Chase the Storm
To V.M. Waitt:
It's ROMANTIC.
And It's HOT.
I love complex stories, I love great plots. But there is something I love even more. The nothingness. I fall for (and hard) stories with no “plot”. The ones with no murderer to be caught or with no business to be overcame or with no Earth to be saved. In fact, no excuse to make the couple getting closer and moving forward to the HEA. The “stage-play” kind. The only-two-characters kind. They are the difficult ones. I could say they are almost doomed to failure. But this author has excelled.
The MC are authentic, true to themselves and to the reader. Elijah is young and in alienation: he doesn’t fit in this family, he doesn’t fit in his college, he doesn’t fit in the ideas he has been raised, he doesn’t fit in his mates goals. He never has found a place or a person to belong to. He is shy and prefers reading, he longs for studying music instead of business, he aspires to get further from his family and find people like him, he is old-fashioned and looks for love instead of sex. He doesn’t want to get rid of his virginity, he yearns for losing his virginity to someone he loves. I could put myself in his shoes because he is honest and true and I could feel identified with his desires easily.
So, in an uncharacteristic impulse he buys an old car falling in pieces and drives heading to the unknown. He doesn’t know where he is going to, he just know where he does come from and the further, the better. Destiny calls him when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska, and applies for a farmhand job.
Here he meets Chase, and knows Chase’s storm in his eyes, and he chases this storm. Because there is no other alternative, and because he is everything he has been looking for in his life and because he doesn’t want to.
But the road is not smooth, Chase has his demons, and sometimes he is far from kind with Elijah. But Elijah is resilient and emphatic and mature. He surprised me once and again with his conviction and way of thinking. He doesn’t answer with ire or wrath or impatience. He is kind, calm and zen. He is human and suffers but he is unselfish and modest, and understands Chase and forgives him again and again. His martyrdom is astonishing but is not without a reason. He loves Chase that much that he places Chase’s needs before his own with an undeniable veracity. I have always admired people like that.
The sex is frequent and hot. I sometimes complain about too much sex scenes in books, but because I find them excessive or empty. Here they are not. Here they are attractive, captivating and full of feeling. They are sensual and heart warming. They are necessary and needy. I could feel the chemistry, the electricity of their touch and I only craved more.
We are never in Chase’s head. We can only guess his thoughts from Elijah’s thoughts. But he didn’t feel less real of less human because of that. Elijah’s perspective brings a heartbreaking image of Chase. Chase is not separate from love but this distortion is natural and made me shaky in the knees (and other parts of my body). I suffered with Chase because of Elijah’s suffering but also because of Chase’s evident pain. A pain disguised in cockiness and cynicism. The façade is hard but the inside is warm and shattered.
I loved seeing the process of Elijah’s getting the pieces together. I could understand the falling of Chase for Elijah. It’s strange because with only Elijah’s pov we would only be able to watch his own falling but the author manages to reflect Chase’s falling too.
I loved the isolation of the MC. The diary routine and simple life they lead. I loved the horses and the leather smell and I loved everything combined. Sometimes I love different parts in a book pretty much, but when combined I feel there is something missing and that the pieces don’t fit together. But this puzzle is one of the most beautiful I’ve read.
