Contemporary romance. Brynn Garrett finds it hard to fit in anywhere. She tends to opt for the road with speed humps and pot holes. Trying to avoid a party she decides to hang out on its fringes and see something that effects her deeply and never really gets over. While all her school colleagues head off to new adventurous lives at college, Brynn decides to learn the ropes of her family's dry cleaning business. Her life is lonely and insular until a mishap befalls Gabe Riley's mother's table cloth and a wonderful relationship develops. I loved this book. It is a quick read for starters. The comedy factor is very fresh and nothing is off limits in this regard. The characters are fully formed and very likeable. There are a few issues that are revealed which make you think and challenge yourself as to "what would I do?" I found it highly devy, the level of his injury isn't mentioned but his hands are affected so I would assume that he is a low level quadriplegic. The author isn't squeamish to go into the details. Gabe is fantastic and realistic not a depressed character but also not a Pollyanna. There isn't much sex in the book. But there is a wonderful build up which has you biting your duvet cover in frustration. It is one of those books you just wish you could wipe your memory and re-read a fresh again and again. It is a crime that it has been sitting on my Kindle untouched for so long. This book isn't going to solve world peace but it sure as heck will entertain you for a few nights.
Morgan Oliver is recently paraplegic, T-10 incomplete, as a result of a bicycle accident during a race he was competing in. He has recently returned home from rehab and he’s now unemployed and living on disability, adjusting to his new life and the new adaptive setup in his apartment. His preferred way to pass the time is drinking beer and watching television, and the main events of the film begin when he runs out of beer and neither his mother, Peg, nor his best friend, Lane, will enable him any further. They refuse to buy him more beer, forcing him to leave the house on his own. It is during his trip out to replenish his beer supplies that he meets Dean Kagen, which is where our romance begins. The dialogue seems a bit forced at first, but it gets more natural as the film progresses.
The drama unfolds once Morgan decides he wants to compete in the wheelchair division of the very same race that cost him his ability to walk, where Morgan, because of his hyper-competitive nature, caused an accident involving himself and two other competitors on a very dangerous part of the course. This same hyper-competitive nature leads to his doing things he ought not to be doing and refusing to listen to reason from Dean, his doctor, or anyone else.
This film is a journey for Morgan where he must confront his past and his present, and he must find a way to learn from his mistakes and move forward. This is also, to a lesser extent, a journey for Dean in finding a new way to live following the death of his mother. But most of all, it is a romance featuring a paraplegic romantic lead, which is something that is very rare to find. And better yet, it is a romance that delves into the issue of disabled sexuality, which we almost never see on film. And Morgan is pretty cute, too, so that helps.
Fanvid by JJstrikesback1:
So how does it fare with regard to portrayal of a disabled character and disabled sexuality?
This is a male/male romance, but it is not a coming out story; rather, the central focus of the story is Morgan’s disability. The film addresses both the disability and the romance from a variety of angles and is, I think, one of the most comprehensive films I’ve seen with regard to disability and romance. It’s a low budget film with acting that could be better, but the writing/directing/production team of Michael Akers and Sandon Berg, as well as Leo Minaya, who played the title character, Morgan, did quite a lot of research in preparation for this film (though there are certainly some important gaps). Leo Minaya is not paraplegic himself, and this was a deliberate casting decision on behalf of the filmmakers because the film originally was going to contain scenes of Morgan before his accident which ended up being cut from the final version of the film. I think that things like Photoshop and body doubles could get around the reasons they cited for hiring a non-disabled actor instead of a disabled one, but the actor they cast was very dedicated to portraying the reality of Morgan’s paralysis. There was a scene early on in the film where Dean helps Morgan with his leg exercises, and the director had instructed Leo Minaya to keep his leg up during the scene after Dean let go of it, and Mr. Minaya insisted that this would be impossible for Morgan to do and he made sure that the film reflected this. There was another particular scene that was very physically intense, and in the commentary, the filmmakers point out multiple times that Leo Minaya refused to use his legs to help him with this very difficult scene, insisting on pulling himself back up and over the wall using only his arms. A lot of actors, particularly in low budget indie films, might not have this kind of dedication to the role they were playing, and so although I think a paraplegic actor would have been preferable, Leo MInaya did a great job of being Morgan. Leo Minaya and Jack Kesy are not gay in real life, either, but they managed to do a great job with that aspect of their roles, as well.
There are three areas where I think the film suffered from the decision not to use a paraplegic actor –
·First, in simple physical realism. Morgan had a lot of muscle tone, and even for a guy less than a year post injury who is still actively doing physical therapy, there are just some things you can’t fake, and the appearance of a paraplegic’s legs and abdomen is one of them. There were two scenes in particular where abdominal strength and control were slightly unrealistic. The first is a scene where he’s in the shower on a shower chair and not using either of his arms to maintain his balance or keep from falling or sliding down. The second is that there are a couple of scenes where he’s doing sit-ups, and I just don’t think that a T-10 paraplegic would be able to move the specific muscle combination necessary to do those particular exercises.
·The second area the film suffered from not casting a paraplegic actor is, of course, realism regarding bladder and bowel issues. That’s something that is not touched on even one single time in the film, and Morgan doesn’t seem to use a catheter or go to the bathroom for anything other than a shower, ever. Men I’ve known with SCI have always gone to the bathroom to sort everything that needs to be sorted before coming to the bed and being intimate, and I think it’s pretty standard to have at least one conversation about bladder and bowel issues at some point in the relationship. This just wasn’t a feature in the film, but it’s something that really can’t be ignored in an intimate relationship with someone who is paraplegic. I think this would have been very different had they used a paraplegic actor in the role.
·And following from that, the third area where I think the film suffered from not using a paraplegic actor was that, although they did significantly address Morgan’s erectile dysfunction, one thing they forgot about was making sure he took his little blue pills before having sex with Dean, and also, for that matter, addressing whether and how much he could feel, as an incomplete paraplegic, when having sex. Also, sex with a paraplegic guy is not a spontaneous act. It requires preparation. And also, I would have been really curious to see how they actually figured out the right positions and the best way to do things for both of them, which wasn’t really spelled out. There were one or two great conversations before they became sexually active that addressed Morgan’s erectile dysfunction and Dean’s openness to figuring things out as they went along, but nothing at the time they finally did have sex for the first time or any time after that. Also, there is a single scene in the film where, during sex, they show the scar as Dean runs his arm down Morgan’s back, and it’s not quite the Joel Brown “Personal Rockstar” video, but it is sensual and shows that they are making an effort to show this aspect of Morgan’s disability. However, I think that the film would have been more realistic in this regard if the actor playing Morgan had been paraplegic himself.
Other than these areas, though, I think that the research the writers did paid off, and you really can tell that they did their homework. Also, they made Morgan and Dean both into well-rounded characters with flaws and quirks and issues that are not related to Morgan’s disability. Morgan is hyper-competitive, afraid of public displays of affection, bad with money, and drinks a bit too much. The writers say that the overarching theme for understanding Morgan’s issues is his issue with his own masculinity that dates back to when he was about 12 years old and his father left the family not long after finding out that Morgan was gay. Dean has just gone through a long period of caring for an ailing mother who has recently died, and he never came out to her when she was alive and is still getting the hang of being an out gay man. Their conflicts come not from Morgan’s disability but from his character flaws, and Dean is quite comfortable with Morgan’s disability from the very beginning. This is also not a coming out film, although Dean is more recently out than Morgan. This is a romance between two men whose major conflict is over Morgan’s hyper-competitiveness rather than his disability. The romance is complex and grows organically, and their relationship is multi-faceted and fairly realistic. Having watched not only the film, but also the deleted scenes, the Behind the Scenes Featurette, and the commentary, I’ve gotten to be quite familiar with the filmmakers’ thought processes as well as with the characters and the film itself, and I really think the filmmakers and the cast did an outstanding job at accomplishing this, despite my continued belief that the role would have been even better with a paraplegic actor.
Ironically, the writers got the idea for the film itself from a paraplegic actor who auditioned for another film they did together, who was kind enough to sit down with them and really talk about issues of being gay and paraplegic and dating, sex, etc. During their conversation, they even touched on the topic of guys who wanted to be with someone who they perceived as “needing” them and guys with a “wheelchair fetish”. Later on during the preparation for the film, they went to a disabled dating site and talked with two paraplegic men they connected with on there about their experiences and preferences when dating and their issues with sexuality. Perhaps this is why I have such an issue with the fact that they went with a non-paraplegic actor, but really, they did do their research, and Leo Minaya did work very hard to ensure as much authenticity as possible in his portrayal of Morgan Oliver.
This is the third offering from Dev Love Press, and a book that originally appeared on Paradevo. So hopefully most of you already know it, but for any new readers, here is a review:
Jason and Tasha have been best friends since they were kids, even though
Jason is kind of a nerd, and Tasha is a little teenage hottie. They go
their separate ways in college, then reconnect as adults in New York.
Somehow, without quite realizing how it happened, Tasha finds herself
still single at 32, wanting to settle down, unable to find the right
guy. Someone like Jason, but they're just friends. And he doesn't even
think of her like that, right?
This book is so much fun to read.
The writing is snappy and funny, and the romance goes down as sweet as
candy, filled with pop culture references. In between the chapters are
clever charts that poke fun at the chick-lit genre.
Tasha and
Jason are great characters--flawed but loveable and believable. Even
though the action takes place when they are adults, there are lots of
flashbacks to their childhood and teen years. I really liked that Tasha
slept around a lot but there's no slut-shaming. She has a slightly
embarrassing past, but it's not that big a deal. So refreshing after
reading so many prudish romances.
Jason's disability is also
handled really well. A paraplegic from a car accident when he was 5,
it's not that big a deal to him or to Tasha, but the book does a good
job of showing how he's adjusted and how people react to him. And the
author doesn't cheat on the details. It's very realistic without being a
huge downer. The wheelchair is part of who he is, but it doesn't define
him.
Having a dev author makes all the difference! Even though Tasha is not a dev herself, the narration lingers over just the right details. Even if you have read this story on PD in the past, please support Dev Love Press by buying a copy, so they can continue to bring us great dev books.
This book was sent to me by the author so I could give it an endorsement. Pretty cool!
It's quite a different kind of book and I appreciate that about it. It's a murder mystery that takes place within the world of academic research, a physics lab to be exact. I have long been fascinated by the unique atmosphere of university research labs with their crazy red tape and strange rules.
The characters are wild and large and a lot of fun to follow.
Lou is the character in a wheelchair. He was paralyzed in a car accident that starts looking less and less like an accident as other people in his department are killed.
I wish there had been more of him and more devy scenes, but okay, it's not written by a dev. There's a great bike ride that I found very devy.
I like the portrayal of Lou a lot. He's realistic and believable. He shows how much a paralyzed man can still do but the narrative also shows his struggles.
The author has promised more books with Lou and Lori, so I look forward to seeing more of him much like I read Meg Gardiner's books for Jesse.
A sequel to Madison's first book (W)hole, Breath(e) delves into Elizabeth's experience exploring her devo-sexuality in college. After breaking up with her paraplegic boyfriend Stewart, Elizabeth attempts several other relationships with disabled men, most with disastrous consequences.
All I can say is that Ruth Madison "gets it." Elizabeth's struggles are all too familiar for any devotee who has struggled to connect with a disabled partner. Her experiences and emotions feel incredibly real, from her painful confession to her parents to being shunned by her colleagues. You will find yourself rooting for Elizabeth to get her happy ending (both literally and figuratively).
Much like (W)hole, this book is a must-read for any devotee. Buy it from Amazon and I promise you'll finish it in one weekend!
Dev Rating: ****
(Although, it didn't get super devy for me until the last third of the book)
I really enjoyed this book.
The first thing that really impressed me was how accurate all the details were. This is an author who definitely knows a lot about SCI (and when I interview her, I’m going to ask her about that!) From how the insurance works to ordering a wheelchair to the physical changes in how a paralyzed person knows when he needs to use the bathroom, it is all accurate. I really appreciate that real life issues of paraplegia were not glossed over.
I love the message that sometimes the best thing in your life comes from your plan for your life getting completely screwed up. Good is born from bad. I think that’s so true.
Ordinarily I don’t read new injury stories, as they tend to bore me. I’ve read so, so many books with disabled characters and that right-after-the-accident time tends to be all the same. I prefer a hero who has adjusted to his disability and has moved on with his life. Here, however, the little bit of a mystery about what really happened that night was enough to keep me engaged and moving forward.
I feel like the time Matt spent with the girl who was CLEARLY all wrong for him what too long. I was getting frustrated and fed up that he couldn't see that she wasn't the right person for him until page 300. Now, at page 300 the book became great, in my opinion. That's when it really became romantic and sexy and completely enjoyable. Basically it's when he begins the process of courting the girl that we all know is perfect for him.
My only real criticism is a tiny one. There's talk about how he needs to order his own chair and he resists that for a long time. When he finally agrees to do it, we never see him actually get a new chair. So it didn't become clear to me that he was no longer using the hospital chair until there's a mention of him taking the wheels off when he gets in a car. It pulled me from the story a little to be wondering about that and I would have liked to see a scene with him getting the new chair, seeing how different it was from the hospital chair and how much easier it was to maneuver.
I would cry foul on how easy it was for Matt to get and maintain an erection, but because all the details of his injury were so very accurate it was easy for me to buy that he was lucky in his particular injury.
Overall I really enjoyed this book, particularly, as I said, the last third of it. I'd highly recommend this to any dev. It's what a love story should be, I think!
Read a longer review at my site: ruthmadison.com And an interview with the author will be up soon!
Lilly is a physical therapist, but she doesn't do it for money, she just really likes helping people. She gets a call from the sister of a man she saw once at a party and developed a huge crush on, Simon Vittorio. The sister says that Simon's had an accident and he's in despair. He needs a tough physical therapist to pull him from his depression and get him inspired to walk again. Simon has also been blinded by this accident, the characters hope temporarily. Little does Lilly know, Simon remembers her and has also been longing for her as much as she has for him. But he's driven away other psychical therapists and he's going to do the same to her by making her super uncomfortable sexually. (???)
The writing is fine. No glaring errors, nothing really wrong with it, but the book definitely left me feeling "meh."
But oh my God, the cliches. Every single one of the romance genre seems to be present here:
-She's cute when she's angry. Whenever she's upset, Simon has to stifle the urge to laugh.
-She's so special that a man-whore who has been sleeping with any girl who breathes for the last twenty years or so instantly falls so in love with her that he'll never want anyone else ever again.
-She's secretly a virgin (and secretly rich)
-Outrageous and ridiculous misunderstandings abound when a simple conversation would make everything clear
(Okay, at least there isn't a secret baby)
And Simon's big plan to drive Lilly away? To kiss her. Seriously? The plot is convoluted, strange, and hard to make any sense out of.
I didn't find anything sexy about Simon personally. He is rich and Italian and passionate and (apparently) madly in love with the heroine (for no discernible reason). That's probably plenty of people's fantasy, but I found him foppish and irritating. The laughing at Lilly whenever she was upset and telling her how adorable she is when she's mad was so patronizing it kind of made me hate him. If he had felt real enough to hate, anyway.
It's pretty clear from the start that a cure is likely. I don't think I can call it a "miracle cure," since his prognosis from the start is that he's going to recover. This is more of a nurse-back-to-health fantasy than a dev fantasy. But then, why is he driving away physical therapists and being bitter when he's likely to recover if he just puts in a tiny bit of effort...? I have no idea.
The cover is a weird choice too. Sexy image (would be better with a wheelchair!) but you can't even read the title at all. The lack of contrast is a very unprofessional choice.
A somewhat silly premise typical of a rom-com style romance novel, but it really does work.
The characters are very endearing and likable. Especially the girl. The boy has some annoying woe-is-me moments, but is overall charming.
For me the dev moments were few, but the ones that were there were great. There's the time Cade falls from his chair into the mud. There's when Cade is taking care of an ill Layla.
There are some not great things such as the brothers in the story all having ridiculously similar names. Also, I found it really hard to believe that Layla was a foster kid. She told us a lot about how untrusting she was, but what was shown was the opposite.
The cover is also terrible. A gray tone cover definitely does not catch the eye and the text is difficult to read on it. It looks really unprofessional. Instead of buying the book outright (even though it was a cheap ebook) I downloaded the sample. I was pretty sure from the cover that I wasn't going to like it.
But then, as a sample should, I fell in love with Layla's character and wanted to keep reading.
The main character, Evan, is a plucky, sarcastic jill-of-all-trades who is engaged to a handsome lawyer in a wheelchair, Jesse. The plot of this particular book has the man who ran over Jesse back in town after trying to run from manslaughter charges (Jesse's friend was killed in the crash). Confusing motives and big corporations with shady dealings soon get involved and Evan plays detective with her many skills and interests.
One thing I really appreciate is that Jesse's disability isn't there in order to raise the stakes in the plot. I've complained about that before in some horror books and movies. Here it doesn't feel as though the disability is around purely for a plot point or to make an extra challenge. It's just part of their lives, part of the lives of the characters.
The sexual side of spinal cord injury is not delved into deeply in this book, but it isn't glossed over either. It's realistic, believable, and nicely done.
Jesse is definitely a heart throb: gorgeous, young, smart, and witty. His wheelchair is given, I think, just the right amount of attention. It is not harped on, but not ignored either. He is a very strong man, definitely an alpha type, and Evan makes a point of saying that he does not allow anyone to push him. Ever. There's a moment where a bad guy grabs hold of him by the wheelchair and pulls him and it's a powerful moment because it really drives home Jesse's inherent vulnerability despite his tremendous strength.
And how sexy is this? He defends Evan against a bad guy coming into her home and threatening her by using the end of a forearm crutch.
This is a difficult one to review. On the one hand, the descriptions of quadriplegic Will are fairly detailed and realistic. He is a very charming guy, particularly once Lou and he begin to like one another. On the other hand, it is another quad-wants-to-die plot written by someone who read a news article about a man who had an assisted suicide and wanted to understand it better.
The story is that Lou, a charming young woman with a quirky sense of style, gets hired to be the carer for a quadriplegic man even though she has no experience at all. It turns out that she was hired more because of her cheery nature in the hopes that she will help bring him out of depression.
Though the subject matter is heavy, it is a chick-lit style book.
I was very surprised to see how many reviews the book has on Amazon. In the UK, where it is published and based, there are some 700 reviews. I've never seen that many! I have no idea how that happened, but there were several one star reviews from people who were not expecting a chick-lit book, so let me warn you about that ahead of time!
If you know me then you know that I find the quad-wants-to-die plot extremely tiresome. It reeks of ableism: "I, an able-bodied woman with no experience of disability shall write about a quadriplegic because I read about it in the news. What should I write? How about how miserable his life must be?"
I, also an able-bodied woman, have no authority to say that's not true. What I can say is that I've known quads, two of them being at the same injury level as Will and one higher. None of them have wanted to commit suicicde. They expressed to me how grateful they were to be alive and emphasized how they have grown from the experience. One told me that he had learned so much from it that his life was better than it had been.
If you're going to ever read any book where the plot is quad-wants-to-die, this is the one to read. It does present a fairly balanced view of the issue. I'm reluctant to recommend any book with this plot, but I did find myself moved by it. If you do read it, I urge you to remember that whatever it might seem like from an outside point of view, many people with quadriplegia are living happy and content lives.
I was reluctant to read the book knowing this was the plot, but I am actually glad that I read it.
Hot erotica about a devotee and the para she falls for. Have I mentioned this is hot? Hot Hot Hot.
Mary is a devotee, and she's also into SM in a big way. When she literally crosses paths with David, a recently injured paraplegic, she can't pass up the chance to flirt with him. Thus begins an epic journey of sexual discovery for both of them. For David, not only to learn to be confident about his sexuality despite his disability, but also accepting his masochistic tendencies. For Mary, learning to accept her deviant desires, and manage emotional as well as physical intimacy. Although the author takes some liberties with the realities of spinal cord injury and sex (ie, that David can get an erection and have an orgasm), but other than that, this is a very realistic and satisfying story. Mary and David are both original and well-drawn characters. The description of the devotee mentality is pretty accurate, and refreshingly sex-positive. The SM is also spot-on in the depiction of how and why the characters do it. The writing style is snappy and breezy, fun to read. Highly recommended!
This was a book club selection, and lots of us enjoyed it, even those who are not into SM: http://paradevo.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=devs&action=display&thread=2951
The writing itself is good and solid. I like her voice and her style. So it's too bad that her take on the long lost husband shows up and interrupts his wife's new wedding involves descriptions of wheelchair use that make me think Gregor is in some clunky old hospital chair.
"The stark contrast of the trousers that only seemed to exaggerate the extreme thinness of his thighs as he sat there passively in the chair." Passively? This is the guy who just rolled into a wedding ceremony and is about to call out that the marriage can't take place. How is that passive?
"He hadn't wanted Livvy to see him in such a pathetic state; to see him having to laboriously heave himself out of the chair when all he could rely on was his upper-body strength." If he's been in that chair longer than two months, he should not be having that much trouble transferring into a car. When I think of the complaints the Avatar movie got that Jake seemed to be struggling with transfers more than was realistic, this is just ridiculously over the top.
I couldn't keep reading. I skipped to the end to see if what I feared was true and it was. There's a surgery and cure at the end of this book. I don't hate cure endings because I'm a bad person who wants the character to be unhappy. I hate the cure ending because 1) it makes people think that SCI is fixable and those who are still paralyzed must just be lazy, 2) it supports the belief that cure is the only path to happiness.
The guys in books like this are always miserable, whiny brats who obsesses about how they are "pathetic" or "ruined" and they shouldn't ruin their woman's life by being with her. This is such crap and makes me furiously angry. Books like this support negative stereotypes about life with disability and I think that's a terrible thing.
This is a short story, which I think is quite reasonable for the price. It tries to cover an awful lot of ground for a short piece, though.
It would have been a fine, sexy fantasy sort-of story if not for a couple of things. First, the characters were very thin. We didn't get a chance to get inside their minds and understand them, which made their behavior difficult to understand.
My liking for both of them fell fast based on comments like:
Bari: "She was bothered by Cooper's confinement to a wheelchair because he was so young. If she were honest with herself, she was also disappointed. Bari had been attracted to him from the moment she met him...perhaps it was for the best that he couldn't make love." Really? Because he uses a wheelchair he is A) "confined" and B) definitely unable to make love? This sort of thinking drips with pity, and yet later they get together and she tells him that his wheelchair doesn't bother her.
Bari: "At least he'd been able to walk at one point in his life. That was something to be thankful for." What kind of terrible statement is that? A person who has never walked is a sad, pitiable person?
Cooper: "I regained my sexual function. It made me realize that I was still a person." So if you don't have sexual function, you're not a person? I am nearly speechless with offense at that comment.
Cooper: "I'm stuck in this g*dd*mn wheelchair for the rest of my life and I won't be a liability to some helpless kid." Luckily he comes to feel otherwise. For my friends who are wheelchair users and fathers...I don't even have the words.
The thing that gets to me the most is that Cooper uses a power chair, supposedly. Never mind that he transfers out of it and folds it to put it in the passenger seat of his car (I've never known of a power chair that could do that), but he is paralyzed from the thighs down (conveniently, so of course sex is no problem). I am completely unable to believe that he would use a power chair.
I wanted to like this story and I really would have, but ignorant and hurtful statements about disability ruined it for me. It's one thing to have the bad guy refer to Cooper as a "cripple half-man," but I can't get past the ways Bari and Cooper themselves think of disability.
This is the usual, expected story of the bitter man who is sure that he is completely unappealing and the woman who is constantly throwing herself at him for extremely explicit sex couldn't possibly really want him. Gag.
The hero was really irritating to me. He was so insecure and whiny that I didn't find him sexy at all. The book is pretty much sex scenes plus the hero thinking "she deserves better than me, she must not really want me" followed by the heroine telling him (and definitely showing him) that she did. This pattern repeated over and over and over and over with no sense of rising tension. His use of the phrase "helpless cripple" really grated on me. At one point Gray "wondered--not for the first time--if it was worth the torture he suffered, using braces and crutches to create an illusion of mobility." And I'm right there with him wondering the same thing. Apparently he would do everything possible to avoid using a wheelchair, a medical device that is specifically designed to help with that mobility issue and that would be a much safer and easier way for him to navigate the world.
The story is that these two had an extended one-night stand before Gray went off on a dangerous mission during which he was, supposedly, killed. He left Andi pregnant, though. Eight years later he's back in town. He had been captured and tortured, but not killed. He has some sort of spinal cyst that's inhibited his ability to use his legs and he is missing one eye.
The child serves as a catalyst to get them back together and they get married after meeting again maybe two or three times. The kid himself doesn't feel real, but just a plot device (overly cute and precious). He is easy to get rid of while they have lots and lots of sex.
There was sort-of an excuse for all the hero's whining. He likes to be dominant. I would have loved to see the heroine find creative ways to show him that he can be. But he doesn't feel better about himself until he has an operation that, while it doesn't cure him, takes away a lot of the disability. Leaving me feeling upset that he can't get a happy ending with his injuries as they are.
This book may be for you, even though I disliked it. If you like very explicit sex, this might be a book you'd enjoy. If you like a guy who spends every waking minute brooding and feeling not good enough for the heroine, you may enjoy this book. If you like a heroine who never tires of being the perfect partner, the person to constantly reassure her insecure man, you may enjoy this book.
This is, to date, the best romance genre novel that I have read.
The action was believable, but exciting. It was paced well and the entire book took place over just a few days. I loved the way the author described each moment and movement of the characters. It drew me right into the story. There was a subtle suspense plot running under the surface and it provided just enough extra tension to really enhance the love story.
It is the story of former partners and lovers who have not seen each other for five years, not since Matt was paralyzed in a freak climbing accident. Alex (the girl, most of the girls in this book have boy names) tried to stick by him at the time, but he wasn't able to deal. His brother convinces him to go back and try to make up for it, but someone else has another agenda.
Impressively, this is the most believable portrayal of paraplegia I have ever seen in a romance novel. I found Matt very real and thought the descriptions of how he moved were accurate and well written. I also completely bought it when he performed some amazing, daring rescues!
My complaints are minor. This, as seems to be a tradition with romance novels, is part of a series of related stories. It's clear there was a previous book about Matt's brother Cory and his wife. I haven't read that one and it was not necessary to enjoy this book, but there were a lot of references to things that must have happened in the other.
Two minor points about the SCI. It was strange to me that Matt was driving a van with a wheelchair lift. I've never known a t-10 para to waste time with a slow lift, not to mention the expense, all the guys I know drive a regular car. Second, there's a line: "flexed his hands in the leather gloves all people in wheelchairs wore to protect..." I don't know of a single thing that ALL people in wheelchairs do. Certainly not gloves. Some do and some don't wear them.
The devo factor was high for me. Matt's movement was described, he was an appealing man and not a jerk, and the love-making scene at the end was not glossed over with a simple "he's a low level injury, so everything is okay."
Quid Pro Quo tells the story of a paraplegic radio reporter Isaac Knot (Nick Stahl) who receives a tip about a local group of wannabes and pretenders. He discovers that the tipster is a woman named Fiona (Vera Farmiga), who, with Isaac’s accompaniment, finally realizes her dream of being a wheelchair pretender.
Isaac is a sexy wheeler and you likely won’t be disappointed by the sight of him wheeling around the city, and the character earns our sympathy when he gets stood up on a blind date by a woman who didn’t realize she was being set up with a disabled man. Unfortunately, Fiona’s portrayal of a pretender didn’t seem entirely realistic to me, but at least the movie didn’t make pretenders seem evil… just hopelessly kooky.
The movie could have been a solid dev film, but a ridiculous ending involving “magic shoes” ruined it. But it still deserves three stars for the very appealing image of Isaac in a wheelchair.
A standard romance story with a paraplegic hero and a widowed heroine. I enjoyed the writer's style. She was very descriptive, engaging all the senses. The sexual chemistry and tension between the main characters was vivid. The secondary characters were all fun and interesting.
As is typical in these sorts of books, the hero's paralysis is incomplete and does not affect sexual functioning at all. He is insecure about his disability and wanders into a bit of melodramatic ridiculousness on occasion. Mostly he's a good, solid character, though.
I found the dev moments few and far between, but they were still there. No miracle cure, so that was good. I had some difficulty losing myself in the story because of a throw away line early on. Gideon's boss suggests setting him up with a woman he knows who thinks wheelchairs are hot. Gideon dismisses the idea, saying that these kinds of women are usually "curiosity seekers." This struck me as a very strange description. As a woman who thinks wheelchairs are hot, I am not really all that curious. I've dated and known many, many men with SCI and know more about it than the average person. I was distracted by that moment and it felt like a bit of a slap in the face, as though to say "This isn't written for you."
Overall, though, a very solid offering that follows the conventions of its genre and does so well.
This book is a fun, sweet, enjoyable read. I would describe it as harmless. Not life changing. The main character is an adult woman taking a creative writing class. She's fascinated by her mysterious professor and hunts him down, discovering that he is paraplegic.
He is more enjoyable than many of the very dramatic romance novels with disabled heroes. He lives an independent life, is mostly well-adjusted, and fights the creepy bad guy.
The devo moments were fairly low for me. In a lot of ways it doesn't feel like Brant is connected. In other words, the writing lightly flies past how he moves, how he is living on a houseboat, how he deals with stairs, and the effect is like he is sort-of floating, but not grounded in the world.
I was barely able to make it through this book, not sure why I kept trying. I suppose I thought it might get better, but it didn't.
There was a lot of head-hopping, switching point-of-view frequently and without warning.
The plot was thin and any conflict that came up was resolved within a paragraph or two, there was no sense of over-arching story. The book had no structure, the story meandering all over the place without coming to a real point.
The dialogue was very stiff and not believable, a trap that historic fiction can easily fall into.
The hero was difficult to take seriously, since he peppered his speech with affectionate terms in just about every single sentence he spoke. He also was used as the vehicle to describe the heroine, which meant that he was observing how in fashion her dress was and the hem line and style of ribbons, which made him seem like he couldn't possibly be a straight male.
In devo terms, the hero is paralyzed in an accident where a horse drawing a carriage got startled by some hooligans. Leaving aside the historical unlikeliness of him surviving with such an injury, the book glosses over too much. There are too-easy solutions for any difficulty that might arise. I didn't find any dev thrill at all, but that might be because I was already too frustrated by the writing and not able to get immersed in the story.
It's about a rebellious young woman who is put against her will in an institution, and about the people with various disabilities she meets there. Her roommate, played by Marlee Matlin, is developmentally disabled. The main character falls in love with a young man who is a quadriplegic (played by Peter Sarsgaard), and while Devo Girl was not so happy with the ending, overall it's a very sensitive portrayal of disability, and even darkly funny in many places. Jonathan Silverman also plays a blind guy living in the same institution.
Sadly, this film has not yet been released on DVD, but you can buy VHS copies online.
****
