Title: Double Hue
Author: Briana Lawrence
Cover artist: Dawne Dominique
Publisher: Eternal Press (a Division of Damnation Books LLC)
Buy Link: Buy Link Double Hue
Genre: LGBT/mystery/thriller
Length: 80815 words
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
A guest review by Sirius
Summary: This story gives a nice twist to “let’s go back to the recent past and try to save a loved one” narrative, but present tense did not work for me and several plot turns disappointed.
Blurb:
When there’s red, close your eyes and try again.
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am the cause of this. Maybe you were normal before meeting me.”
When something tragic happens, you want nothing more than to close your eyes and make all of the pain go away. For Gable Peterson it’s a little more complicated than that. When detective Maurice Ashford shows up at his door with news that his boyfriend, Avery Blair, has been found dead, Gable is left devastated. Seeking some sort of comfort, Gable closes his eyes and imagines a world where none of this happened.
Only, when Gable wakes up, he’s surprised to see that Avery is still alive.
Review:
WARNING FOR VIOLENCE.
This review is a result of trying to be a conscientious reviewer 🙂 – from time to time I make myself pick up a book for review by the author I never heard of. I believe this is a debut novel. I love gay mysteries, so I was happy to try this one and it seemed clear from the blurb that there is also a couple in love front and center of the events, so I was even more excited. I did *not* expect romance, I was just pleased that there would be a love story in addition to the mystery.
As you can see from the blurb Gable gets news about his boyfriend being dead, and then goes to sleep and wakes up when his boyfriend is still alive. I do not want to venture too much in the spoilers territory, but I do not think it will be a spoiler to say that Gable would want to save his boyfriend from the event which already happened.
I have to admit that even though I thought the narrative maintained tension nicely, it was not the most pleasant of the reads for me. I think that after discussing this book with someone I understand why the present tense was used, but I still really did not like it. The story written in the present tense is not an automatic turn off for me, but I have read few books written that way that I enjoyed. I get that dreams played such an important role in the story and the present tense added that dreamlike quality to the narrative, but I also felt that the story wanted me to relate to the main character more than I usually would want and I was irritated I suppose? I guess I needed some distance from Gable and what he was doing, because at times I felt that I was going crazy with him. I also did not feel that he was all that interesting as a character and while I was entertained enough by what he was doing, I thought that narrative was pushing me into much closer connection with him than what I was ready for.
No, I am not going to tell you if Gable really was going down the crazy road and how the events in the story played out :), I will tell you however that I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out to which genre this book belongs. I think publisher characterized it as a thriller and I thought it was an appropriate characterization after I finished the story. I was thinking that it was a mystery right till the villain was revealed in the middle of the story. I was both pleasantly surprised with the identity of the villain and extremely unhappy with that identity – I cannot explain why without spoiling the story. I also was not happy with the early reveal, because to me it was actually quite shocking. Because of such early reveal I suppose thriller with paranormal elements fits this story the best for me, and it was definitely not a romance, but two boys who are in love with each other were trying to deal with traumatic and violent events in their lives.
I was actually quite impressed that in the book which was not a romance the author showed me very well how much Gable and Avery loved each other – I guess it was partially because there is a constant danger to their lives involved, but no matter what reason I thought they had pretty strong chemistry together.
Sadly when I was done with the book I decided that besides their great chemistry I really did not learn much about them as “people”, add to this early revelation of the villain, present tense which annoyed me pretty much throughout the story and I could not grade it any higher.
