Jackass Flats by Julia Talbot

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Another story where the romance happens between two very normal men, not at all heroes. Tate is an old cowboy, how much old we don't know, but between 30 and 50 years old, and since 30 years old is too much young to feeling old and having problem in recover after sex, I'm inclined to believe that he is more near 40 years old. He lives alone in an old decayed ranch he struggles to save from taxes and he judges himself decrepit like the ranch.

Dave is a young army man, probably mid-twenty or so. He is stationed in a base near Tate's ranch and meets him in the only pub around. At first Dave helps a drunken Tate to go back home without accidents and he has no second ends, but when he meets him again, he starts to have some naughty thoughts on the man. Only that Tate, even if friendly and always up to a mutual jerking, is a bit reticent to move the things on. Tate is very self-conscious both of the age difference, than of the different upbring; Tate is of the old way, he is not used to be touchy feeling with strangers, and for him Dave, who is not from the surrounding, is a stranger. And then maybe Tate has never had the chance to near a man for enough time to deepen the acquaintance.

Anyway the story between them, even if progresses slowly, it's fated to be steady and strong. So strong that, when Dave begins to have problem at the base, is even too simple to link it to the infringement of the "don't ask don't tell" policy.

The story is medium lenght, 128 pages, but it's quite good, even if sometime I feel like missing something; it's built of fast scene, not linked between them, and sometime not reading what happens between two scene let me with the feel that I'd like to know. For example, for Dave is starting to be a problem not move their relationship in a more intimate phase, and when finally Tate agrees to it, the scene ends letting me hanging on... and when starts again Tate is shopping for grocery!

All right, now I'm a little too picky since I also thinks that the story has a right lenght, just good to be read in a night without straining. Even more since it is expected a sequel at the beginning of the 2009.

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