Book Review of Amy Lane's "Living Promises"

Okay, I'm going to see if I can get through this book review without sobbing my eyes out, but seeing as how I'm already crying, I have no hopes for that.

By the end of the Prologue I was already identifying with the MC of Collin, having lost two cousins in a car accident on the same night I lost my favorite cousin (the first person I told when I started having sex who went and got me tested and told me about condoms, HIV and STDs) to cancer.  Soon after that I became fearless and reckless until I met Christopher a year later.  He gave me something to live for and helped me to heal.

This is when I begin to identify with the MC of Jeff (who I fell in love with in Book One) who lost someone he loved in the military, very unexpectedly.  That sense of grief and feeling as if you don't want to live if that person isn't alive to be with you.  I cried when I read that Jeff's lover, Kevin, died while serving overseas and he found out that he had contracted HIV (readers will remember that we found out he had this from the first two books).  Having served in the Army and having lost friends overseas, my best friend to AIDS and my fiance to brain cancer, I felt as if Mrs. Lane had gripped my heart and was crushing the life out of it.  I actually had to walk away from the book for a while to compose myself, the description of the haze Jeff went through was so wonderfully written.

However, the story is not all sadness and grief and "Oh-My-God-Somebody-Just-Put-Me-Out-Of-My-Misery" heartache.  Mrs. Lane mixes in a wonderful blend of laughter, surprise, love, realistic life situations, disappointments and heart-stopping, breath-stealing sex as to make this book my favorite one of this year (and that says a lot because I LOVED "Viking Lore" by Stormy Glenn).  By the time I got to the end of this book I'd gone through an entire box of Kleenex, two bottles of water and felt so emotionally drained that all I could do was lay on my bed trying to get my head together.

Collin and Jeff are so beautiful together, both helping each other to heal, to become better, to believe and hope again, loving so deeply and strongly as to be almost supernatural.  This is one of the greatest stories of love lost, love found and life rediscovered.

Thank you [author:Amy Lane|151973] for writing such an amazing story and for your dedication at the beginning of the book.