Richard May

Books: LGBT

Gay All Year (2020)

These are twelve short stories–one for each month of the year–with a variety of men in a variety of situations, including age differences, second chances, friends to lovers, some supernatural elements and a BDSM story.

Which is a lot.

As with most anthologies, I didn't love all the stories, but they were all well-written (thank goodness–I've read some really bad short stories this year).

Each tale stands on its own, as a good short story should, with complex and complicated characters, in complex and sometimes complicated situations.

"I'm sorry. Nat's my aunt. Well, she used to be," he said, looking confused. "Her and Uncle Lee got divorced. But she's still my aunt." He sounded defiant. "I don't think you should give up on people so easy."

Some of the characters I liked very much (such as Jordan, above), some I really didn't get at all, which is fine, because as I said, each story had different character (with no overlap) and it's not as if you would meet 24 people and like all of them.

I'll also note that many of the characters had issues, from prior abuse to death of a spouse to family.

The next morning the man-boy walked into my room while I was still in bed and half asleep. If I'd had a gun, I might have shot him. I was still that jittery, no matter how many talks I had with myself.

Most of these stories did not have the amount of healing one might normally expect from broken characters, but these are short stories so it's not unreasonable for these characters to have more of a HFN with the hope that they'll be able to find healing in the future (or perhaps that's just me).

Regardless, it was a good collection with a lot of variety.

Publisher: NineStar Press

Rating: 7/10