The Spec Press, $0.99, ISBN 978-1005293994
Contemporary Romance, 2014
“I mean, admittedly there’s only so much you can tell about a person when they’re wearing a parka and a beanie, but he had nice thighs. Like Daniel Craig nice thighs.”
Okay, give me a second. Let me load up my browser and type into the address bar: “D-A-N-I-E…”
Oh my. Those are nice indeed, I concur. The face is more leave it than take it, but neck down, I’d take it definitely.
Cold Press is a small town romance, and now, I know I’m piled on many such romances before, but I am a sucker for a well done small town romance. A fictitious small town setting often walks a fine line between quaint, cozy intimacy and suffocating oppression by judgmental, busybody townsfolk, but when the author has struck the right balance, then I’m all for it.
This one is about storekeeper Jordan Kane, who has lived a solitary existence ever since his ex nope’d out of town seven years ago. Aside from his employee Elle, he’s mostly left to himself, and he likes it that way. Really, he’s happy being alone. Can’t you tell? Then comes Avery O’Sullivan, the estranged son of the late Sheriff who has come back to check out the house he has inherited. How can any sane fellow like Jordan resist a bloke with Daniel Craig’s thighs?
Now, the good things. There is something very real about Jordan that makes this fellow an appealing character. Sure, in an age of hook-up apps, it’s hard to believe that he doesn’t have anyone to do the hokey-pokey with even when he’s living in a small town, but still, he’s a tall glass water from the usual romance novel bloke that just has to exhale to have 20 people lining up to hop into bed with him. He’s lonely but not whiny, solo but not emo—hence, a most appealing bloke to read about.
Avery is a somewhat more conventional character, as it seems like less thought and effort was spent on fleshing him out compared to Jordan. He’s a hot newcomer in town, bringing with him daddy issues in that luggage of his, but I’m glad that he’s at least self aware enough about his daddy issues to not be too melodramatic about these issues. He and Jordan have a chemistry and banter system that reminds me quite a bit of old school Gilmore Girls (the first two seasons at least, everything after that was painful to even recall). These characters talk and act in gimmicky ways that likely bear little resemblance to folks in a real small town, but there is still enough about them to get me to relate to them and like them.
This story hovers in that territory between three- and four-oogies, and oh how I want to give this one four oogies as I haven’t given such a score in a while now. Don’t want people to think that I’m cranky or stingy, you know. However, each time I want to give this one a four, something in me recoils and goes, no no no.
You see, there’s one big thing about this story that gets on my nerves: Elle. She’s everything I can’t stand about the fag hag stereotype in gay romances: she’s unnaturally invested in getting the two men together, being creepily intrusive and even voyeuristic about it, so much so that she’s not a character as much as the author’s own self-insert going all manic pixie girl on me, likely because she doesn’t trust me to get that the two men are meant together with her self-insert screaming about it at my face. This character has a prominent placing the first and the last line in this story, which really cements her status as the author’s self-insert.
Also, this story ends on a perfect note. The story leaves no ambiguity about the happy ending that is to come, but it also ends in such a way that lets me imagine how the happy ending is like. No forced love scene, wedding, or other mawkish nonsense to make me cringe, no—the story ends on an upbeat swing, making me happy for the two men but also allowing enough open-ended interpretation of how they will be happy together. It has me thinking that maybe Lia Cooper is one of the few authors I’ve come across that is so attuned to the tempo and pacing of her story that she knows just when and how to end a story that leaves me smiling and imagining nice things about the main characters—she makes me wonder, think, and imagine; in other words, she knows how to let her story get under my skin and make me want the main characters to happy…
Oh, wait, then in the line after the final paragraph, she tells me that there is a sequel that will continue the story of these two men.
No, the story has ended on a perfect note! What is the author doing? Everything good about this story will be ruined—ruined—when the author gets explicit about how these two men reach the perfect happy ending. It’s like Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint—that last sentence is perfect, so perfect, and then author goes on and on about the couple in that one for a few more short stories and a sequel and by that point, all the mystique of the characters were ruined, everything about Swordspoint was ruined, and I would always regret having read the related stories that came after that book.
So no, while I am happy to have read Cold Press, I am not going to touch the sequel—especially if that Elle would still be stinking up the joint in that one!
