“He got closer and gave me a liplock, to which I just couldn't say no. I loved him so much. Without even thinking, I started kissing him back, as lovingly as I could, trying to light a flame in his cold soul, in the way one would try to ignite the fire in a sea cave, cold and dark.”
When Peter has a mental breakdown and rushes out of office, his coworker Arnold drops everything to help him. The two start a lonely pilgrimage through lunar landscapes of Iceland. Peter’s goal is to discard his sadness at the sea, while all Arnold wants is to win Peter’s heart. Peter isn’t interested… Or is he? Arnold doesn’t know, but he won’t stop hoping.
In this story you will find:
•Quirky, convincing characters with unique secrets, that will not only surprise you, but also change your way of thinking about everything that you’ve been reading.
•Witty, intelligent and sexy dialogue which will make you hope that Arnold and Peter will end up together after all.
•A message of hope to brighten up the darkness of internal torment that sometimes hits everyone in life.
•A tasteful sex scene being more than just an expression of physical desire.
•Gorgeous descriptions of wild forests, furious waterfalls and black beaches.
Warning! This short story contains adult material, including explicit sex scenes.
I’ve been trying to think of the nicest way to say that this didn’t work for me. At. All. But, I couldn’t so there you go. I suppose now I just need to explain why I gave it a 2 instead of a 1.
As the synopsis states, Peter has a breakdown at work, leaves, and Arnold follows him. They start off on a journey as friends and quickly become more.
That’s pretty much it. Their interactions are awkward, I didn’t get their attraction nor did I believe their connection. Arnold comes off as stalkerish (apparently, not on page prior to the start of the book) while Peter is contradictory with disliking that and then not caring. I’m also unsure of the point of many things but will highlight these two.
“I prepared his desk for him, and he sat at it the way women sit, with legs crossed, as if he wanted to hide his manhood.”
and,
“While everyone else seemed to have grown up already, I still felt jumpy and struggled to focus. The revelation came during a twenty-five-hour psychology course. At home, I started solving quizzes to figure out what was wrong with me. And I realized then that I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Aka the infamous ADHD. I didn't want to go to therapy and dig into what exactly had gone wrong with my life, so I opted for a more comfortable option, which was medication.”
The first might be nitpicky but the ADHD self diagnosis with zero therapy but somehow got medication as the comfortable option? Ermmm… ok.
I truly don’t want to rip apart the entire novella. It could definitely use another around of revision/editing for spelling, grammar, word usage, sentence development, awkward dialogue, etc…
With all of that, I still gave it a 2. *sigh* I feel like this story got lost in translation. I’m assuming that this wasn’t originally written in English (hopefully). It seems to me that important bits of information and *potentially* meaningful encounters were lost in translation. Maybe the phrasing, blasé mentions of suicide, ADHD (and how it was treated), truncated sentences, and editing would have been more cohesive and sentimental? Maybe those topics held more weight of importance in its original format? Or I could be entirely wrong and this was actually written in English and then it really, really didn’t work for me.
This one missed the mark for me but YMMV. Not recommended.
A review copy was provided in exchange for an honest opinion.
