’ve encountered a book that’s so flat and lifeless that I’m struggling to think of something to say about it other than ‘it’s boring’.
Looking at the author’s website, she mainly writes M/F with a couple of ménages, and this seems to be her first M/M title – and boy, does it show. Because It’s True is the third book in a trilogy that includes an M/F romance, then a M/F/M romance, and finally finishing with the M/M romance. Perhaps it would read better in the context of the series, but the lack of any kind of conflict and motivation and only the thinnest of characterisations makes me doubt it.
Perhaps if you’re a fan of the author you may enjoy it, and I’m sure some readers will have different opinions, but for me, this was a miss. I simply cannot recommend this book.