Jaro_423

Thanks for a really heart-warming in depth exploration of a young man coming to terms with himself. Quite an amazing story really.

I have been reading without reviewing, actually not sure that this was even my cup of tea! Excuse the very English expression! But your descriptions of this lad growing up have been so very good - so detailed, so convincing and much of it hitting home too. I was never abused but had a distant aloof father who didn't know how to love me. I never remember ever being hugged by him or even kissed - just a handshake. He once only invited me to do something with him and that has stuck in my memory to this day, though it was a simple thing where he took me to the cattle dip to watch what was going on there with the cattle being dipped and the calves being bedidzered (I think that's what it was called) and just being around dad. It was so special but it never happened again. He stuck to a policy of us having to ask him if we wanted anything and I was too darned shy or too darned stubborn - not sure which. I think it was a combination of the two. But the emotions that this lad experiences are so real and it is evoking thoughts of my own childhood and my relationship to my dad (or lack of relationship). Here Kevin seems to make connection, finally, with his dad and that is so special. The other thing is that I could never acknowledge that I was gay as I was growing up. Looking back all the signs were there, but I was in total denial. I was married with three children before I was able to finally acknowledge it and then I lived without giving way to it, except in private moments of fantasy, until last year when I finally decided it was long past time to live out my last days as I was made. It has been the roughest year of my life and is still far from being over. Who would ever choose to be gay? But loving your story as it is helping me to process some of my own desires from way back and I believe this will ultimately bring some healing and salve to my damaged psyche. Thank you!

Beautiful story with such a good feel (ha,ha) about it in every sense. Loved the teasing way you developed their relationship and the teasing between them in this paradise of a setting. Very satisfying. Thank you.

As I thought - not in the least disappointed by this. Thanks for a great read. I love the balance of emotion and humor as well as the insights into the characters and the wonderful revelations of relationships and love. Very insightful, rewarding and satisfying read.

Of course, Palouse! It took me to the beginning of this chapter to realize that I knew something about this Jake Cantwell and then suddenly the name came to life as the famous film star and then some of the details of Palouse began to filter through. I had been finding the story up to then a little bit slow moving and was on the point of giving up on it. So glad I didn't as I would have missed a treat. I had all but forgotten about Palouse as I have been reading as widely as I can on this sight and have read many excellent stories. But I am so pleased to have found an old friend I had forgotten (though not for 14 years!) I am looking forward to a really good read.

A lovely story. You do a wonderful job. Thank you for writing and entertaining so well.

Very short easy to read chapters and full of interest and intrigue and mystery.

Very extraordinary and mystifying. Here we have Mandy, but who is she to Alex. Love at first sight is one thing but this is really over the top! Ah, well, must read on to find some answers.

The intrigue continues and lures one to read on to know more about this mystery woman who has such amazing power over her gay neighbors . Well written.

Intriguing start when one is confronted with heterosexual desire on a gay authors site in the opening chapter, only to be further confused by the fact that this is from a strongly gay oriented man in a loving and hot gay relationship. What is going on?

I was enraptured by your story and couldn't stop each chapter to review. This story was beautiful and so very meaningful to me to as so much of it spoke into my own life and struggles, having myself married and had children, and only recently determined like Andy that I am finished with living the lie that has consumed most of my life. I really hope my story has as happy an ending as yours. I yearn for that, but am somewhat doubtful that I will find it at this late stage in my life (I am over 60 already and it's kind of late to start again!) But thank you for writing such a wonderfully positive, mature, sensible story.

Amazing story. It was riveting. Couldn't put it down so no time for reviews at end of each chapter. The epilogue was kind of unnecessary in my view and the ending of Ch.20 was just so perfect and so good. Great finish there! And quite a relief too as I thought with all you did here you were really going to be mean and take Nye out at the end and leave us all gasping and crying! So glad the romantic won in the end! And it was so refreshing after all the dark wickedness to be reaching for the light and the sun and love and life. Thank you again, Nephy! Definitely a great favorite writer!

Chilling and quite sick really. It's also very interesting to wonder how Adam became what he has become. Of course Nye has to be sufficiently vulnerable to that manipulation in the first place in order to succumb to it and it seems that even Adam was not entirely convinced he would succeed with Nye but has manipulated his stubbornness to work against him to the point of total submission.

Very powerful writing that has evoked great sympathy for Miriam and for Nye whose situation seems hopeless already. I sense great tragedy stalking in the wings waiting to pounce like a panther and tear and scratch and bite and maim.

And thank you for writing such a beautiful well-written story. I enjoyed it all the way and am a bit teary-eyed at the moment.

I heartily concur with all the above/below comments. I also like something a little more mature - too much teen stuff is a little syrupy sweet and like an ice-cream with syrup on it - and this was more mature. Nicely savory! In fact, sometimes the characters came over as much older than they were so I had to keep reminding myself of that. They are totally believable and the hidden gay Mick was so well done too that we were with Jake in his clarity on the issue and could also understand how blind Aaron was to that. Aaron's innocence in sexual experience was a case in point that was a bit of shocker until I realized how he was himself a little like Mick as well though not quite so closeted. Been there myself! But a great story and highly to be recommended.

Sorry that you don't respond to those that review! That is always good to set up. Great story but the ending sucks as far as us romantics are concerned - far too real! But maybe the sequel will take us to a better conclusion to all this. The way you develop the whole thing is really good and as I said before, I love Aaron, though in this final chapter he was a real drama queen - something of Ronnie rubbed off on him I think - which was unusual, though he did say that himself. Very entertaining and enjoyable. Great laughs. Really funny comments. Thanks.

Can't ignore your invitations to comment/review/give opinion any more. I am really enjoying this. I love the quirky humor but underneath it all the amazing seriousness of the whole thing and the interplay of the characters. Aaron is so likable and such a mixture, like us all. You are doing a really great job and I love it. I didn't think I would, being an old geyser and this being a little out of my league I thought I might not even get to first base you know but collapse before hitting it. Anyway, I did, and I am understanding most of it, amazingly; I keep bursting out in loud guffaws as I read that being the effect this has on me. Thanks. I needed this and love the fact its making me laugh but I am also feeling the tenderness of the romance and Aar's quirkiness. He is such a softie at heart getting caught up in the Japanese garden description in the middle of his first major romance. Wow! I shall be looking out for anything else you have written too as I am quite taken with this story and your style. Thanks.

A light read and very pleasant too. Colt was a delight and so suited his shortened name as also did Leo. You conveyed Leo so well as an older rather stuffy almost pedantic type, ideally suited to guide the young Colt. I had difficulty remembering that Leo was still in his early twenties at the beginning of the story because he often appeared so much older which was as you obviously intended. They were a good foil for each other. Probably an unlikely match but many reasons why they should have fallen in love and stayed together. Nicely romantic! Thank you. You also conveyed Leo's difficulties in guiding Colt thru this time of his growing up and the dilemmas he faced and overcame with such wisdom. I liked the fact too that you portrayed one gay man as an ideal parent whereas the conventional couples each failed in their different ways.

I have definitely stumbled on another favorite author with this story. Wow! I could not put it down at one point and everything had to go by the board until it was finished. Even the desperate call to the loo was way too distracting! Thank you! Brilliant plot, wonderful characters - I'm in love with all the goodies and hating all the baddies. You do such a good job. I will so enjoy exploring some more of your work and getting lost in it. Fantastic! I was imagining you writing this and coming up with multiple ideas for the plot development and working this and that until you got a satisfying thread that worked. Love the suspense and the intrigue as well, of course, as the tremendous romantic love story. Beautiful. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Not bad at all. Has some good elements that could really work well with more descriptive additions to build it up some more. Little details needed to add to the feelings and the atmosphere. Hope you writing some more.

Loved your story. Light romantic touch with realistic characterization. Liron and Milo (Where do you find these exotic names?) were so very likable and touchable and the story so improbably probable. Though it left me going to bed with a deep ache in my heart for the same thing which made me rather sad. Thank you for writing and posting.

Alls well that ends well so someone once said! Certainly true here. I really have to thank you for opening this horror story about the things they did to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals. I had heard about it but never really looked into it and never been myself, thank God, affected by it. Your story tells the effect on one beautiful man and his lovely partner with such devastating poignancy. It was touching that Daniel regarded Josh as being his saviour, which is the meaning of the name Joshua, though I am sure you probably chose that with some deliberation. After doing some reading into the subject of these devastating practices, I am ready to go out waving placards, burning effigies and becoming militant gay for closing down such places. When's the next march? Oh, and I must share this incredible quote “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I think that's so true of this story. Thank you!

Now I have questions that I am not sure you will answer. How much of this is based in fact and how much of it is total fiction? Is this possible? For the story sake it is wonderful and romantic and funny and cute all wrapped up in one lovely read. Please can you separate for me the fact from the fiction here. It won't disappoint me nor take away my pleasure in the read, but I must know. Please.

My connection is painfully slow today and everything is like treacle. Could not get into the Review for Ch.14 and this one has just made it, but not sure it will go thru the process fully. The print is very faint for some reason. You have put me on an adventure in the web searching and reading up on Conversion/Reparative and now Aversion Therapy. This is fascinatingly horrible. I am reading up at the moment on what they did to gays and lesbians in the SA army in the apartheid years. I was actually studying at university in SA at the time and I shudder when I think this was going on then and I was so totally innocent and ignorant about it all. Of course, at that point I was in total denial that I was gay anyway and hadn't even got to the place where I could acknowledge it to myself. So I am reading up about it and taking in Daniel's story, and of course what you write about him is now becoming so convincingly real. Thank you for writing this and making me aware of these things. I really appreciate that.