Jigs and Reels

I don't read a lot of contemporary romance, partly because I don't like the style of humor that I usually encounter in these books, and mostly because I don't like the way the characters talk about gender, especially in m/m novels. This book was very disappointing for me on both counts. I don't like to write negative reviews. Most reviews of this story are positive, though, and this isn't my favorite subgenre, so feel free to discount my criticisms.

You can see the basic plot in the blurb, and there are no real surprises in the story. Eli is quite a grumpy guy and I am not sure why Peter fell in love with him. He is pretty miserable in his daily life as an office drone. His best friend is an extroverted and cheerful woman, and he complains about that. She introduces him to a band in need of a fiddler, and he performs with them, which he is nervous about but really enjoys.

But he is still grumpy, and in fact, most of his complaints about the people around him are about women. The leader of the band is “intense” and comes across as a bit overcritical; his co-worker is old and nosy and wears too much makeup; his boss is a “bitch” (in fairness, it's the co-worker who uses that word, not Eli); even his mother is “squat” and “flabby”. Also, Peter performs in a fairy costume, with wings and makeup, but Eli lets us know that the costume does not make Peter look feminine, as though that would've obviously been a bad thing.

Again, I am sorry for my negativity here, but I really have encountered a lot of this kind of language about women in the m/m genre. This book is not even one of the worst. But I don't understand who people think reads these books. The only people I have known in real life who were regularly super negative about women have been cishet men, and I don't think they are reading these books in large numbers.

I almost set the book aside early on due to this stuff, but I thought maybe this was a story in which a man with a chained-down mind learns that he can live life on his own terms. That is the general plot that the story is aiming for, but it does not quite pull it off, in my opinion. The narrative doesn't challenge Eli's everyday assumptions about the people around him, and definitely not his negative feelings about women/femininity. It only challenges the big thing, his desire to stay in a boring job for financial stability. I don't buy that Eli has learned how to live a happy life, by the end of the story, because he has not changed. He only meets someone exciting, who convinces him to run away.

The story is written well, and the proofreading is very good. Also, the depiction of Eli's anxiety was easy for me to relate to. Peter is an appealing love interest, and I liked the Renaissance Faire setting. Overall, though, I didn't enjoy this story very much.