Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Alphabet Soup Challenge: AM Riley - Quod Tam Sitio

George is an Anglican priest who loves music and the church. His life is very fulfilling; now if only he could find someone to share it with. However, options are limited for a gay priest, as he can't exactly go trolling through the clubs.
Fate steps in when the lovely Dominick is drawn to the church by the lovely sounds of the gay men's choir singing. George is their director and he is delighted to find out that the beautiful Dominick has a stunning voice. George immediately falls for the young man, but Dominick has a secret that may destroy them both.
  

Comment: I picked this book from my pile of unread LGBT eBooks because it has a handy Q title and that would work well in my Alphabet Soup challenge...but...
I'm not going to use up much space to talk about this book. I really disliked it.
I'll just tell what this is about and present the reasons why I didn't like it.
 
The book is a serious miss for me. Again, I had the notion this could have been better but the execution and, to be honest, the whole idea just didn't seemed good enough for me. Of course this must have worked and will work for others.
 
This is George's story, he's an Anglican priest who is gay, has gay friends and is the priest in a church that welcomes gay people and even has a choir of gay singers.
So far, not a problem in sight.
George, however, is incredibly attracted to a stranger that sits outside every night there's choir practice. After some awkward moments in different occasions, George finally meets the guy, Dominic.
Dominic is actually a vampire. He has other vampires to take care of and answers to an older vampire who created him, his master. Dominic knows and accepts he's a monster but he still feels attracted to George, his innocence and the music played at the church.
Things get complicated when the other vampires realize Dominic has an interest in George.
 
It was really hard to appreciate this story. I didn't like it, didn't enjoy reading it and disliked immensely the characters. I kept reading in hopes something good could happen rationally and because it was short enough to not bother me for too long.
I'll put in topics the reasons why I didn't like it:
- The story never felt solid or structured enough to make me understand things even if I didn't like the characters.
- The characters were all basic and acted in a way I found stupid, cliché and without any valuable reason.
- Most information was given in a very basic and little explanatory about why things worked that way or why some characters seemed more crazy than others, there wasn't a straight line in the way things happened that could be used as reference to explain things.
- The vampires here are bad, they kill people and they don't feel remorse. I couldn't empathize with any of them, including Dominic.
- Dominic is an old vampire but the relationship Master- Made Vampire is weird, too unbalanced and shows Dominic as someone weak and dependent on a sadistic person that manipulates him. I didn't find any quality in Dominic that made me eager to see him happy.
- George is a very radical priest, he has hidden desires, sure, his thing, but his actions aren't always determined and he acts insecure a lot of time, so I never warmed up to him.
- The relationship between George and Dominic felt flat and unappealing to read about.
- The whole story was boring for me and there wasn't anything that could make me think this was positive or interesting. I can understand why some could have liked it, but for me it did not work at all.
- Any interesting points of discussion about the character's choices, thoughts, actions weren't explained well. Everything felt basic and unexplored properly.
 
All things considered, this sounded very weak to me. I applaud the author's imagination and certain effort to produce the story, but author's dedication aside, this didn't work for me and nor do I think it's that representative of her value.
Completely forgettable and easily dismissed in my opinion. Of course others might love it...
Grade: 2/10

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