Reviewed:
All good things come to an end. Living Two Lives - Book 25 is the final book in the series. It finishes at the point of Andrew starting work. But what job did he decide on? Where does he live and who has he become? What other characters are in his life? These questions and more are answered.
Gruinard has written an epic tale and it does seem that Andrew has managed to live two lives. The characters around him are interesting and his interactions with them range from fascinating to ordinary.
Please do yourself a favour and start at book one and read all 25 books. It was an enjoyable life journey.
Hopefully, Gruinard will continue to write. He is an amazing storyteller and I look forward to reading his future efforts.
Reviewed:
Book 25 of the story - "Living Two Lives" - by Gruinard is the last installment of a very long, but very interesting and satisfying story.
Andrew McLeod barely survived cancer when he was young. In the hospital, he meets two sisters, one of whom also has cancer, and that experience shapes him for the rest of his life.
When the sister (obligingly named Faith) who is sick does not recover, she gets Andrew to commit to "living two lives", one for her, since she will not survive.
This emotional undercurrent runs through all 25 very long "books", each of which has multiple chapters, so if you decide to read this engaging story, plan to set aside a pretty fair amount of time to get through it.
I could summarize the plot, but I won't. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed reading it during the many hours I spent with it, and it was very worth my time.
There is a lot of sexual content, much of it explicit and some of it BDSM, but the real story is the relationship between the various characters. One could say that the life situations the main character encounters are unbelievable, but that did not lessen the enjoyment of the story, at least for me.
There are some grammar and punctuation problems, but I didn't find them to be a barrier to reading and enjoying the story. But plan to devote a large amount of undisturbed time to the adventure - in effect, it's 25 books with anywhere from 18-20+ chapters in each.
Reviewed:
I do like me a good, long coming-of-age story, about a young person coming into their own as a mature grownup. And this is indeed long, is definitely good, and very much about coming of age. And now that I’ve finished it, I can look back on the novel as a whole—and that’s what this review covers, not just this installment.
For this is, yes, a single novel, rather than a series. I really wish the author had continued to sequentially number chapters past the first few installments. (I cannot in good conscience recommend editing your downloaded books to renumber chapters, as it was the author’s choice to begin restarting installments with chapter 1, but my reading experience was noticeably improved by renumbering them.) (Speaking of story presentation, I also wish there wasn’t a spoiler in the description of book 25, but yanno, wishes, horses, and all that.) The story seems to sprawl and meander, but underneath details of a young man growing up over a decade, the plot is really well-constructed—not just that early details come back in relevant ways, but the resolution builds organically out of said relevant episodes.
And more importantly, that resolution is tasty and satisfying. Well done, author—well done.
Circling back to a concern from my review of the start: we never do get details that make what we see of Andrew’s mother match what we’re told about her. His father, evidence and description agree, which is good as he matters more, but not her. Ah well. Very minor issue.
One content warning: I don’t mind mild D/s and can make myself tolerate the occasional light bondage, but BDSM content beyond that, including anything remotely S or M, is very squick and usually an immediate nope-out. There are scenes later in the novel, especially this last installment, that push my boundaries hard. I stuck with it for the story because I was engaged with the characters, but if you’re like me, be prepared to skim a fair amount as you approach the end. I’ve deducted 1 from the Author Appeal score for this. (That said, that content fuels a hilarious scene involving furniture shopping.)
Two technical/style warnings:
1) If British style run-on sentences, especially those without even a comma to splice things, annoy you, this novel is not for you. It’s very much in voice, what with Andrew being a Scot, but some Americans in particular are allergic to this.
2) If omniscient narrators who give a peek ahead, or even summarize future developments of an otherwise unimportant side-plot, annoy you, this novel is not for you. Frankly, I love the narrator—great voice with a dry British wit, and except for two or three instances of laying down some foreshadowing a touch too thickly, excellently handled. The author knows when to pull back, when to peek ahead, and when to stick tight to Andrew. But again, some readers are allergic to this. (Even taking that aside, though, my writing concerns from the first installment remain: repetitions, typos, and inconsistent names/pronouns happen. Not overwhelming, but jarring enough to lower the Technical score.)
So with all those caveats, highly recommended.