Gwynn Marssen

A short and rather to-the-point novella about two damaged souls who find healing together, including but not limited to sexual healing. ;)

Dylan...I didn't really feel like I understood his character all that well, even though he is the narrator of this short story. He has withdrawn from society pretty much, only making the necessary trips to the grocery store (and apparently PetSmart) and spending the rest of his time holed up in a vacation home on a mountain with no nearby neighbors, working on his book. And we never really got a full explanation of the impetus that drove him there. I mean, granted, he said that his dog died and he got sad (depressed?) and his boyfriend at the time ended up kicking him out and then he lost his job, but it just felt like there was something MORE there that the reader just didn't "see" through his eyes. We've all lost pets; many of us have lost pets who have literally saved our lives more than once. And yet there's no real explanation of why he tailspun out of control, except if he was dealing with depression and his boyfriend at the time just couldn't deal and/or didn't know how to deal with it. And if THAT is the case...I kind of feel sad for Dylan, because he never really got any real help. Sure, he got the guy (Owen), but that's not a CURE for depression (love is pretty awesome, but it doesn't solve all).

Owen has been abused in the past (not exactly a spoiler) and has some serious trust issues. He and Dylan mesh pretty well together, and I loved Mug and Oreo. ;)… (mere)

In Gwynn Marssen’s moving short story, “Running Away From Sunshine,” Jake, an emergency room doctor, has run away from the sunshine and surfing of California to the wintry cold and snowboarding of Calgary. Something happened six years ago in that sunny utopia, and Jake still hasn’t gotten over it.

Gabriel, a 22-year-old college hockey player, shows up, not for the first time, in the ER. It might be difficult to imagine what Jake and Gabriel could have in common, but they do share one major thing: a taste for danger, be it on the ice playing hockey, on steep slopes snowboarding, or in the ocean waves surfing.

One of Marssen’s many beautiful sentences says it all. This one gives us Jake’s reaction when he first sees Gabriel on the ice: “He made skating into an art form, the game into a battle, the moves into a dance—a violent dance in which he threw his body on the line without ever considering what he was doing to himself.”

So will Jake and Gabriel take their love of danger, and the intense sorrow it can bring, beyond the games young men play?

Can you tell I enjoyed this story?

(As originally reviewed on Rainbow Book Reviews. Please visit http://www.rainbowbookreviews.com for other reviews that may be of interest.)… (mere)