Chris M
Some books find you at exactly the right moment. To Catch a Firefly found me at mine. From the very first pages, Emmy Sanders pulled me somewhere I wasn't expecting to go, back to being ten years old, sitting side by side with my best friend on a small wooden platform in the trees behind our neighborhood, talking about everything and nothing for hours. I hadn't thought about that place in a long time. This book brought it all rushing back.
Lucky and Ellis captured me deeply. Two best friends carrying feelings they couldn't say out loud, living separate lives while quietly aching for each other across the distance. There is something painfully familiar about that kind of love. The kind that lives entirely inside you because saying it out loud feels like risking everything. Ellis especially resonated with me. Quiet, steady, holding it all in while the world moved around him. I understood him in a way that surprised me.
One of the most lingering threads running through this book is Ellis and his unsent emails. Words written with such honesty and precision, then tucked away where no one could see them. I felt that deeply. There is something achingly familiar about finding exactly the right words and then keeping them entirely to yourself. Sanders captures that particular kind of silence beautifully, but also the small physical moments we hold onto, a hand on an arm, a brush of fingers, the kind of tenderness you want to bottle and save. By the time Lucky and Ellis finally found their way to each other, my heart didn't know whether to soar or splinter. Happy for them in the way you can only be when two people truly deserve their ending. And quietly grieving for the version of my own story that never got one.
To Catch a Firefly is a story that finds the places inside you that you don't talk about and stays there. I finished it feeling warm and heartbroken and grateful all at once. Somewhere out there is my own firefly, blinking in the endless night. This book made me wish, just for a moment, that I had been brave enough to catch him.
Some books find you at exactly the right moment. To Catch a Firefly found me at mine. From the very first pages, Emmy Sanders pulled me somewhere I wasn't expecting to go, back to being ten years old, sitting side by side with my best friend on a small wooden platform in the trees behind our neighborhood, talking about everything and nothing for hours. I hadn't thought about that place in a long time. This book brought it all rushing back.
Lucky and Ellis captured me deeply. Two best friends carrying feelings they couldn't say out loud, living separate lives while quietly aching for each other across the distance. There is something painfully familiar about that kind of love. The kind that lives entirely inside you because saying it out loud feels like risking everything. Ellis especially resonated with me. Quiet, steady, holding it all in while the world moved around him. I understood him in a way that surprised me.
One of the most lingering threads running through this book is Ellis and his unsent emails. Words written with such honesty and precision, then tucked away where no one could see them. I felt that deeply. There is something achingly familiar about finding exactly the right words and then keeping them entirely to yourself. Sanders captures that particular kind of silence beautifully, but also the small physical moments we hold onto, a hand on an arm, a brush of fingers, the kind of tenderness you want to bottle and save. By the time Lucky and Ellis finally found their way to each other, my heart didn't know whether to soar or splinter. Happy for them in the way you can only be when two people truly deserve their ending. And quietly grieving for the version of my own story that never got one.
To Catch a Firefly is a story that finds the places inside you that you don't talk about and stays there. I finished it feeling warm and heartbroken and grateful all at once. Somewhere out there is my own firefly, blinking in the endless night. This book made me wish, just for a moment, that I had been brave enough to catch him.
When I picked up Summer Solstice, I was looking for something light, a quiet coming of age story about two boys finding each other and what that means for both of them. In some ways, Patrick Shawn delivers exactly that. In others, the book gets in its own way.
Nicholas recently moved to Provincetown. There's something about his new neighbor, Ethan, that he can't quite put his finger on. As time goes on, emotions start to flow into something sweet, the slow and hesitant kind that comes when feelings outpace what you're ready to admit. The story takes the time to let those first moments breathe, giving this new relationship room to turn into something real.
What starts as a light and tender story has a harder edge underneath it. Ethan's fear of who he is and what it could cost him has been there from the beginning, but the back half is where the story stops holding back. It goes to some pretty heavy places, and not always smoothly. That unevenness has a source.
The narrator's voice is part of it. Rather than the dual POV most coming of age romance readers are used to, the story keeps you at a certain distance, and not always in a way that serves it. Combined with scene transitions that can be abrupt and disorienting, it sometimes pulls you out of moments that deserve more room to land. The emotional instincts are there. The execution needed more work.
At its heart, Summer Solstice is a story worth telling, and there were moments I genuinely enjoyed. I just found myself wishing the writing hadn't gotten in the way of it as often as it did.
When I picked up Summer Solstice, I was looking for something light, a quiet coming of age story about two boys finding each other and what that means for both of them. In some ways, Patrick Shawn delivers exactly that. In others, the book gets in its own way.
Nicholas recently moved to Provincetown. There's something about his new neighbor, Ethan, that he can't quite put his finger on. As time goes on, emotions start to flow into something sweet, the slow and hesitant kind that comes when feelings outpace what you're ready to admit. The story takes the time to let those first moments breathe, giving this new relationship room to turn into something real.
What starts as a light and tender story has a harder edge underneath it. Ethan's fear of who he is and what it could cost him has been there from the beginning, but the back half is where the story stops holding back. It goes to some pretty heavy places, and not always smoothly. That unevenness has a source.
The narrator's voice is part of it. Rather than the dual POV most coming of age romance readers are used to, the story keeps you at a certain distance, and not always in a way that serves it. Combined with scene transitions that can be abrupt and disorienting, it sometimes pulls you out of moments that deserve more room to land. The emotional instincts are there. The execution needed more work.
At its heart, Summer Solstice is a story worth telling, and there were moments I genuinely enjoyed. I just found myself wishing the writing hadn't gotten in the way of it as often as it did.