Snow on the Mountain by P.D. Singer
Like for the previous book in the series, Fire on the Mountain, the description of a lifestyle that is completely different from mine is so vivid that I was really into it and had almost the feeling to be an expert at the end of the novel. And it’s strange since the men are the same, the experience is completely different.
In Fire on the Mountain, Jake and Kurt are mountain fire rangers for the summer season, and their experience in that book was almost claustrophobic, two men alone in the mountain for six months with very little chance to meet somone else for the whole season. If I remember well, both Jake and Kurt were attracted to each other, but Jake was not completely out and he was not certain of Kurt’s mutual interest; on the other hand, Kurt, more experienced and less shy, was teasing Jake, inviting him to do a move, probably not understand that Jake was still a naïve in the seduction game.
Same men, completely different habitat: now Jake and Kurt are respectively ski lift operator and ski instructor in a fashionable ski resort; the place is full of people, but it’s the same claustrophobic, since everybody knows everybody, and Jake and Kurt are not yet so confident in their relationship to be out and proud, or at least Jake is not. Kurt indead surprised me, since I remember he was the one with more experience on the facts of life, and here he naively got stuck with a job that is the screen for an escort service.
Maybe for insecurity, maybe since they are still in the training period, it takes a bit to Jake and Kurt to resolve a situation that apparently was pretty simple; and what at first was almost a bad, but funny joke, will turn into a nightmare and there will be even a dead man. This was something I remember also from the previous novel, these stories start with a quiet and peaceful setting, a simple and sweet romance, to turn in a thriller, with unexpected consequences. Due to the different setting, even if the characters are the same, the feeling was not of a repetition, but more of a variation on the same theme.
The main difference is that in Snow on the Mountain, also Kurt has his own voice, something that instead in Fire on the Mountain you had to imagine. In this way the reader has a chance to better understand him, and to confirm my first impression: Jake is a bighearted and nice, but the real brain of the couple is Kurt.
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3143
Amazon: Snow on the Mountain
Amazon Kindle: Snow on the Mountain
Paperback: 210 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (August 17, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1613727097
ISBN-13: 978-1613727096
Series:
1) Fire on the Mountain: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/751165.html
2) Snow on the Mountain
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle