Holidays in Blue

4.5It's kind of sad that this story seems to be slotted as a Christmas/Holiday story because though it takes place during last weeks of the year the Christmas and New Year's Eve timing is almost irrelevant save for the weather that strands the MC in an almost forced proximity which allows them to connect.[a:Eve Morton 20470862 Eve Morton https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] is a NTM author and she seems to write in a variety of genres but I really loved this. Much like it being a Holiday story it's almost also incidentally MM. You could have any pairing and the themes would be the same. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is referenced a couple of times and it certainly captures the tone of the story. Shortly before Christmas Cosmin and Eric are each stranded by an ice storm in their respective childhood homes. There's a ten year age difference between them, they're undeniably different men in terms of life-view or even aesthetics, but they also grew up as across-the-street neighbors and thus share something of a common history. The isolation gives them a chance to really open up to one another and to individually assess their lives up to this point and where they want to go. They fit like puzzle pieces while remaining utterly themselves.The casual romance reader my have to grab hold of patience because this story doesn't follow the well trod beats. There is a romance, Cosmin was and continues to be Eric's boyhood crush, and Cosmin pretty quickly sees Eric for the attractive, grown-up man he is but the story really centers on other things. Cosmin has a complicated family history, one he's learning to unravel, discovering how wrong he's been about things, and how to let go of a past that's precisely that, the past. For his part At 33 Eric is also at crossroads where he has to make a choice between pursuing his OG aspirations or realizing that dreams & goals change and that can be a good thing. This burgeoning romance between two grown ups, utterly devoid of the textbook descriptions of turgid members etc. was absolutely refreshing. Yes, there was sex, but it was almost irrelevant. The heart of the tale is about people, friends, family, old loves, new loves etc and how these are the components of what makes us human. Ignorable, irrelevant niggles Eric is bi and there's a whole back story of how he eventually acted on his same sex attractions while married to a woman and with her blessing. That's fine. My issue is that thereafter and I've noticed this in other stories too where a character is purportedly bi but in reality every attraction, any significant one, is for a same sex person. Why not just say they're gay and hadn't really known or embraced it? No shame in that. Noticing that a woman is attractive doesn't make a gay man bi.