Customer Reviews

Whistling in the Dark

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Every once in a while I'll read a book that will literally sweep me off into another world and hold me there, in a magical trance. WHISTLING IN THE DARK is one of those novels, and while reading it, I began to feel that I had no business being a writer as nothing I write will ever compare.

Tamara Allen uses a very light touch to show the New York City of 1919 as she recreates a post-war Mecca vividly describing the birth of prohibition, jazz, and radio stations; underground homosexual parties; automats; shady loan sharks; and two psychologically-damaged soldiers, Jack and Sutton, who find salvation in one another. The very long novel has a feel of Americana, but without the overly cheery optimism. What is so fascinating to observe, is how these two characters warm up to each other. The pace is deliciously slow and as they get to know each other, it never once feels staged, nor does the reader feel telegraphed ahead where there relationship is headed. It took great restraint to allow these characters to develop separately before they finally came together romantically. I shan't spoil you by telling you how it happens, but the circumstances that lead up to their first kiss, is one of the most unique and imaginative plot twists I've ever encountered.

Though the novel certainly deals with some dark and serious issues, the overall tone is buoyant and charming and I had a silly grin on my face though most of it. The myriad of supporting characters are well-drawn and there was the full range of good to bad. The only thing I will say that is even remotely negative is that I counted five straight characters that knew about the love affair between Jack and Sutton and were completely supportive of it. It's possible. Not likely, but possible. Also, this book has got to hold the record for the number of times the word "sandwich" is used. That's not a complaint, just a playful observation. There were so many sandwiches consumed in this book, I felt positively stuffed.

WHISTLING IN THE DARK is a truly remarkable first novel and a beautiful and poignant romance that deserves to be read and savored by anyone who appreciates good gay fiction. So please read it, then tell all of your friends to read it too.

Mark R. Probst

Whistling in the Dark is one hell of a lovely book. Possibly one of the best m/m books I've ever read. Definitely the sweetest, most engaging romance I've ever read.

I don't even like historical m/m novels, because they're usually set when homosexuality was a crime punishable with severe penalties. Since the story opens with Sutton being picked up (wrongly) for public indecency and forced to spend the night in a police cell, it's clear the author doesn't intend to gloss over real world consequences. But even so, I loved this story and am torn between shouting about it from the virtual rooftops and getting you all to buy it, and sitting down and reading it all over again, even though I really don't have time for that right now.

Let me tell you about the bad points of this novel.

...

Right, now let me tell you about the good points. In short, everything.

The writing is engaging, well-edited and literate. The author gives us a lovely feel for New York a few months before the start of Prohibition, with so many young men back from the War to End all Wars, and a society still terrified by the ongoing flu pandemic which took millions of lives. Yet she does so lightly and deftly, so we never feel we're being subjected to a history lesson, but rather a peek into the real lives of real people. She skilfully gives us a wealth of period detail, along with dialogue that is both natural and authentic. Even without the characters and the plot, this novel would stand out for the handling of its setting.

But the characters and the plot are also masterly. We are introduced to Sutton and Jack, so very different in background and approach, but both broken and grieving after their war experiences (and for Jack, losing his parents in the flu epidemic as he was on his way home from France.) Both are delightful. Jack is cocky and brash, broke, charming, queer - and suffering shell-shock, with crippling insomnia and nightmares. Sutton, one of nature's true gentlemen, his dreams of a musical career dashed by injury and shame, emerges from his privileged cocoon and the rejection he faced when his sexual proclivities were discovered, and finds his true place in the precarious yet engaging world of Jack's emporium and his fledgling radio shows. He too has scars from the war, more than he even realises. It's a reminder of what terrible things we do to young men when we send them abroad to kill and see others killed.

The story's a bit country mouse and city mouse, for sure, but it's not belaboured, and the growth happens for both of them, as does the healing. This is a story about friendship, and love between friends, as much as that between lovers. The other characters shine with goodness and their own quirky natures - Harry, the emporium's manager, acting in loco parentis to the unstable and perpetually indebted Jack; Ox, their faithful and sweet-natured man of all work; Esther, the waitress who gives Sutton his first break, and comes to play an important role in their lives; Theo, the doyen of the gay scene, falling in and out of love with ease, but with always with a good heart; Gert, the gangster's sister with more than enough charm to make her way without him; and even Woodrow, the five-foot long crocodile who lives in the yard and makes importunate and ill-timed appearances in the store, but whom no one can bear to get rid of. They're all part of a vividly drawn, tightly woven web of relationships which sustain and enrich those within them. The employees and friends of the emporium intersect with the criminal underclass, and the secret but vibrant world of gay New Yorkers, skating under the law's attention and looking for love wherever they can and with whoever will have them. An unfamiliar world comes alive, where the characters aren't actors in a movie set, but living, breathing humans we come to care about, and remember.

The plot is on one hand a straightforward tale of a young man finding fame and love, and on the other, a story about loss, sorrow and dealing with the horrors of war. True love doesn't fix everything, and Jack and Sutton have to deal with the horrors in their past before they can hope to build a life for themselves and with each other. It sounds trite, writing it out like that, but I swear, this is not a trite book, or a simple romance. There's so many layers here, so many subtle themes and resonances. I need to read it a few more times to extract them fully.

The pace is sprightly, and the twisting and turning plot kept my interest all the way through. The dialogue is realistic, often funny, and never sappy. No mushy declarations here, or weeping lovers. Just manly men with fragile souls and brave hearts, women who are friends and sisters and as sympathetically drawn as our heroes, and villains who are all too believable in their petty greed and jealousy.

This is the kind of novel I keep looking for, and so rarely find. It's a love story without sap or even overt sexual content, while still keeping the sexual tension high. It expects the reader to be intelligent and never talks down to them, has a tight plot and characters that you could imagine sitting down and sharing a Manhattan with. There's redemption and tension and plenty of humour to leaven it with.

Whistling in the Dark is a real, honest to goodness keeper. Highly and unreservedly recommended.

Absolutely delightful! WHISTLING IN THE DARK is romantic, exciting and funny with just a soupçon of sexiness (but LOTS of love and friendship).

Somehow the author perfectly captured the mood of the roaring twenties and what I imagine it might have been like to be gay men in the big city during those post-WW1 days. Yes, that life (even for heroic returned veterans who happened to be gay) could be harrowing but there had to have been joys and validations as well - validations that we've built upon as the decades have gone by.

The excitement of the early, amateur-driven days of radio only adds to the fun herein and makes for a perfect framework for the love story that unfolds so naturally in these pages.

With so much of what passes on Amazon for gay male romance being - in actuality - cliché-ridden Craigslistian porn, it was truly a pleasant and welcome surprise to come across this novel. I treasure it.

This is one of the best gay romance novels I've read yet. It is very intelligent, well written, and has engaging characters. Most of the time in gay novels, bad things happen, and I think big deal. But when bad things happened to our heroes in this book, I found I was so involved that I couldn't wait to read further to make sure everything turned out ok. Such lovely characters! I really cared about them.
On another note, I've noticed that most of the gay novels (not this one, thankfully)I've read lately have mismatched lovers. It seems that almost every author unites the big strapping macho guy with the small, petite, pale, and hairless partner. One masculine, and one feminine. And every author doing this it seems is a woman. I know lots of gay couples, and rarely have I seen couples that are like the ones in the books. I feel like I'm reading a thinly veiled heterosexual love story, and that's not what I'm reading these books for.

I had a very good history teacher in high school; he didn't teach us history through date but through the words of people who lived in the period we needed to study. I still remember the word, but not the name, of a writer who told his World War I: it was the war that changed the way of make war; before the WWI there were knights and the war was made by men; after the WWI there were machine and the men were only numbers, bodies to slaughter. Young men went to war with dreams of justice and came back, if they came back, forever changed.

It's not said why Sutton and Jack went to war, probably for the same reason of most of them, since it was the right thing to do, but now they are back home and home seems different, a place where they don't know how to live. Sutton is from a wealthy family, and he has still chances in his life to be someone, his family sends him to college but he is kicked off after a liaison between him and a teacher is discovered. Sutton has no face to be back home, probably since he still doesn't know what to do in his life... probably Sutton is wondering why a man like him, with forbidden desires in his mind, was allowed to come back alive when so many others lost their life; Sutton doesn't think he deserves that.

In New York instead Jack knows what he wants from his life, he wants to ail on radio, but he has also to pay off a lot of money he borrowed and his stores is not doing well. Plus he is still recovering from the nightmares he brought back from Europe. He has no problem with the fact that he prefers men, since he has none intention to make a family and he is more than satisfy to spend his free time, and his few money, with his friends at night... anything to delay the time in which he will be alone in bed. Wasting all he has and behaving like a idleness is only a way to prove to himself that he is not worthy of something better.

But when Jack meets Sutton in the worst moment of the man's life, he has to help him... save one now since he couldn't save more then. Truth be told, Sutton and Jack help each other, Jack giving Sutton a shelter, and Sutton playing the piano for Jack's radio tune. And at night they again help each other, Sutton finally finding a man who doesn't fear to love him, and Jack having someone beside him to hunt down his nightmare. It's an easy and tender love story, not passionate declaration of undying love, but more the meeting of two lost souls. All right, maybe there is not graphic sex, but only since all happen behind closed door, and even if we don't see anything, the sensuality is all over the book, in the way Sutton looks at Jack when he wanders for the apartment, in the way they awake in the same bed still embracing each other and searching comfort, in the sweet smile of Sutton who thinks that Jack is the best man in the world, and in the good heart of Jack who knows that he has found a treasure and cherishes him.

You can say from the first pages that this novel will not deceive you and so you will happily loose yourself in the more than 300 pages, knowing that, at the end, the romantic in you will be happy.

Sometimes a novel and its characters grab you so much that you can't put it down. 'Whistling in The Dark' is exactly that sort of book.

Well written, amusing, moving, it gives an atmospheric picture of post WWI New York. Best of all is the portrayal of the two leading men, both struggling in different ways to come to terms with their time serving in Europe and the very different world they returned to. Their blossoming romance is a constant delight, the humour and affection they have for each other a real pleasure to read.

This isn't a story which is just rose-tinted, though. The hardships and difficulties facing veterans, returning home to a time of great uncertainty, aren't skipped over. Jack Bailey and Sutton Albright have a lot to overcome but they grow together while overcoming it. These two are now a permanent fixture in my mind, very believable characters in a a hopeful, heart warming story.

Wierd, I thought I left the review for this book long time ago. I guess not, oh well, am going to do it now.

It is very hard to leave a review for the book which one loves so much and really does not have any constructive criticism to offer.

So what did I love in this book? The setting - absolutely. I became a New Yorker twelve years ago and fell in love with this city ever since. Any chance I have I am trying to learn about is history and it was very interesting and entertaining to read about post world war one New York. It definitely felt very real to me, in fact not once did I feel that something pulled me out of the story.

The characters - oh my goodness, yes and yes and yes. They are so likeable, so sympathetic and I was rooting for them all the way. I loved their chemistry, I loved that it was written in a very restrained way, I guess and they still shined.

I adore this book and would have given it ten stars if I could.

Attraction is one of those things which is just hard to explain. "Whistling in the Dark" is a gay historical romance following Sutton Albright and Jack Bailey as their very different walks of life cross and they find love in the early twentieth century. Exploring the historical gay community of New York during this era, author Tamara Allen does well in crafting a novel that will intrigue many a curious reader.

Sutton Albright's life is in shambles. He returned from the war injured, his career as a concert pianist destroyed. Then he is expelled from college for having an affair with a professor. Now Sutton is jobless and nearly broke in New York, with no idea how to remedy his situation and no desire to go home.

Jack Bailey came home from the war to find his parents dead from influenza. Determined to preserve their memory, he struggles to keep their novelty shop open. His latest plan, to advertise on the radio, isn't working out as well as he'd hoped. When Sutton loses his job, Jack gives him a place to stay, and they soon discover that Sutton is able to play the piano again. Men who love men aren't accepted in 1919, however, and they both have a lot of problems to deal with. Can they save Jack's business and find a way to be together?

Whistling in the Dark is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I adored both lost, honorable Sutton and rakish, trouble-making Jack. They made a wonderful pair, in spite of (or perhaps because of) their differences. The conflicts they had to work through in order to be together, including war trauma and the illegality of homosexuality, were believable and difficult. Throughout the story, I rooted for Sutton and Jack. There is a large cast of interesting secondary characters--friends, enemies, and lots of others. Tamara Allen did a wonderful job of portraying New York just before Prohibition. The setting was vivid and richly detailed. With a compelling story, great characters, and an unusual and well-drawn setting, you can't go wrong with this one! I am pleased to Joyfully Recommend Whistling in the Dark, and I can't wait to see what Ms. Allen comes out with next.


Cassie
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

This is one beautiful novel. My only regret is not reading it earlier. With a lot of M/M romance drowned in sex and erotism, Whistling in the Dark is a lovely breath of fresh air. The setting of the era after WW1 in NY city is unique and richly depicted. Being gay in this era is taboo but the writer manages to inject a bright optimism in the atmosphere. As for Sutton and Jack, these 2 young men scarred badly by the war really shine and grow in the story. It is so easy to fall in love with the naive, romantic yet courageous Sutton and the flamboyant and effervescent yet tormented Jack. You just wish the 2 boys to overcome their struggles and be happy together. Their developing romance is pure charm, delightful and most heartwarming.
As for the cast of supporting characters they are all well developed, each one a distinct personality. The plot itself is most unique and refreshing and keeps me paging down till the very end. Kudos to the writer for her first effort and I hope she does not keep us waiting long for her next gay romance. No qualm about getting this one in print too.