Kevin Armstrong (2)

Book Riot's 2019 Read Harder Challenge #8 "An #ownvoices book set in Oceania." Kevin Armstrong is a gay writer, teacher, traveler who has worked in film, theatre and television in "the Land Down Under." His writing, he says in his Amazon biography, is "often quite erotic because I believe that our sexuality is an essential part of our humanity." Always Together is set in Sydney, Shanghai, and New York City and many of the main characters are Australian gay men, most of them in their 20s or late teens. Sounds #ownvoices to me. This is a book I almost put down. As much as I like gay romance, I don't usually pick up books to read literary pornography, and the opening of this novel seemed to me, at least, more erotic than literary. But I stuck with it, and for what it's worth, I'm glad I did. There are two interwoven stories here, both involving gay couples who are separated by work or health (one partner is in a coma following an aneurysm) and the question of monogamy vs. open relationships plays a major role in both. My main complaint about the book is that it suffers from poor editing. In an early case, one entire paragraph appears twice within a couple of pages. More often, two to three word phrases repeat in adjacent paragraphs, or even from one sentence to the next. I don't consider these quibbles. They certainly interrupt the flow of the story. (Wait, didn't I just read that?" Of more concern to me is that one shift (from the Sydney/Shanghai story to the Sydney/New York story) seems to be missing an important connector. (Wait, how did we get here and why is Oliver such a mess?) But if you can overlook such matters, the overarching stories are fun, with a good bit of danger thrown in, and I will recommend the book to anyone interested in gay romance, but only with three stars.… (altro)