Winter Oranges

The Christmas Bonanza continues!

Jason is a child actor who didn't transition well into the Hollywood adult world. Needing a break from the rat race he buys a house near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho claiming he's retiring, but in fact he's just tired and needs to regroup. His biggest problem is loneliness. He has no one special in his life and a non-existent relationship with his parents. The one guy he loves is his friend Dylan, but that hasn't progressed into more than a friends with bennies situation, and it breaks Jason's heart. He's so hungry for connection, for love, for companionship the need oozes off him.

His luck changes when he meets someone and doesn't even have to leave his house to do it. No, not through an app. There's a 20 year-old living in his guest house! Problem is this boy, Ben, is really living in a snow globe. Yep. His sister locked him in the globe to protect him and due to life's ups and downs he's been trapped in the globe for like 170 years. YEARS! His only way out is projecting his image outside but that image is insubstantial, like a hologram. The plus side is Jason can see Ben. The seeds of true love are sown.

I like how Marie Sexton sets up the realities/rules of the world of the globe and the parameters of Jason & Ben's interaction in and out of it and sticks by them. I think that she was really smart in giving Ben a life of sorts before he meets Jason Ben's a tv addict, I love it. It justifies Ben being abreast of the modern world and his ease with current mores & speech, it tones down a bit the babe in the woods aspect that would necessarily be part of a story involving one character from another time period propelled into the present.

I liked how the author worked out the possibility of intimate moments between the MCs in a way that was consistent with story and I liked the ultimate resolution, though I would've liked a little more about Ben's past, his origins. shrug Also, in what may be an unpopular opinion, I liked Dylan very much. He was who he was and was unapologetic about it. He's also a good and true friend proven even through the epilogue. Maybe he'll have his own story? I'd read it.