A review by loishojmark
Invitation to the Blues by Roan Parrish

5.0

How? How can you love me? How can you, who are so magnificent, love me as I am?

I love the creative milieu in which this series is set. All the tattooist, painters and musicians makes an interesting  and diverse group of characters.


The series "Small Change" is set in the Middle of Somewhere universe. I absolutely loved that series and was glad that it continued in a spin off. The first book "Small Change" is MF, but I definitely recommend it to you. Roan Parrish succeeded in writing a MF book without strong gender classification and without many of the floccles that often characterize MF stories.


Since I prefer MM stories, I'm happy that I  the sequel, the focus again is on a gay couple as the romantic protagonists.


In book #2 we meet Jude. Jude has fled to his hometown Philadelphia after a failed relationship and a failed suicide attempt. He has been suffering from depressipn since his teen years, and he feels like he failed every person he has been in close contact with ever since. His low self-worth and the depression makes him believe that he is a black hole that sucks in the people who loves him, in until they are drained. Even though he, on one side feels like a failed because he let his ex boyfriend treat him like shit, he uses the same flawed relationship as one of the main "proofs" that he ruins people around him.

He feels like a burden to his family, but mostly to his brother, Christopher.


We met Christopher in  "Small Changed" wherein he fell in love with the coolest tattooist, Ginger. As the direct contradiction to Jude's depressive mind, Christopher is an optimistic, hopeful and extremely caring person.

What can ever balance the scales if you’re a black hole of misery that sucks in every scrap of light and turns it to your own material? You can’t climb out of a black hole if you are the hole.

Faron works at Gingers tattoo shop. He is beautiful and Jude is instantly attracted to him. But Jude's low self-esteem makes Faron unattainable to him. Well Jude thinks so. Fortunately Faron doesn't. Farin is very sensitive toward Jude and he gets Jude to relax. But at the same time he is good at taking Jude into account, he also treats him normally. For many years, Jude has become synonymous with depression and his close family is walking on their toes around him. Faron doesn't. He gives him room to be Just-Jude and not the Depressed-Jude.


It would have been easy to make Farin to Judge's ultimate opposition. The light against the darkness. But so I do not see Faron like that.


That would just have created a manic state that swings between two extremes. Two countersides - never on the same side. Faron is more the equalizing factor. He gives Jude peace and time to find himself. Allows him to see something good and beautiful in himself.

I’m not perfect. I don’t want you out of generosity. Or because I’m some kind of angel or savior. I want you because something inside you vibrates just so with something inside me.

.

A Lot of the MM romance books I've read in the last year centers around a character with some kind of "minor" mental disability. I don't know the real psychological terms but I'm talking about social anxiety disorders, chronich depression, sensitivity, eating disorders, PTSD or Asperger's.


I have not yet come across in a little more serious psychotic disorders, like Schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder or severe autism.


While it lends some realism to the story, it can also be too disturbing to read about or too different to connect and identify with main character with too difficult issues. And in general, it is preferable that the reader in one way or another can move beyond a mere sympathetic and empathetic approach to the protagonists of a romance novel. There must be the mitigating circumstance that allows you to imagine being in a relationship with either or both of the romantic protagonists. Not that I mean that you can NOT be in a well-functioning relationship with a mentally ill person. But I do not think there are many who really dream about and that opt ​​for mental illness. It is something to overcome and live through, not something you choose and looks for. If the story becomes too hard and the illness too severe I'll claim that the book is more fiction than romance. But that is just my personal opinion.


Being someone who has suffered from depression several times since my teenage years, I recognize a lot of Jude's sentiments. My depressions didn't follow the same pattern and I'm not highly sensitive either, but still there are similarities. Especially in the way you see yourself and the way you think other people see you. One of the most descriptive paragraph made me cry. Because there is none as selfish as a depressive person. You know it. You hate it. But you cannot change it.

I don’t mean to be selfish but I am because it takes me so much energy to deal with my own shit sometimes that I don’t have much left over to think about other people.

Invitation to the Blues is a wonderful book. It's a slow burning romance that deals with some heavy shit. And I'm beginning to believe that Parrish is one of the best to do that.