Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A perfect book for the summer!, June 15, 2009
If you are looking an entertaining, light read to toss into your tote bag for a trip to the beach or weekend at a lakeside cottage, look no further. The Rest of Our Lives is the perfect summer novel. Like a bowl of lime sherbet on a hot summer day, the story is sweet, but with a bit of a tang, refreshing in your mouth and it melts on your tongue. What more could anyone ask for?
I've always loved stories where a character has magical powers and doesn't know or understand his/her capabilities, but over the course of the story comes to understand what it means. This is the case for Colm McKenna, an elemental witch who has the ability to slow things down and cool things off when the need arises. Colm has known about his abilities for quite awhile--he would, in high school, freeze the quarterback in the locker room so he could spend time studying his finer attributes--but he always thought he was the only one in the world like this: a freak.
Enter Aidan Gallagher who proceeds to open the hidden world of witches to Colm, teaching him, mentoring him, and yes, loving him, too. It would seem to be the perfect happy ever after for both of them except that Colm discovers he and Aidan have been crossing paths for millennia--and it didn't always work out so well for Colm. This gives him pause--he's had his heart broken dozens of times by Aidan in various lives--does he want to risk it again?
The writing is fresh and funny--I chuckled out loud many times while reading the book. Aidan and Colm are a beguiling couple and I was rooting for them to work it out, even in the midst of Colm's existential crisis. If there's a weakness it is that some of the supporting characters are sort of cartoonish--I didn't particularly care for Dr. Nike--but it's easy enough to breeze past them to stay with the heart of the story.
I read this on my Kindle and while individual pages were properly formatted, there were many blank pages (five or six, usually) before every chapter. Odd. There was also, unfortunately, no way to navigate easily throughout the book, ie, no clickable links to each of the chapters. While not a deal breaker, these are nice features that I hope the publisher will consider adding in a revised edition.
On the other hand, one thing the publisher did perfectly: the cover. I love it! It totally captures the essence of the story and it's pretty, too.
This is author Dan Stone's debut novel and it certainly is a magnificient start. I look forward to reading more of his writing and I sincerely hope that Aidan and Colm will magically reappear in the pages of another book, sooner, rather than later, since I don't feel like waiting for another lifetime to read more of their ethereal escapades.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bell, Book, and Fondle, August 8, 2009
When it's successful, humorous writing looks so effortless that we forget how much effort goes into it. There is a subjective element to humor that makes it very, very difficult to pull off on the page. Is the author as amusing as he thinks he is?
Happily, Dan Stone's novel The Rest of Our Lives is genuinely funny. Two male witches, the opposite of each other in many ways, meet and fall in love, only to discover that their love affair is centuries old. They met in previous lifetimes, sometimes as a mixed-sex couple; and their love didn't always--well, didn't ever work out.
This premise has a screwball edge to it--see René Clair's I Married a Witch. And as in a classic screwball comedy, there is true romance here. Maintaining an even, light touch throughout, Stone delivers scenes of steamy love and hand-wringing angst that carry the reader along like a breeze. His narrator, Colm, is especially winning; he has the native wisdom and dicey self-esteem of a protagonist from a Stephen Macaulay novel.
Stone gives no hint of a sequel, but I wouldn't mind meeting these characters again. And again. And again....
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Romance and Magic, May 26, 2009
This is a totally fun, magical, and heart warming story of two young men who find each other lifetime after lifetime. The characters are well written and the secondary characters are so enchanting that you want to know more; especially about Aidan's aunt. I dearly hope that there's a sequel because Colm and Aidan's story is so much fun. And soooo romantic. The book does have sex in it, but unlike most gay love stories I have read, here it isn't gratuitous or just to sell the book. It really does have a connection to the story. A must-have read for any gay guy who believes that there really is magic out there and that love can bring it alive.
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