I have enjoyed other TJ Klune books so much that those ones are some of my favorites. So I had high hopes for this one. It was so unnecessarily long. Numerous times I thought “it’s wrapping up now” only to look and see there was still many hours left. It was shame because the storyline is strong at so many parts. But that was interspersed with long scenes that do nothing to move the story along. I adore his writing style, however. He truly understands the sentence structure required to build tension. But truly, just too too long. The secondary characters deserved more attention as they were too well fleshed out to be given such little page time.
I also do want to get so many of these characters into the therapy that they truly need. I wanted to love the love story but I couldn’t help but remember that Joe suffered very severe abuse at the hands of an older man. So the age difference that normally wouldn’t have made me blink suddenly felt very wrong and painful for Joe’s much needed healing. This was made especially off putting when the abuser is taunting Ox in a way which creates a disturbing parallel between the abuse and consensual sex.
Go read Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering door for some truly wonderful Queer fantasy stories. Let this one fade into the obscurity it deserves.