Fair Game by Josh Lanyon

[lightreads]

Fair Game by Josh Lanyon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I started this book about six hours ago, just after eleven last night, and read it through in bleary bursts, folded in half in a wooden-armed hospital chair. My feet tucked up to keep warm, disentangle every hour or so to stretch out and pace. Midnight vitals check, three a.m. narcotics, realizing that I’ve heard everything that the woman in the other half of the room has said for the past sixteen hours – about a hundred times more exposure than anyone on staff – and wondering how exactly one goes about pulling aside a night nurse and gently suggesting that they need to slow down a second, take another look, maybe it’s time for a psych consult here. Clocking my girlfriend when she can actually get to sleep to see if she’ll get through a full REM cycle even once tonight, tracking meds, icepacks, mugging the charge nurse to make sure the order for solid food actually goes through. And this book.



Books are – okay, yes I have in fact been awake for days at this point, but it’s not like I don’t also think this when I’m fully sane: books are amazing. Books are fucking magic. The right book, matched to the moment. (My brain supplies at this juncture a reference to transcendentalism, and a stupid metaphor about keys in locks).



And this was the right book. Gay romance – well, a serial killer hunt while estranged lovers, fledgling relationship smothered by the shock and trauma of sudden injury, find their way back to each other. A bit playful with mystery tropes, nice depth, pockets of quiet emotional richness. I picked this book because I thought it would be distracting. It was, but I had no idea it would make me laugh a little to myself. There you are sometimes, having what’s supposed to be a one night stand, and then boom five years down the line you’re crunched up in a hospital chair at four in the morning, listening to your girlfriend dream oxycodone dreams and sighing as you finish the exact right book.



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Comments

[readerjane]

(to see if she’ll get through a full REM cycle even once tonight)

((hugs you)) I know. I do know.

[daraq]

I just got this based on your post and can't wait to start reading. Thanks for sharing all your recommendations!

[lightreads]

My pleasure. If you like it, I would recommend Lanyon's stuff in general. It's not all to my personal emotional taste, but a lot of it is and it's all much better than any random lgbt romance selection I've tried.

[ecaterin]

*goes to Amazon Kindle store. Clicks "BUY"*

Here's wishing you and your sweetie a restful hospital/pre/post/surgery time, okay? *hugs to you both!*

[ecaterin]

*starts reading*
*runs back to computer*
Ooo! Ooooo! It's set in Seattle - awesome :D Verrrry few books are set here, and even fewer things on the big or small screen. We're big fans of the series Millenium, which is set in Seattle, but they didn't use Seattle in the filming of. It cracks us up that they feel the need to make every. single. establishing shot. start with a TOTAL DOWNPOUR OF RAAAAAAAAAAAAIN! Because only by TOTALY DOWNPOUR OF RAIN would the audience remember that we're IN SEATTLE. :P In actuality it almost never POURS here - just drizzles in a really really wet fashion (if you don't think some rain is wetter than other equally heavy rain...you've never lived in pseudo temperate rainforest climate :P).

YAY! FUN GAY MYSTERY SET IN MY TOWN :D

[lightreads]

you've never lived in pseudo temperate rainforest climate :P)

And never will, eek. Rain just makes me gloomy.

I do recommend some of Lanyon's other books, if you like this one. They're not all to my particular taste, but they're all pretty good -- certainly several cuts above the general state of the lgbt genre, which is terrible. I liked his Adrien English books, and the Dark Horse/White Knight novellas hit some personal emotional kinks, but The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks didn't do much for me.

[ecaterin]

Yeah, rain continues to make me gloomy even though I've lived here for almost 25 years :P Eventually I'll leave, I swear!

YK, I enjoyed Fair Game, but I must lodge a complaint about the sex scene. I'm reading along, enjoying some characters who are actually 3D and unique, a plot that kept me interested, a mystery that I didn't unravel half way through the book....and then there's this scene. This scene that I've read sooooo many times. This scene that could have been lifted from any slash fanfic in the past 15 years, without regard to character, story or description. Holy crap, the guy may have come up through the fanfic ranks, didn't he learn to write sex any more interesting than that????

I wanna send him to the resonant8 school of smutlet writing. C'mon Lanyon, you know we've all read that already, cause YOU'VE read it already!

*headdesk* I did like the book though :P

[lightreads]

Actually, that's one reason why I like him more than a lot of the other original lgbt authors, where the sex is actually terrible. I mean, astonishingly bad. And there are some . . . odd moments in some of his earlier books, some of that weird thing where they import coyness from the het romance genre and ad a lot of purple pros and it's just wrong. But he got over most of that, thank God.

[cyphomandra]

I have two Josh Lanyon books lurking on my iPhone unread, so from a selfish point of view I'm pleased to hear that I'm likely to enjoy these, but from a broader point of view I thought this review/post was really touching. Hope your girlfriend's doing okay!