The Botanist

The Botanist (2017) Dahlia Donovan (The Sin Bin)

This is another dark story. It opens years prior to the events in the previous stories, with Wyatt helping to rescue Aled, a young botanist who was mistakenly grabbed by drug runners.

This story takes course over several years and Aled slowly (slowly) heals and Wyatt falls in love with the younger man.

Aled opened the door, stared up at the two imposing men, paled dramatically, and slammed the door shut in their faces. “I’m fine.”

Sure.

His insistence would’ve been funny if Wyatt hadn’t seen the panic on his face. We should’ve come a hell of a lot sooner. He sat on the ground to the left of the door and gestured for Hamish to take a seat on the other side of it.

“Aled? It’s safe now.” Wyatt waved his hand sharply to stop Hamish from speaking. “We won’t loom over you. I swear.”

It’s hard to watch Aled suffering, but she does an excellent job with the struggle to get past trauma–nothing is magically healed, and it all takes an extraordinarily long time.

“It’s been a year.”

“And?” Wyatt knew several veterans with post-traumatic stress who five years out of the military continued to struggle every day, some more than others. “I don’t think pain comes with a specific expiration date.”

Note that the story starts with the rescue–we don’t see Aled being tortured, but we do struggle with him through his recovery.

Also: She is terrible at writing American. We don’t have walking frames or pavements here.

One important note. In this story, Aled’s parents are dead. Which makes a great deal of sense for this story. He had no family to notice how he was struggling, which is how Wyatt ended up helping him. But in another story, Aled has parents, as a reason for events panning out the way they did in that story, and it really bugged me.

Aled’s parents couldn’t possibly be alive, because if they were they would have assisted him instead of Wyatt.

I just needed to point this out.

Publisher: Hot Tree Publishing

Rating: 7.5/10

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