A review by wardenred
Sunset Springs by Kacen Callender

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I'd rather be hurt because I'm being myself than hurt myself by not being me.

My feelings on this one are kind of... mixed? On one hand, the story was really immersive in many ways. I felt for Charlie, and a lot of the struggles he was facing felt viscerally relatable. His and my packages of intersecting marginalized identities don't fully intersect, but there were so many details here, like tensing up reflectively at the approach of certain people (white cis men, usually), constantly being on the defensive, expecting snide remarks and humiliation, being genuinely, warmly surprised by the barest minimum of basic respect, of getting seen as a human being and not a collection of all the ways I don't fit "the norm"—yeah. Very familiar, albeit for different reasons in different circumstances.

I normally like small town romances, when they're nice quaint small towns where people look out for each other. Sunset Springs isn't a town like that. There's a handful of decent people, but the overall vibe of ruthless bigotry and hostility to anyone who isn't like everyone else reminded me of the place where I grew up. It was honestly a very unpleasant place, and so I couldn't really understand Jack's insistence on loving it and wanting to stay there for good. Maybe it's a personal thing, a personal difference, but... what is a town if it isn't the people? He doesn't like big city life, well, surely there are in-betweens. There are perhaps friendlier, more inclusive places where one could still work with horses but be mostly surrounded by people who won't ostracize you for being queer. Yeah, you can't completely escape bigotry, but honestly, stumbling upon it on occasion and knowing you have a bunch of safe people around you to lean on is way, way better than constantly navigating a cesspool of hate with only a couple of somewhat awkward allies. The reasons Jack gives for staying—wanting to change the town by his presence, to make it better for the next generation—are noble and good, but I'm uncertain about the angle he's taken. Then again, maybe the town doesn't look that wholly terrible through his lens, since he's still a white cis man even though he's queer. But seeing it through Charlie's lens, well, for me it wasn't even a question whether Charlie should leave again given an option!

As for the romance itself, it was nice in parts—I loved the clear communication, for example. But I think the "friends with benefits to boyfriends" dynamic, the way it played out here, didn't quite work for me. I'm too ace for this shit. :D I also felt like some conversations between the leads weren't really natural. The way they were written, it was like the purpose of exploring the characters and their budding relationship was secondary to using them as mouthpieces to explain in detail how racism, homophobia, and transphobia are bad. Don't get me wrong, they are bad! They are awful! And there are moments in this very book that show that way better than these conversations about how they're bad describe it.

I actually liked the somewhat open bittersweet ending, and how it came full circle to Charlie venturing back into the world he'd left back in the first chapter, hopefully intending to do things slightly differently. But there were a couple of moments that were too much on the bitter side, and even though the leads stayed together and all, their future feels a little too nebulous to fit into the genre convention. Maybe there'll be a sequel?
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