Stevie‘s review of Torque by Charley Descoteaux
Contemporary Bisexual and Transgender Romance published by Samhain 23 Feb 16
I’ve complained a few times about the comparative rarity of romances with believable bisexual characters in them. Romances with gender-queer or trans* characters are even rarer, and romances with asexual characters are practically non-existent, even though the acer community includes a broad spectrum of individuals, not all of whom are both asexual and aromantic. So this story, given that it also included bikers, car restoration, and a cat, should have been very much my thing.
Sadly, it never completely grabbed me. Mick is on the run from a group of bikers for reasons that take a long time to become clear – if indeed they ever do, given that his fears about what his brother’s friends will do when they catch him prove largely unfounded. He’s headed for Alaska, also for reasons that are only explained later on, but his beloved VW breaks down in Portland, and he seeks refuge, as well as car parts, at a local wrecking yard, where the owner is only too glad of an extra worker.
Right from the start, Mick is attracted to the owner’s grandson, Scotty, who has a complicated on-off relationship with his best friend since school, Mercy, a transwoman. Mick tries to suppress his feelings for Scotty and to ignore Mercy’s flirtatious behaviour by seeking out encounters with women well away from the yard. We learn that the older brother he grew up with drummed into Mick the importance of hiding his attraction to men and only acting on his attraction to women – with little success, it appears, since Mick’s reason for wanting to move to Alaska is to find a place with as few people that he might be attracted to as possible.
Mick’s default reaction to just about any situation is to run away, so when one of his brother’s friends shows up, he sets off in the VW, but doesn’t get far before the car develops another fault. Frustratingly, as I hinted earlier, there was absolutely no reason for him to fear being discovered, but once that’s all resolved, Mick is finally able to come to terms with his attraction to both Scotty and Mercy, and then to help Mercy escape her abusive family once and for all.
I really wanted to love this book. Scotty is asexual, although not completely against having sex with people he loves, and the poly relationship between the three main characters felt a lot more realistic than many I’ve seen in fiction. I was also heartened to see Scotty’s grandfather finding romance, although I’d have liked to have seen more of him and his lady-love together.
Overall, I gave this book a higher grade than I might otherwise have done, because the author really tried to pull together a bunch of characters of types that we see far too rarely in fiction, never mind in romance, but the overall plot – particularly the reasons for Mick’s angst and his motivations – just didn’t work for me. I think I’ll give one of the author’s books a go at some point and see if that suits me better.
Grade: C
Summary:
Sometimes letting things get complicated is the best way to figure it all out.
Mick Randall is on the run, from the biker culture he grew up in and his impossible vision of love. Alaska should be far enough to escape his old life—until he rolls into a wrecking yard and gets lost in a pair of pale, bottle-green eyes.
Scotty Bell has spent years learning to channel his fiery temper into the heat of a welding torch. His sexual heat has always been slower to ignite, but one look at Mick rouses confusion alongside desire. In all his life, he’s only been attracted to one other person—his best friend, Mercy Taylor.
Mick lands a temporary job at the yard, and finds an uneasy crash pad at Scotty’s place…where the ragged ends of his emotions get tangled up in Scotty and Mercy’s relationship.
But when Mick hears a Harley engine from his past bearing down on him, his first instinct is to go back to the half-life he’d been living. Lest his secrets destroy the only two people who’ve ever made him feel whole.
Warning: Contains references to abuse, subversive ideas about sexual identity and gender expression, and a free-range bisexual on a mission.
Read an excerpt.
