Title: Like a Prayer
Author: AJ Wilde
Publisher: Torquere
Buy Link: Buy Link Like a Prayer
Genre: M/M Contemporary
Length: Short Story ( 10k words )
Rating: 3.75 stars out of 5
A Guest Review by Cole
Review Summary: Not much in the way of romance, but a good short story about a man with a sex addiction.
BLURB
Dorian West is truly a lost soul, with a revolving bedroom door and an unhealthy obsession with a statue at his local church. Add to that an unrequited crush on his straight friend Josh, and Dorian’s life reads like a sad catalog of loneliness and pain. Dorian finds release only through rough, anonymous sex and, oddly enough, art.
When he hits rock bottom, however, it is not Josh but Dorian’s new lover Mark who picks up the pieces. Can Dorian find a way through the maze of fear and doubt to find peace? And will his lust for a statue of an angel lead him finally to everlasting love?
REVIEW
There isn’t much left to Dorian’s life anymore. There is his art, and the students he teaches at the local college; there is his unrequited crush on his straight best friend Josh; and there is his obsession with the statue of the Archangel Raphael at the church of St. Gregory’s. They all seem to lead him to depression, pain, and a long-standing guilt, though none do so more than his rapidly escalating sex addiction, where each rough encounter gives him a moment of truimph and fulfillment, then leads him into a miasma of guilt and shame. The only thing that gives him some comfort is the statue of Raphael, though his lustful thoughts toward the angel only deepen his guilt. Then, there is Mark, the first man in a long time who has shown him the least bit of respect — something that Dorian can’t see that he deserves. The real question put to Dorian is: Who is the angel and who is the sinner?
I enjoyed this story quite a bit. Like a Prayer is a Classic Sip from Torquere, so it has been around for several years now, but I’m happy that I read it. It faces a problem that many other short stories do, when the ideas presented are a bit grandiose for the limited space of exploring them. While some parts of the story fell behind, the rest of the story made up for it. The theme presented here, and the major lesson that Dorian is faced with is self-redemption from his guilt over his sex addiction. This part of the story was done very well, and I felt like I got to know Dorian quite well by the end of the story, where his self-depreciation from the sex addiction had almost stooped to madness. He has been at odds with his own religion (Catholicism) for many years due to his sexuality, especially in the face of the myriad of nameless men that pass through his bedroom every night. The beginning of the story shows this reconciliation between the two parts of him with his first confession in three years and the dialogue between Dorian and the priest. This is also shown by his dual innocent love for the purity of the angel Raphael, while alternately sexualizing him, to the point of having to restrain himself from touching the statue.
The difficult part of the story, for me, was the actual romance. The POV is solely Dorian’s, and Mark is only in around 25% of the story (in my estimation). There is a short scene in the first half of the story, then no more until the end. Naturally, then, the romance came off at Insta-Love. I wouldn’t have minded Insta-Lust (No, siree!), nor would I have minded Mark and Dorian being on the road to falling in love at the story’s end. I thought this would have been more natural, and it certainly makes more sense. I can understand, after seeing Dorian’s experiences with lovers, that he might think what he was feeling was love, when the first man who came along showed him some respect, but the story is just too short to expand upon their relationship when the focus is on Dorian’s personal journey. In my opinion, it is better not to qualify those feelings at all. Instead, leave the characters with the opportunity to fall in love. Furthermore, there was a sweet sex scene between Dorian and Mark, but the majority of the sex in the story isn’t erotic at all (which is the point — however, it is still forceful and depreciating to Dorian).
This story was much more about one man’s depression as the result of two conflicting parts of his life than a romance, though I still enjoyed it very much. There is a lot of sensory detail in the writing that I enjoyed, particularly from Dorian’s keen eye for art. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable story that has certainly stuck around for a while instead of falling into obscurity. Though I would have liked more of the story development between Dorian and Mark, I enjoyed the story for what it was.
Recommended.
Interesting :thinker:
As you say there are works out there that have been around for a while and are really recommendable 🙂
Thank you for your review 😎
Thanks Helena 🙂
Hey Cole,
Hmmm, sounds like there’s a lot going on in this story. I’ll put in my possibilities file. :reading1:
Thanks for the review.
Hi Luci,
You’re welcome sweets 🙂
Interesting Cole, I’ve read a few books where the protagonist leapt into a lot of meaningless encounters due to having their heart broken etc, but not one about an actual sex addiction.
Sounds like the religious conflict adds an extra element as well. The only thing I’m not sure about is the length, as you point out, there’s not much you can do in 10k words.
Given there’s a sale at TQ I might give it a look 🙂
Hi Beck,
Yes, most of it was done really well. Then, like you said, part of the story was stunted by the length. I always want those stories to naturally conclude, even if it is twice as long, but I suppose the author had a reason for doing so. Even if the reason is to fit it into a certain category of release. IDK if that’s the case here, but I get frustrated sometimes with short stories that are really incomplete novellas/novels.
For all that, though, this was still a good story and I would have loved to read more of it, had it been longer.
If you do get it, I hope you enjoy it 🙂
Hi Cole,
I think it’s really hard to write a romance to conclusion in the narrow confines of a short story and still stay off cliches. But shorts might, at times, be the ideal format to show one character’s growth, particulaly if written from a single POV. From your review, this sounds worth giving it a try.
Hi Feliz,
I agree. I think that what many short stories do well in romance is write from a highly personalized point of view, so we get a strong sense of character.
I also think that the short story in romance is counterintuitive, unless the author becomes very inventive. I think it is part of the genre’s ethos that one, the story ends with an HEA/HFN, but also I think, two, that the story shows the meeting of the pair and their journey towards that HEA/HFN. But, that just doesn’t work in the short format. Not that I’ve seen. That’s why the Bittersweet Dreams works well for short stories. Or, if the story is written completely in narration, and not in real-time.
This is a good story, I just think that we would all enjoy romance short stories more if we wouldn’t expect them to be little novels. It’s impossible to write the breadth of depth into a short story that you get in a novel. And, even more than that, if authors felt free to publish stories that progressed naturally but still pushed the bounds of that ethos a little bit (like the Bittersweet Dreams or varying POV like narrative), then readers might be more inclined to read short stories. I love short stories, they have always been one of my favorite formats, but when they’re written with the same guidelines as a novel in the romance genre… It just doesn’t make sense to me.