Chocolate, Cheese and Choices by Juli Monroe

This is the story about several "first times." 

Richard is experiencing his first sexual experience and never thought of himself as a sexual being. 

One day he finds himself attracted to John, a young man he works with. 

Richard discovers desire, attraction and possibly the beginnings of love in one magical night.

 

While I do go into short stories with an open mind, because I do realize that the stories are short and there isn’t enough time to get too detailed about everything, I was extremely disappointed with this book.

When I read the blurb, I had a feeling that the story was going to be about Richard, while it was but it was told by John’s character. So to me, the blurb was really misleading.

Then as we get into the story, Richard’s character is described down to the T. We know what he wears to work, depending on the seasons, and how attractive he is. But with John’s character the only physical description told of him is “he gained a few pounds over the holidays.” So I’m left with no image of him whatsoever during the story.

The storyline itself is something that seemed really interesting to me and I really do think that the author could have made this into a full length novel. But as a short story, it fell extremely short.

 

So, this will be a short review for a short story.

This was kind of a strange book.  It’s short, about 20 pages, but it really lacks a lot of details about basically anything but Richard.  He’s hot and apparently asexual.  I thought that was kind of strange.  I mean, how can a person go through life without sexual urges?  Then one day suddenly awaken?  It’s an interesting concept, but I found it to be far-fetched.  Plus, I have no clue how old these characters are (see lack of detail), so how long has he been denying all of this?  I really expected Richard to reveal in the twist at the end that he’s some kind of extra-terrestrail cyborg.  I’m serious.  Alas, that is not the case.

Overall, this seems like a really great start to a full book.  But, to be good, there just needs to be more of it.  The writing isn’t bad, really.  I followed the story and the scenes between the characters just fine.  It was just hard for me to get into because I couldn’t picture anything about this story (again, see lack of detail).  I think no matter how short the story, it’s the author’s job to paint a picture for the reader.  This was more like a rough outline.  2 stars.

This is a very quick read, under 30 pages and read more like a chapter than a complete story.  While the two characters were semi interesting, there wasn’t enough time to develop their personalities into something a reader could connect to. 

Richard Daniels is the most handsome man on Earth, everyone notices him but he has no clue of his beauty.  He comes across as almost robotic.  John is very interested in Richard but always assumed he would never make it on the handsome man’s radar till one day Richard asked John out for dinner.

From there John ask a few questions and realizes Richard had never done this before and wasn’t even sure if he was gay.  The rest of this story takes you on their date and what happen next and then it is over.  I think with more pages, story line and character development I could have enjoyed the characters more.  As it is written now, I felt more like I was given a chapter to a mystery book and I am not sure I would seek out the book.