Embrace My Reflection

Title: Embrace My Reflection
Author: T.A. Chase
Cover Artist: Trace Edward Zaber
Publisher: Amber Allure
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: Extended Novella – 36K words
Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Review summary: Ronnie shows that a man is still a man despite wearing a dress, high heels and make-up

THE BLURB

Lucius Montagne and Ronnie Lake were best friends during high school, and in those two years, they fell in love. But Lucius joined the army and left Ronnie behind to deal with the pain of being alone.

Now, a decade later, Ronnie works at Cindi’s Cabaret in New Orleans as a female impersonator. He’s come to terms with the fact that he likes to dress in women’s clothes, as well as his heartbreaking love for Lucius. Although Ronnie’s happy, he still longs to reconnect with the man who left him all those years ago.

Lucius returns to New Orleans and gets a job as a detective on the police force. Finding out Ronnie also lives in the city brings all of Lucius’s buried feelings to the surface. When Lucius discovers his high school sweetheart is being stalked by a sleazy United States senator, he immediately jumps into action. Protecting the man he loves comes naturally for him. Accepting that Ronnie dresses like a woman, however, is a little more difficult.

Yet can love find a way to survive, no matter the obstacles in its way?

THE REVIEW

Lucius and Ronnie had met 12 years ago in junior high school and they became best friends. Two years later, the night before Lucius joined the armed forces, they took their relationship one step further by having sex, but Lucius left the next day without saying goodbye. Now Lucius is back in New Orleans as a detective in the NOPD and he’s anxious to renew his acquaintance with Ronnie. It appeared that Ronnie had filed a complaint with the police that a US Senator was stalking him. Unfortunately the officer who took the complaint had pretty well dismissed it because, well, what US Senator would stalk a cross dresser when he wasn’t even gay? Lucius had been assigned the case and was investigating the Senator who seemed to be a serial stalker but the department was not convinced.  The other reason he wanted to see Ronnie was that he had never forgotten him, as he was the only man to claim his heart.

When they reconnected it seemed that the old fires were still burning and both men wanted to see where that would lead, but before they had an opportunity to take things slowly Ronnie’s stalker upped the ante by following him to where he was staying temporarily with his employer and his partner, and Ronnie had to move immediately since he was no longer safe. He had already moved earlier from his apartment to escape Senator Cameron, and now he would have to find alternate accommodation. The obvious solution was to stay with Lucius who had offered him his own place of residence with no strings attached, should the need arise.

Senator Cameron then had a better idea for making Ronnie his and Lucius realized that there was a real possibility he could lose the man he loved.

In many books with cross dressers the  characters are cardboard cut outs, but in Embrace My Reflection T.A. Chase makes her cross dressing character three dimensional and sympathetic. Ronnie made no apologies for dressing in women’s clothing, not just when performing at Cindi’s Cabaret as Veronica Lake, but also at home hanging out. His childhood was detailed and readers are given an explanation about why he started gender bending in the first place and how he felt about himself. His love for Lucius seemed genuine and he appreciated the fact that Lucius made him feel beautiful, whether or not he looked like a woman or a man. I liked that although Ronnie was small statured he was no pushover, as he physically defended himself and proved that even though he wore a dress he was tough.

Lucius had a very interesting backstory. As a teenager he moved a lot because his father worked on oil rigs, so he changed schools many times until he met Ronnie in junior high. They became best friends and he protected Ronnie from the school bullies since Ronnie was much smaller and looked effeminate and therefore was an ideal candidate for being bullied. After high school he spent 8 years in the armed forces and 2 years with the NOPD, and he contacted Ronnie mainly because of his investigation into complaints against Senator Cameron. What I didn’t understand was why Lucius didn’t reconnect with Ronnie during the 2 years that he was back In New Orleans. He knew where Ronnie was performing every night, so if he was so much in love with him, why wait? The impression given was that he was worried Ronnie would hate him for having sex with him and then leaving the next morning without saying goodbye, but it seemed to me that they could have worked that out pretty quickly by talking to each other. Their love for each other appeared to be genuine and although in some ways it was the usual insta lust/love in terms of the speed with which they jumped each other’s bones, I didn’t find that surprising given their history.

I thought that the end was a bit preachy when Ronnie was giving testimony in court against the Senator:

“They looked at me and saw the same thing most of you see when you look at me. A fag trying to be a woman. It was bad enough I was queer, but I was even more deviant than that because I liked to wear women’s clothing.”

“I guess I kind of understand why you’d think that. We’re taught at such a young age about gender roles and stereotypes that when someone steps outside what we perceive as the norm, we’re uncomfortable and at times, unwilling to see past the outside to the person inside.”

Ronnie’s message came through loud and clear throughout the book and I felt that it might have been a bit overdone here, however it made him appear sympathetic in his female attire when testifying before a jury that was definitely not of his peers, so I guess the end justified the means.

I like T.A. Chase’s writing although a few of her recent offerings have not been my favourites. However, in my opinion, this book indicates (to me anyway), that she’s back. I thought that the protagonists, although not perfect, were well drawn other than a few niggles I mentioned earlier. The supporting characters, especially Cindi, owner of the bar where Ronnie worked, Tomas the bouncer, Lucius’s tenants – a gay couple, Preston and Randall who had been together for 30 years, and Miss MaeAnne, an elderly woman with a very interesting history – were fully fleshed out.  The reason I didn’t rate this book higher is because of the concerns I had about Ronnie’s characterization. My main issue was I thought that the character was defined by being a cross dresser rather than this being just a part of who he was. I also I felt that what was missing from the story was more about Ronnie the man, without the heels and makeup, but perhaps that didn’t happen because we’re told that Ronnie believed he was ugly after years of mental abuse and conditioning by his father, and wearing feminine clothing made him feel beautiful.

If you like sympathetic characters and cross dressers you  might want to take a chance on Embrace my Reflection.

Recommended.