Bluewater Blues (Bluewater Bay #15) – G.B. Gordon

“This. You. Dinner, music, movies. I liked all of that. I want more.”

 

In a word: Read the thing. This book didn’t actually have as much to do with music as I thought it was going to, which was fine with me since I’m not really passionate about music one way or the other, especially in books. I was totally here for the budding relationship between Jack and Mark. Jack is a fairly new transplant to Bluewater Bay, and he lives in and runs a general store with his younger sister. Mark is a costume designer on Wolf’s Landing and sings in a choir in his spare time. It’s mostly by chance that they meet, but they develop something of an instant connection that eventually deepens into something more serious. Jack, who is hiding a massive secret in his past, isn’t entirely sure that he should open himself up to this man he’s just met, but it soon becomes clear that this is a risk he’s willing to take. What initially drew me to this book (aside from it being a part of Bluewater Bay) was that it has two autistic main characters: Jack’s sister Margaret, and Mark. It’s not often that you see autistic main characters, especially in lead romantic roles (I can only think of two others off the top of my head), so I was excited to read this. I was not disappointed. Mark and Margaret are on different ends of the autism spectrum, so it looks different on both of them, and they both deal with it in different ways. Jack’s understanding of autism (which stems from being so close to his sister) is probably why his relationship with Mark is less fraught than it could have been. There is a bit of a breakup involved, but it all comes about from Jack’s hang-ups about the past he’s running away from, nothing to do with Mark specifically. Speaking of Jack’s past: what I would’ve liked was more about that and maybe a more definite resolution. It’s fine as it is now, but I’m always a fan of some well-deserved vengeance. Though having said that, going any deeper into that whole mess would have made the book longer and would change the overall story into something completely different.

 

The Summary: (from Goodreads) Jack Daley left his music career behind—along with his domineering father—and is struggling to make a new life for himself and his autistic sister in Bluewater Bay. When a summer storm sweeps a handsome stranger into his general store, Jack is more than ready for a fling. No strings attached, because Jack can’t share the secrets he and his sister are hiding from. Unfortunately, his feelings refuse to stay casual.

Mark Keao is married to his job as a costume designer on Wolf’s Landing. He’s autistic, so he’s used to people not knowing how to interact with him, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be a hermit. Especially when he meets Jack Daley, who dances with brooms, shares his love of the blues, and gets him like no one else. But relationships have proven complicated in the past.

Just when Mark is ready to try anyway, Jack pulls back. But Mark isn’t giving up, and neither is Jack’s sister. And then there’s the music both men love, bringing them together time and again. It will take trust, though, to bring them together for good.

 

[this book is currently out of print]

 

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS

 

The Series: Bluewater Bay is a series of mostly standalone novels and novellas, written by various authors, that all take place in or near the formerly sleepy logging town of Bluewater Bay, Washington. Each book features a standalone romance, usually between two men, and there is usually some connection to the popular in-universe TV show that brought the town back to life, Wolf’s Landing. The stories all take place in the same universe and timeline and sometimes share characters. Bluewater Blues is the 15^th installment in the series.

 

The Trigger Warning: This book contains mentions of sexual assault, mentions of ableism, mentioned suicide, and implied spousal abuse.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

• Jack & Mark: Jack Daley is a man with a past… sort of. He’s been living in Bluewater Bay for only the past couple of years, and he’s only starting to become a fixture in town as owner of a general goods store he runs with his younger sister. Mark Keao is a costume designer for Wolf’s Landing and spends most of his time working, hitting up yard sales, and singing in a local choir. They meet totally by chance one day when Mark goes into Jack’s store to ask to hang up a poster for a choir performance. Jack, who is a jazz musician and all-around music lover, decides to bring his sister to see the choir. It’s partly to enjoy the music and partly for the chance to see Mark again. They do meet up again at the performance, Jack’s sister invites Mark over for dinner, and the rest is history. Jack and Mark are attracted to each other right from the off, but starting a relationship is a bit more complicated than it looks for them. Jack is technically on the run and has a past that he feels he can’t share with anyone. He also has his sister to look after as she is autistic and can’t live on her own and Jack is afraid of what will happen to her if he tries to get her proper support. Mark is also autistic, though a lot higher functioning than Jack’s sister, and that makes navigating relationships – especially romantic relationship – difficult for him. Luckily these two are both stubborn, so they do eventually manage to overcome any obstacles they find themselves against. Jack is a bit of a goober with a seemingly endless capacity for love and sacrifice. He’s devoted most of his life to his sister, ensuring that she’s happy and taken care of, and really lives for her. He eventually becomes a bit of the same with Mark once they get really close. Jack is someone who loves with his whole heart and really treasures the people he’s close to. Mark is a bit more reserved than Jack, but he still loves passionately. These two are a really great fit together.

 

• Margaret: Margaret Daley is Jack’s younger sister (she’s 26 and he’s six years older). She’s autistic; mostly non-verbal and unable to live on her own. Unfourtunately for her, she was born into a family that didn’t value her as a person even without considering the autism, so she went without a lot of the support some people with autism need to properly thrive. She now lives with Jack in a house attached to the general store Jack owns, where she takes care of the accounting/bookkeeping. Margaret’s role in the story is mainly as a side character, but because Jack is basically taking care of her and very involved with her wellbeing, she’s in a lot of the story and always present in the back of Jack’s mind. She’s very tied up in the reason why she and Jack left home in the first place and I think she’s more aware of that than Jack thinks. She also thinks about Jack the way he thinks about her, in that she also wants him to be happy with his life. She notices that Mark makes Jack happy, and after Jack separates from Mark because of the secret past, Margaret goes behind Jack’s back to contact Mark to try and get the two of them to see sense and get back together.

 

MORE PLEASE:

• Mawmaw & The Past: Jack and Margaret clearly come from a very dysfunctional background. Like, we never get a true sense of what their childhood was like, but what little we get makes it clear that things were pretty horrific. Their father especially seems like quite the monster, and it’s implied that he almost completely ignored his children and ended up driving his wife to suicide. It seems like the only good part of Jack and Margaret’s childhood was their grandmother Mawmaw (they’re from Georgia, it turns out), who married into the family. Mawmaw was the one who really cared for the children, and also nurtured Jack’s passion for music. Jack and Margaret were both very close to her, and being in that family was really only manageable for them because she was there to watch over them. She died when Jack was in college, I think, and then things started going downhill for the siblings – especially Margaret – from there. There’s a lot we don’t get to know about how Jack and Margaret grew up that I would’ve liked some insight on. A few flashbacks would’ve been nice too. There’s really only one proper flashback, which is what happened on the night Margaret was nearly raped and the catalyst to what drove Jack to take her and leave sooner than he really wanted to. Really I wanted more scenes with Mawmaw in them, because she seemed awesome and lovely.

 

• Deaver: For most of this book I thought that Jack and Margaret were kind of hiding out in Bluewater Bay just because they didn’t want to deal with their asshole father. The asshole father, by the way, who wants to lock Margaret up in a home somewhere to be forgotten. But then it turns out that Margaret might have accidentally killed a man, which I definitely wasn’t expecting. We never get a real sense of what type of family Jack and Margaret actually come from (there’s money somewhere, but nothing’s ever really made clear on that front), but apparently their father, Charles Lovell, is an aspiring politician. He had this buddy-type guy named Beaufort Deaver, who is also involved in politics. He’s also a rapist dickweed. He corners Margaret near the family pool one day and tries to rape her. Luckily, she gets away, but Deaver falls into the pool during the scuffle and hits his head. Jack and Margaret don’t stick around long enough to see what happens to him. Charles implies to Jack that Margaret killed Deaver and that now Charles is gonna lock her up somewhere, and then Jack leaves that night. We later find out that Deaver isn’t dead after all, but instead still alive and kicking and involved in a #metoo type scandal. This goes a long way to making Jack feel more secure in the fact that there won’t be any police knocking down his door at any point, so he’s now free to actually stop hiding so much. The only issue I have with this part of the story is that it ends with no confrontation with Deaver or Charles. Which works for the story, I guess; Jack and Margaret being able to live freely is enough of a triumph here and them going after Deaver would be way more trouble than it was worth. But I still like a good comeuppance story every now and again.

 

UGH:

• Natalya: Natalya is one of Mark’s co-workers on the set of Wolf’s Landing. She’s the stunt coordinator. She’s also one of the leads in the eleventh book in the series, Stuck Landing, which I haven’t read yet so I’m not really familiar with her as a character. I really didn’t like her here, and she barely even shows up. There’s just this one particular scene that made me really not like her. One day on set, there’s a mix-up with some of the costumes where the stunt doubles were provided with improper outfits. Natalya blamed Mark for the slipup and confronted him by yelling at him and forcefully jabbing him in the chest, and basically just attacking him. Mark’s chapters are written in first person POV (Jack’s are written in third-person), so we know exactly how painful and uncomfortable this whole thing is for him. And Natalya didn’t even give Mark a chance to explain what the issue was, nor did she explain anything to him at first. It really looks like Natalya doesn’t like Mark much for no really specific reason (or maybe she’s just generally confrontational, I don’t know) and pretty much ignores any of Mark’s requests for accommodations related to his autism (the main one being that he’d prefer to get notices and instructions through email instead of verbally so he’s better able to process it, which would have made it so that this particular situation may never have happened) and then eventually he has to disclose his autism to her in order for her to take his requests seriously. That whole aspect of the situation just rubbed me the wrong way and really made me dislike Natalya (and also her partner Anna, one of the show’s director/producers, who managed to seem like she didn’t believe that what Natalya had done was wrong).

 

[Bluewater Blues was published October 17, 2016, by Riptide Publishing; it is currently out of print]