Silver Bells by Hunter Raines

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This is quite a sad story and even if there is a sort of happily ever after, I still felt like the sadness was not all gone.

Jud and Derek were best friends since they were children, and not long after they also fell in love. The life seemed perfect for them; they were living together, good jobs and a new home. But something maybe was missing, maybe they were not on the same line of thinking, maybe one of them was outclassing the other… anyway they hadn’t the time to understand what it was since Derek died on Christmas day, just the day after he made Jud promise that there was never anyone else for him. Already this promise was strange, why on earth a man as young as Derek was wresting promises from his lover, like he had the feeling that he would be not there. But Jud had promise indeed, and Derek died, and so, guilt or love, or maybe a mix of the two, made Jud keep the promise for 10 years, helped maybe by the little booby prize of having Derek back for one day each year, on Christmas day.

First year it’s joy, second year it’s hope, third, fourth, …, tenth year it’s almost damnation. Yes, it’s harsh to say, but time indeed heals the wounds, and Jud is young, and Derek is died, and where a romantic sees a wonderful love story, a practical man sees an eternal doom. It’s time for Jud to move over, and if this moves will lead him near to or far from Derek, well, you have to read the book to know. What I can say you is that, in Jud’s shoes, I would have not left those silver bells, even if they represented ten years of grief, they were also the remembrance of an important part of his life.

On a side note, despite the sad feeling I already mentioned above, the story manages to be the same very sexy, to some level that, sometime, the reader has the idea that what Jud is missing is not much the love but more the lover. To the romantic reader who will not like the idea, I will suggest to consider the idea that, in a way, Jud and Derek were not made to be together, and that, if Derek had not died, there would be a good chance for both of them to outgrow their youth love; death instead, gave it a forever kind of nature.

http://www.loose-id.com/Silver-Bells.aspx

Amazon Kindle: Silver Bells

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Cover Art by Anne Cain