reviews_and_ramblings | Stray by Ash Penn

I wasn’t really expecting much from this book, either because the author was new to me and also since I had the wrong idea this was a menages a trois (M/M/M true, but always a menages). And even if sometime I like a good angst romance, I was probably not in the mood for one.

So it was with great, and pleasant, surprise that, after few pages, I realized that I was reading more a comedy than an angst romance, and it was not a menages a trois at all. Terry is a middle twenty English gay man living with his best buddy; they know each other for year, since then they were two misfits in school, one the fat guy, Marc, and the other the sissy one, Terry. They made team together and from that moment on they are best friends, almost everything for each other. And Terry is jelaous.

Between Marc and Terry there has never been a sexual relationship, but Terry nevertheless consider Marc private property. As soon as Marc brings home a boyfriend, Terry starts to behave like a jelaous girlfriend, until the day he is not able to drive away the unwelcomed addition to their couple. At first you can think this is a sex/love jelaousy, that Terry wants Marc for his own, but I think it’s more a friendship jelaousy, that can be even worst: you know when two teenagers are best friends and one of them find a girlfriend/boyfriend? How the other almost always reacts in a bad way, trying to instill the doubt in his/her friend’s mind that the other is not good form him/her? Same here.

Terry awakes one morning to find out that Marc brought home a boy the night before, Dan. For Terry is not a nice surprise, above all since he has just managed to get free of Bradley, Marc’s previous boyfriend, and now he has to start it all over again. But apparently Dan is not so much interested in Marc and way more in Terry. As soon as they are alone, Terry approaches Dan trying to test his interest on Marc, to have a proof that Dan is profiteer, that Marc for him is only a safe shelter… and he is right. Dan is a runaway from home, he has no job or place to stay, Marc was like a guardian angel for him, and he really wants to be able to love him, but that is not as he sees Marc. On the other hand when Dan sees, and “tastes” Terry for the first time, he becomes addicted: despite Terry being rude and selfish, despite all the time he treats Dan more like an object than a man, Dan is stubborn and firm in wanting Terry, in trying to make him realize that they are perfect for each other.

There is an innocence in Dan that is almost disarming; he is like a punching ball, he absorbs every blow and never gives back. And in his innocence he reads love and caring in everything, even when Terry indead was trying to be the bad boy. On the other hand, Terry can be rude, but he is not really bad; probably he would even like Dan if not for his connection with Marc. And in the end, it’s Terry that is always going back to Dan, and from his ten years more on Dan, he almost behaves like a big brother, wanting to teach Dan how to be an healthy modern gay guy… and having sex with him is only one step on the good path.

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Amazon Kindle: Stray

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