The Cellmate by Rachel West

[reviews_and_ramblings]

The Cellmate is maybe a bit pink glasses perspective and optimistic, but I don’t think its mainly purpose was to be a drama prison romance, but more a prison romance without the drama.

First of all, even if it’s not clearly stated, I don’t think Andy and Jesse are retained in a high security prison, but probably in some region penitentiary, where small criminals spent their few years of sentence. Andy is inside for being a drunk driver and to have caused a car accident, with death but with a victim, a woman who suffered a semi-permanent paralysis. Jesse is inside for rape, even if there is something that doesn’t match in his story, he is not actually a vicious man, but more someone who would like to be left alone.

True, the fact that the first night they are in the same cell together, Jesse slips in Andy’s bed and have sex with him is not exactly testifying to his good intentions, but Jesse is kind and tender, and Andy is gay and lonely, and so both of them find in each other something. Only for Jesse to snap out when he finds that Andy is indeed gay and not adapting to the situation. There are some buried issues in Jesse’s past, also linked to his conviction, and what he is sharing with Andy is hitting too much near that weak spot.

As I said there is really no drama; life in prison seems a little to easy, but as I said, maybe they are in a low security penitentiary; plus there is the nice turn that, the one that is supposedly the victim in this situation, the narrator, Andy, is indeed the more guilty of the two. For once Andy’s sentence was right, he needed something to right him, and even if the prison is not hard, it’s always a deprivation of freedom, and Andy has the chance to learn from his own mistakes. Maybe for this reason I have never felt like Andy was a victim of Jesse, or that he was suffering unwanted attentions; on the contrary, I think Andy uses Jesse to adapt to the life in prison; he is his mainstay, someone he could rely on. Loving Jesse, Andy is able to make penance for his own mistakes, since he has in front someone who is really not guilty, but he is self-punishing himself; so in a way why Andy, who was guilty, has not to suffer his right punishment.

Maybe the light tone of the story is also due to the fact that both men are really young, 20 years old if much. There is really the feeling that they have a future that this is only a moment in their life, and that when they will be out, there will be still chances for them. Andy is from a good family, who despite all is supporting him, and so the future seems bright for him. Again the one in the worst situation is Jesse, and for this reason, after their first encounter, Andy slowly changes his role from submissive to caretaker, even if they have the same age, more or less, Andy seems stronger and savvier, more confident of himself and his possibilities, and he is ready to share all of this with Jesse.

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Amazon Kindle: The Cellmate

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