The Ice Prince

Title: The Ice Prince
Author: Jessica Freely
Publisher: Loose Id
Genre: M/M contemporary romance
Length: Short Novel
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

Summary Review
This third book in the Rust Belt series gives us a greater insight into the character of David.

THE BLURB

The habit of silence is hard to break.

Isolated by a cold and lonely past, David was on his own until Seth came along. Together they’ve forged a life full of love, friendship, and scorching hot sex. But just days before Christmas, David discovers a long buried secret that sheds new light on the father who rejected him.

The revelation dredges up painful memories and threatens to exile him to an icy land of silence. When Seth opens their home to a young man in trouble, David withdraws even more in a misguided effort to deal with his confusion and jealousy. The fact that the bookshop he’s worked at since high school is in danger of closing just makes everything worse. Seth wants him to talk about his problems, but what good are words when they can’t pierce his unresolved grief?

Seth is worried about David. Something’s wrong and he won’t talk about it. Day by day, he’s closing himself off, and everything Seth does to try to reach him just drives them further apart. As the holiday’s approach, both men will learn valuable lessons from unexpected sources, but the most important will be the secret to melting a frozen heart.

THE REVIEW

I’ve been enjoying this series by Jessica Freely and was pleased to discover this new story of David and Seth. It picks up from the last book Hero and follows David as he tries to cope with the possible loss of his job, plus the growing independence of Seth. Now that Seth is on the road to recovery he realises that he knows next to nothing about David and his past. Any attempt to address this imbalance leads to David withdrawing further from Seth. When another survivor of the pit needs Seth’s help that draws Seth further away from David and causes more of a wedge between them.

As you can probably guess from the summary above, this story is focussed more on David. In the previous books Seth has been the main focus and David was his rescuer and strength during his recovery. Now that Seth is on the mend, David comes more into focus as we discover things about his past. It hadn’t occurred to me before, possibly because as a reader I was drawn to Seth, how quiet and unassuming David is, how protective of his past. It is this that causes difficulties for the pair during this book. Now I have to admit, my sympathies were mostly with Seth during the story. He feels that he has dominated the relationship so far with his troubles and now wants to know more about David and his life. To me this seemed perfectly reasonable, and I felt all of Seth’s annoyance and frustration when David clams up and refuses to talk about his past. Seth may not have been particularly subtle, but his heart was in the right place, and I found myslef drawing away from David and not liking him as much because of all he was holding back from Seth, and the way he often over-reacted when Seth tried to discover more.

Having said that, I thought the author had done a good job of showing David’s conflicting feelings. He’s been alone for a long time and thus finds it hard to adjust to Seth in his life. The build up of pressure from stress about his job, annoyance at Seth’s involvement with Case, the other pit survivor, and some startling revelations about his father, all bring David close to the edge of breakdown. I felt some sympathy for David, especially about his job and his father, but also irritated that he couldn’t share this with Seth. What happened instead was a series of mini misunderstandings caused by lack of communication and jumping to conclusions. As this is never my favourite type of plot, I didn’t really like this story as much as I had the two previous books.

Despite my reservations about the storyline, the growth in David as a character, plus the confidence that Seth gains as a result of helping Case still makes the story well worth reading. I also liked the sly nod to the m/m publishing business (as well as the red-faced customer who approaches David to order an m/m book through the bookstore). There were other things to like too such as the increased description of Seth’s job at the community cafe, along with mouthwatering descriptions of food, and the opportunity to discover more about David’s employer Mr Haverstock.

If, like me, you’ve read and enjoyed the previous books set in the Rust Belt world, then The Ice Prince will be a must read. I’m not sure whether this is it for David and Seth – I think probably it is – but I’ll certainly be looking out for more books by this author.