Another Enchanted April by Eric Arvin

[reviews_and_ramblings]

As the title suggests, Eric Arvin takes a spin on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and weaves a contemporary tale with a fantasy flavour. I say flavour since, after all, nothing that will happen in this novel is magical, if not the magic of love.

Doug is friend of Jerry and Jerry is friend of Tony and so Doug is friend of Tony too; they all met at Verona College (a place that often appears in Eric Arvin’s novels) and their friendship survives still now, when they are at the verge of thirty. Actually Doug and Jerry had something more than friendship happening between them, but Doug was, and still is, a flirt, and he doesn’t notice that Jerry is nursing a deeper feeling for him. Sometime Doug let it out that in 10 years or so maybe he will be ready to settle down with only one man and that, if he meets the right man, Mr Right will be willing to wait for him. I think Jerry applied for the role, and is now in the waiting phase, even if Doug didn’t notice.

Tony noticed though, but he has his own trouble to deal with and so is not really able, or willing, to help Jerry. On the contrary he would like for his friends to let him alone, but they don’t listen: they practically kidnap Tony to bring him with them on an isolated B&B in a beach village when outside is still too cold for the summer season. They will have a manor house all for them and the nice surprise will be the wonderful garden outside the house and the even more wonderful gardener. Where Doug is all looks and friendly attitude, and Jerry a plain joe type with a nice heart, Tony is bitter and aloof but he is the one to catch the eyes of the handsome Sal, the master of the gardener.

No one of the three men will find in Beechwood and in its enchanting gardens what they were looking for, but in the end all of them will go away with what they really needed.

The feel of the novel is of fresh air and blossoming season, i.e. a moment in time when everything could happen. Even the sex is a little absurd, very much like in a comedy of errors, when people fall in bed with the wrong partner to then wake up searching for the one they really want. But even if sex happens, and often, it’s not explicit, on the contrary is almost fake, and the author describes it in detail only when it’s happening between the wrong ones, and instead, when the sex is between the soul mates, then it happens behind closed courtains.

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Amazon Kindle: Another Enchanted April
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (January 12, 2011)

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle