Homeless in Heaven

Title: Homeless in Heaven
Author: Deirdre O’Dare
Cover Artist: Trace Edward Zaber
Publisher: Amber Quill Press 
Amazon: 
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: 60 PDF pages
Rating: 3 stars out of 5

A guest review by Lasha

Summary Review: An interesting pairing of a wealthy protagonist and his homeless lover that just doesn’t get off the ground until the end of the short novella.

THE BLURB

Homeless for more than two years, Merl Weishart has hunkered down to endure a second winter in Eden, Colorado. He has lost the ability to trust or accept kindness as anything but a sneaky attempt to weaken him for an attack. He sells aluminum cans and other trash to survive, knowing he should fight to get back into the mainstream, but he lacks the will to try.

Nathan Bloom has led a sheltered and privileged life as the only child of wealthy parents, now deceased. Currently, he is working on a photo journalism piece about the homeless people in Eden when he first encounters Merl. The man impresses him so much that when an early blizzard hits, Nate returns to the homeless camps to bring Merl and others to his own home for shelter.

Can Nate win Merl’s trust and cooperation in an effort to provide positive long-term help to other homeless people in the area? Even more importantly, can he forge a real partnership with the suspicious man who has captivated him?

THE REVIEW

I don’t think I’ve ever read a m/m romance that features a homeless man as the protagonist. Kudos to Ms. O’Dare for tackling this subject and giving us an original character in this genre. Told in two POVs: Nate and Merl’s, this short story has a limited setting (meaning the two men meet and quickly begin a relationship).

After Nate, a photojournalist, meets Merl on a shoot he’s quickly drawn to the guy. When the weather turns very cold, Nate goes back to the homeless camp he originally met Merl in to take him home so he and his friends don’t freeze in the frigid Colorado winter. The rest of the action is set at Nate’s huge Victorian home, as Merl and Nate grow closer. (Three other people join the couple, and their stories of why they are homeless are interesting. I especially liked the young couple, down on their luck. These secondary characters added more flavor to the book.)

While I enjoyed the sweet love story between Nate and Merl, I felt as if there were little tidbits of information missing that left gaps in the plot. If those missing gaps had been filled, I think Homeless in Heaven would have been a more enjoyable read. For example, the reader never finds out why Merl is homeless. It is alluded to, but never fully developed and that point really helped keep this book in the ‘short, but sweet and probably won’t read again’ category. I wanted to know more of Merl’s backstory and really believe that would have pushed the book from an average read to an above average read. Unfortunately, the author doesn’t give much depth to Nate and Merl beyond the surface descriptions and limited background stories. Sixty pages just wasn’t enough to fully understand these complicated men and their lives.

Plus the plot point that Nate now wants to use his home as a half-way house for the homeless after bringing Merl home for just one night and that he is going to give jobs and let the other homeless people live there until they get back on their feet seemed forced. I understood why Nate wanted to help, but this I thought went overboard as Nate had just met everyone. I think if the story had been over a longer period of time I could have bought that idea, but on its face do-gooder Nate just did not work for me.

Overall, I liked this short story dealing with a difficult subject matter. The two protagonists were sweet together, and although their issues seemed to be magically swept away by Nate’s money, the truth in their devotion to each other was cute. Recommended, but with caveats.