The Fire Inside by Julia Talbot
Even if this is an adventure plot, neither Nick or Ty, the two main characters, are exactly the adventure heroes. Ty is a 23 years old man who looks and behaves more like a boy; it’s not that he is dumb or naïve, it’s simply that he is basically an innocent, like he hasn’t yet lived all the years he has. There is a void in Ty’s life, from when he left his foster home, probable at 18, to when he literally bumped into Nick, probably knowing what happened in between, it would help to understand better Ty, but all of that is lost in Ty’s memory, and Ty’s mind is not exactly an organized archive, so retrieve the information is almost impossible.
On the other side there is Nick, that should be the protector of Ty, the big and strong man… only that Nick seems more a day-after-day hero, one that resolves one problem at time, and who hasn’t a big plan in mind. Neither being Ty’s protector was his choice, Ty appears in his life and he suddenly realizes that he can’t the boy go, that they are bounded by something bigger that neither of them knows.
Yes, there is the danger outside, but the most interesting thing is to see Ty and Nick’s interaction, and how they story evolves always remaining sweet. Ty and Nick have sex, but sex is more like comfort and sharing than need and desire; sex is like a warm blanket, sex is like having something in common, sex is light and funny, nothing serious. For this reason, sex is also “innocent”, heavy petting and nothing more; at first it seems incongruous, even if Ty is more like a teenager than a grown man, he is 23 years old, so nothing prevents Nick (that is only 29, so not much older) to have sex with him, but in the end, it seems not right. Ty needs sex to survive, and so, in a way, maintaining it in a lighter level, takes off heaviness to something that heavy should be not.
Nick and Ty are really two lovely characters, pretty and cute, more like puppies in love than really grown men, but probably this is their strength. Along their story there is also that of Devon and Aidan, with Aidan that, in particular, is a really interesting possible hero. Those two men are not fully developed in this story, and maybe the author is considering to give them their own story.
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Amazon Kindle: The Fire Inside
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Cover Art by Rose Lenoir