“Was he trapped in a tiny prison of his own making, or had his life been saved by the happy accident of finding Buchanan House?”
In a word: Maybe read the thing? The main feeling I had while reading this book was frustration, which doesn’t strike me as a good thing when one is reading a romance novel. I had a really hard time getting into this book and caring about the main relationship. I never did really come to like Eric, who is essentially our narrator. I found him annoying and aggravating, and sometimes inconsistent. The man he falls in love with, Tim Tate (not to be confused with Eric’s ex, also named Tim), is a bit bland and confusing. Also them falling in love kinda skirts the edge of insta-love territory, which I don’t think was done well here because I was definitely not invested, especially since I didn’t think they had any chemistry with each other. Though having said that, the passage of time in the story was never really made clear and I’m not entirely sure of the time frame. The story either takes place over the course of a few months or a few weeks, I was never entirely sure about that. There were too many side characters wandering around with nothing to do. Even Nathan, who is Eric’s best friend and easily the main side character, didn’t seem to have anything relevant to do half the time once Eric and Tim’s ‘relationship’ really kicked off. There’s also the issue of Eric’s family, which eventually became a non-issue at some point since the story mostly seemed to forget about them most of the time. The writing was also something I wasn’t fond of, mostly because I felt, bland characters and tepid romance aside, that we really weren’t getting enough information about the important things. We got bits and pieces of things, but never really enough to put major plot points together. Honestly I felt as if I was trying to read this through a brain-fog, which wasn’t fun.
[available for purchase at Dreamspinner Press, Amazon.ca, Chapters, and Barnes & Noble]
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS
The Trigger Warning: This book contains some homophobia, biphobia, the loss of a grandparent, and possible alcohol abuse.
The Series: This is the first book in the Buchanan House series. Buchanan House, named for ‘confirmed bachelor’ president James Buchanan, is the name of a gay oceanside resort/B&B started by best friends Eric Allen and Nathan Lucas. This is the only book I’ve read in the series so far, but I’m guessing that all the books in the series will focus around couples and events in and around Buchanan House.
The Couple: When we meet Eric Allen he’s just lost his grandmother, the only person in his family who’s ever really cared for him (his parents pretty much disowned him when he came out as bisexual at 13). He’s, understandably, a bit of a mess. In the undetermined amount of time between the funeral and him purchasing an old camp with his best friend, Eric becomes a bit of an alcoholic (though that suddenly disappears at some point). I never really came to like Eric over the course of the story; he annoyed me quite a bit. I’m not sure whether it was because I found his personality annoying, or that how it was written was annoying. Eric doesn’t strike me as a very upbeat person, which makes sense given what he’s gone through, but he still grated on me. I had a bit of inconsistency problems with him as well, as there would be some parts of his backstory and how that affected him that would come up but then never really go anywhere. Really, everything about him just felt a bit incomplete. I also thought he had absolutely no chemistry with the man he eventually falls in love with, handyman Tim Tate. Tim is a character who somehow manages to have less personality than Eric. Actually, he doesn’t do much of anything until he and Eric get together (mostly out of the blue). Tim is a strong, silent-type of guy, and doesn’t really start doing much until he gets more comfortable with the people in Buchanan House. He mostly ignores Eric until he suddenly doesn’t, at which point his personality seems to do a 180 and we see him actually react to things. Actually, the thing about Tim is that he doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose outside of being Eric’s love interest. He initially shows up on the scene to help fix up Buchanan House, but we don’t really see much of him doing that. He’s usually only mentioned in passing then, and that’s only when Eric is thinking about how hot he is and how he’s a superhero (?). There was really nothing that appealed to me about Eric and Tim’s romance. Eric is attracted to Tim from the first time he shows up, and is sure to mention Tim’s hotness whenever he catches sight of him. There’s nothing written in Tim’s point of view so he’s a lot harder to get a read on. He doesn’t seem to have any interest in Eric at all at first, we don’t even know for sure that he’s even into guys. Then all of a sudden (after having to rescue Eric from the ocean) he’s into him, and then they’re head over heels for each other and totally in love. And then it’s pretty much smooth sailing from then on (aside from a few hang-ups on Eric’s end that ultimately don’t go anywhere). They get married at the end, after having known each other for less than a year, and I really just gave up caring by that point.
The Best Friend: Nathan Lucas has been Eric’s best friend since childhood, and they’re still going strong. I have mixed feelings about Nathan, I wasn’t particularly fond of him, but I think he could’ve been a lot of fun if the writing was different. Reading him through Eric’s point of view was annoying. Nathan’s a flamboyant gay man, pink feathered robe and all, but as told by Eric he’s a bit subdued. We don’t get much of Nathan’s history, like, at all. We learned (in a convoluted way) that it’s been him and Eric’s life-long dream to open a retreat for gay couples, and he hasn’t had much luck with romance, but that’s about it. We don’t even hear much about his family situation, and I can’t remember his family ever coming up. He gets less appearances in the story overall as Eric and Tim get closer, mostly staying in the background while working on Buchanan House and (presumably) hooking up with some of the side characters. Honestly, I lost track of Nathan most of the time. The only thing that really sticks out to me about him is how Eric is often confused at his reactions and wondering why he couldn’t have fallen in love with him and solved all his problems (I don’t know either).
The Side Characters: There are a few side characters, none of them particularly memorable as viewed by Eric. Grammy Jewell died before the story started, but she’s the one who left Eric the money that helped him buy Buchanan House. She was the only member of Eric’s family that Eric felt ever truly loved him and he misses her dearly. Tex is Jewell’s life-long friend and lawyer. She’s also Eric’s lawyer and friend. She’s tough and she takes no shit and doesn’t show up in the story as often as she should. Tex has a (romantic) partner named Maria, she has no personality to speak of, she’s just a stock character. They are currently housing a 20-something transgirl former sex worker (it’s implied) named Alex, who also doesn’t do much of anything except be shy (though she does get a boyfriend eventually, so good on her). Tex and Maria (along with Nathan) make up Eric’s new family unit, because his biological family – with the exception of Jewell – are awful. Eric’s parents were apparently fine until Eric came out, then they spent their time berating him for his feelings and emotions and anytime he did/said/felt anything even remotely ‘girly’. We learn all this through throwaway lines from Eric though, as it’s only Eric’s mother that even shows up, and it’s only for a scene at Jewell’s funeral. Eric’s older brother, Zach, plays a bit of a bigger role in the story. He spent their childhood tormenting Eric, and he’s still at it as an adult. His plotline is about him harassing Eric for his part of their grandmother’s estate (she left everything to Eric), but very little is done with it and then Zach suddenly apologizes and stops without warning or explanation. A complete contrast to Eric’s family is Tim’s family, which consists of his elderly parents (Tom and Tammy) and two older brothers (Tommy and Terry). Tim was in an accident a few years ago and ended up in a coma and then was outed by his lover at the time, his brothers have been a bit awkward around him ever since. I think they’re a bit uncomfortable dealing with their brother’s sexuality, but they handle it a lot better than Eric’s brother (which is setting the bar pretty low already, but still). It’s still obvious that Tommy and Terry care very much for their brother, there’s a scene that kind of establishes that. Tim is also still close to his parents. The whole family actually live close to each other in the same area and they often get together for card games and movie nights. I really like Tim’s family a lot. Another side character is Paulie, who Eric and Nathan know from their hometown and is pining after Nathan? Or something? Paulie doesn’t do much except for pine after Nathan while they’re hooking up (as told through Eric, who often mentally mocks him for his pining and his weight). There’s also two cousins/lovers named Felipe and Andres Zerate who Nathan discovered somewhere and have agreed to work at Buchanan House in the kitchen and on the website. Eric’s awkward around both of them, of course, other than that they don’t really do much.
The House: This would be the titular Buchanan House, an old hotel/resort/camp by the ocean in Oregon that Eric and Nathan bought. It’s always been Eric and Nathan’s dream since childhood (apparently, it never comes up until later and the buying of the camp happens out of nowhere and way too fast) to run a place where gay couples could enjoy a couple’s vacation in solitude and safety. With the money left to him by Grammy Jewell, Eric can afford the place if he and Nathan share the cost. Which they do. Then without warning they’re the owners of a run-down hotel and living in a completely different city. My only real issue with this part of the plot is that the transition is badly done and the whole thing confused me. Also them fixing the place up didn’t seem to take that long, either that or the condition of the place wasn’t properly conveyed. But I will say that the opening weekend seemed fun, though I’d probably rather read a story from the perspective of one of the guests than the uninteresting drama going on behind the scenes.
The Sex: It takes a bit for Eric and Tim to get together (as opposed to Tim being a brick half the time and Eric lusting after him in secret), but once they do they seem to have a hard time being apart. They have a lot of sex, but what scenes that don’t just skip right to the end aren’t all that explicit or detailed. I am very thankful for that because I absolutely did not care enough about these two to read about them having sex over and over. There is some vague drama about Eric not liking anal sex, but that doesn’t really go very far and was more annoying than anything else because it often brought a weird tonal shift with it and it seemed like the characters kept brushing it aside.
The Writing: I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t like the writing. There was just too much missing, I thought, in terms of the plot, character motivation, chemistry, and character development. I couldn’t get invested in the main characters’ relationship; it was almost like there was nothing there for me to get into. It didn’t help that most of the characters either annoyed me or had a such little function that they were easily ignorable. The spelling and grammar were good, I had no problems with that, but the flow of the story and the character/romantic development were where I had issues. It was like reading the story through a fog, which was a weird experience. I have another book in the series, the one focused on Nathan, and I’m hoping that that one’s better. Though if I hadn’t already owned it, I probably wouldn’t bother reading it.
[Buchanan House was published August 19, 2015, by Dreamspinner Press; it is available only as an ebook]
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