Tag: KA Mitchell

Relationship Status by KA Mitchell

April 20, 2017 / Kaetrin

Why I read it: I’m a fan of KA Mitchell and I have enjoyed the previous two novellas in the series.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) Life doesn’t come with a syllabus.

Ethan knows firsthand that long distance is hard on love. If Wyatt is spending his summer at an internship in Pittsburgh, that’s where Ethan will be. Even if it means inventing his own career goal just to find a reason to stay with his boyfriend. He didn’t expect they’d be living in a hot, crappy apartment, with work schedules that keep them apart more than together.

Wyatt’s past has taught him to keep his head down and focus on living through the day. Loving Ethan has him looking to the future for the first time; he’s just not in as big of a rush to get there. It’s hard to trust in happiness when life has been busy kicking you in the nuts.

Together they’re getting the hang of real life, when a new responsibility for Wyatt throws everything off balance. Ethan’s doing everything he can to prove he’s in this forever, while Wyatt is torn between a future with Ethan and a debt to the past. Too bad they didn’t cover this in college.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): Most of Relationship Status takes place over the course of a summer where Ethan and Wyatt are sharing a room in a small apartment together in Pittsburgh while working and interning. Wyatt is interning at a prestigious engineering firm and Ethan at the ACLU – because there is the vague possibility he might want to be a lawyer but mostly because he wants to be near Wyatt. Between their jobs and internships, there is not a lot of time for them to spend together and when things start off, there is some tension between the pair because of the whole “ships passing in the night” thing.
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Review at Dear Author

September 1, 2016 / Kaetrin

I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Boyfriend Material by KA Mitchell. I had mixed feelings about this one.

Review at Dear Author

December 17, 2014 / Kaetrin

I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Bad Behavior by KA Mitchell. Beach finally gets his book and oh my, what a book he gets. Warning: My squee levels were high with this one.

Review at Dear Author

April 25, 2014 / Kaetrin

I’m at Dear Author today reviewing Bad Influence by KA Mitchell. I had some trouble with the central relationship but YMMV.

The Default Hero/ine?

January 19, 2014 / Kaetrin

I don’t know if I read the same way other people do. But I’ve been thinking lately about the way I read and what I see and pay attention to in the text of books. (And what I miss.) And I have realised something about myself. I am still working on the why, but here’s what I’ve got so far.

I think I have a “default hero” and a “default heroine”. I know that typically, blond heroes on covers do not sell as well as dark haired heroes. Maybe that’s why Mr. Default has dark hair – it’s what I’m most used to seeing. Or maybe that is my own preference. But Mr. Default is tall (around 6’1″ ish), with broad shoulders, narrow hips and a six pack. Ms. Default is less defined – in that I find it much easier to change her hair colour (is this the influence of book covers again?) but she, typically is around medium height, edging into tall (maybe 5’7″ish), slim, with a nipped in waist and a nice (but not huge) rack. If I’m reading a book where the characters aren’t particularly well defined, Mr. and Ms. Default step in. It’s also true that if I’m reading a book where the hero is described as very short or very tall or otherwise outside my “default”, I tend to morph the hero in my mind. I “see” him in my head as around that 6′ mark unless the text doesn’t allow me to.

For example, in The Magpie Lord, my inclination was to make Stephen taller. Unfortunately, the text kept reminding me that he was not tall –

He was incredibly unimpressive. Short, for one thing, barely five feet tall, narrow shouldered, significantly underweight, hollow-cheeked. He had reddish-brown hair cut unfashionably close, possibly against a hint of curls. His worn suit of faded black was obviously cheap and didn’t fit terribly well; bizarrely, he wore cheap cotton gloves. He looked like a clerk, the ten-a-penny kind who drudged in every counting house, except that he had tawny-gold eyes that were vividly glowing in his pale rigid face, and they were staring at Crane with something that looked extraordinarily like hate.

I never felt the text hammered it into my head over and over again. It was not annoying. But, I could not see Stephen as anything other than the short man he was.

Mr. Default and Ms. Default (or Mr. and Mr. Default as the case may be) are usually relatively close in age as well. That’s my default. So, unless the text convinces me an age difference is important, I’m going to picture the main characters as being similar in age/maturity too. I read The Changeup by Rhonda Shaw recently. The hero is 22 and the heroine is 34. I didn’t actually start off thinking that was a huge deal in terms of age difference (because, fundamentally, I don’t think 34 is old). But the text convinced me it was a problem. It also convinced me (and I don’t think it was supposed to) that the hero was actually too immature to be in a relationship with the heroine.

I also read The Good Boy by Lisa Henry and JA Rock shortly after. (I reviewed it at Dear Author.) Derek, the elder hero was 37 and Lane, the younger hero was 20. For some reason I didn’t feel that the age difference meant anything material to them. Possibly it was because the authors did a good job of showing that the characters related well to one another and that Lane was a mature 20 year old. (He was certainly vulnerable but maturity is a different thing I think). But, what if I merely inserted my default? Did I round Lane up to 25 and Derek down to 30? I might have. I don’t know.