Without Sin by by J. Tomas

[reviews_and_ramblings]

The bad boy and the angel girl, all church and home... It's quite a classical plot, only that here, the angel girl is an angel boy, better the altar boy, and bad boy Jacob sees him the first day at the boarding school where he was sent due to one fight more in public school. Jacob is 16 years old and he wouldn't be a bad student if not for the fact that he picks up too more fight, above all when someone call him names since he likes boys. Jacob has not a problem with liking boys, he is well beyond the phase when it was a doubt, now for him it is a sure thing, but Jacob is like a lot of other teenager, he is easily inflammable.

Avery instead is apparently a saint; but the truth is that he has mastered the skill to not listen to who he is around him. Avery has still one year left in boarding school and then he will be out at college. He made the mistake to have a thing with his roommate, someone who was not at all discreet and who left at the end of the previous year, leaving Avery to live with the consequences of his big mouth. Avery is only waiting for this year to pass, he is not for sure searching for another story inside the boarding school. But then he sees Jacob, and it's love at first sight. Even if Avery is older than an year and with more experience (he had sex 3 times...), he always falls in love: two times before he had a boyfriend, and two times he was in love and he was the first to say the L word. He swore to not do the same error again and then here he is, falling for the new guy since day one.

Jacob is for sure temperamental, but he is also very insecure; it's not that he hasn't a supportive family, they are not happy for him to be gay, but they are not even fiercely against the idea. When his father found out, when he was 14 years old, he beat him, and his mother cried, but then, they reached an unspoken agreement, a family don't ask, don't tell. I believe that most of the rage Jacob feels inside, is only a way for repressed feelings to come out, he has no one to speak to, and the only way he can "communicate" is through his fist. Jacob attacks the boys who call him names only since he still isn't at comfort with whom he is and with who he likes. And when he meets Avery, his balance, Jacob will manage to dissipate a bit of that repressed feelings.

On the other hand, Avery faces better the same situation, since he, first has the support of his mother, and second his a bit older than Jacob, and at that age one year is very important. Avery suffers from the jokes against him not since he is insecure, but since he is lonely; and when he meets Jacob, a soul mate and not before long, also a boyfriend, he fill that loneliness and he is content, he has enough to go through the last year in boarding school. Oh, he loves Jacob, no doubt, the boy is not only a convenience, but Avery knows that they are only teenagers, and what they feel now is only heightened by the feeling to be two alone against the world. When they will be out, when they will have the chance to meet someone else, what will happen then? But I have faith in Avery and Jacob and in their love, their story is so tender and sweet, that I can really believe that they will be happy together ever after.

Without Sin is a really romantic story, very suitable for young gay adult in love, but with that bit of romance with a much more adult feeling in it that can satisfy also an older reader. And then me, an older reader, I have always had a certain thing for young boys in uniform...

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Cover Art by Rose Lenoir