The South Side Tour Guide by Shelter Somerset

Title: The South Side Tour Guide

Series: N/A

Author: Shelter Somerset

Genre: MM / Contemporary

Length: Novel

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (May 15^th, 2013)

Heat Level: Moderate

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥4 Hearts

Reviewer: Thommie

Blurb: Andrew Wingal’s life has become a farce. Unemployed for more than a year, he starts giving tours into the seedy parts of Chicago to tourists eager to witness real-life crime. The local media, politicians, the police department, and belligerent gang members don’t like him. When Andy’s job gets him into deeper trouble, his hotheaded boyfriend insists he flee town for a few weeks until things simmer down. With nowhere else to go, Andy heads for eastern Iowa, where his former brother-in-law, Harden Krane, lives on an idyllic farm with his two school-age children, Mason and Olivia.

Harden has his own specters haunting him. Left with his young daughter and son to raise on his own, he struggles to work full time and build a normal life for them. Yet when Andy shows up after a three-year absence, he hopes that the family’s hardships might ease up, if only temporarily. But during Andy’s stay, a common menace from Harden and Andy’s past appears unexpectedly—and Harden and Andy find solace in each other in a way neither imagined possible.

Product Link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3808

Review: Ok, so I loved this book. Really, it is written in such a way that even if you are totally indifferent to the story it will still enchant you and grip you till you’re done. Strange thing is, it’s not the fast and furious intense kind of book. It’s a mundane thing, with a steady and calm pace, with everyday routine things in a supposedly boring part of the U.S, Iowa, with cornfields, and farmers, and waking up in the morning, working 9-5 and coming back home to eat and play monopoly games with your kids. And still, there I am transfixed and unable to look away from the incredibly hooking main characters, Andy and Harden.

Andy who is this guy fed up with the world. This guy whose ideals have gone to the bottom of the drawer and has convinced himself that if the world is going to shit, he’s gonna go with the flow and profit from it. This guy that despite what he tells himself to get the job done and survive yet another day, hates it with all his might. This City-Boy who can’t even see himself anywhere but in the City.

Harden. God, what a man.  What a character; Impossible not to love, impossible not to care for this one. A man whom life has elbowed right in the face repeatedly and still stands tall and still smiles, and still goes on. For what he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t stop. He got kids to raise and a family to keep and if he’s losing his mind and resources in the process, so effing what. He’ll keep going and smiling while he’s at that. Harden, good old American boy, damn lovable.

The story is a bit wild in my head because of how very cool Harden was and how very in stride he took things. The morning rained frogs… so what, he’ll wipe ‘em out and go to work. Even his sexuality and his revelations he dealt like that, with a smile and a “don’t dwell” attitude. In a way it was hilarious, in another somehow surreal. I mean, it’s not every day a divorced straight man falls for his ex-brother-in-law. It’s not every day that said ex-brother-in-law comes from the city in the middle of nowhere cornfield and sets in a rural style of life. And it’s definitely every day or anywhere that people of an entire city takes that thing in stride, too. But, I damn well loved it, couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t even think of sleeping when I finally gave in at 4 am in the morning and for the rest of my sleeping hours I kept dreaming the damn book. And it’s not even intense!!! Really it should be boring for me.

There was one part though that I couldn’t swallow and made a difference in my personal rating of this book and that was the Ken incident at the near end. That was not only unbelievable but ridiculous in some ways. I mean come on; a police officer would not behave like that on someone else’s property. It’s just beyond the sphere of reality for me. But, thank God, the previous and the rest of the book more than made up for that one scene. And God, the intimate scenes between the pair, yeah, hot and sweet and familiar and yeah, repeating myself I know, but I loved it. I like this author’s writing style a lot. this slow trap he sets for you with an under the radar emotional story that before you’ve realized what has happened it has sucked you in its world and dares you to stop if you find the strength and the will, which you never do.

Recommend it? Hell yeah! Wonderful read, totally worth it.