review by A.B. Gayle
Wow! What a delightful surprise “The Worst Best Luck” is. All I knew of Brad Vance was that he’d had a book, “Luke's Brutal Abduction”, banned by Amazon. That was pure raunchy gay erotica kink, but this book is totally different.
The sex scene at the start was hot, but even better was the banter at the advertising agency where Peter worked. There were enough cracks at the fakeness of the industry and the people in it to really show the viewpoint character and the world he lived in.
Okay I thought, so far so good.
But then came a couple of fantastic flashbacks that wove beautiful pictures of children growing up in radically different circumstances.
The clichéd poor kid with the sick mother and the rich kid with helicopter parents trying to ensure he got into Harvard.
Now the author can’t have experienced both childhoods, so the fact that both these felt so real shows ME that he can do his research and does it well. We’ve all seen these clichés on shows, but what I like is that he sees these from a fresh angle. This was also demonstrated in “Luke’s Brutal Abduction”. The clichés are there but so are some wonderful different snippets that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Eg Matt’s mother giving him a hard time because he played the guitar instead of the cello and he preferred Galbraith to Segovia. (Not that she would have known who either of these people were)
I suspect from blog comments and things he said in the podcast that he either doesn’t write fiction for a living or he has had some exposure to traditional New York publishing. I don’t for a minute buy his Amazon profile: “Brad is a college student in Reno, Nevada who enjoys hiking, snowboarding, theater, and writing hot man-on-man action.” Unless he’s a mature age college student. But that doesn’t really matter.
What does matter is that this guy can write. And through writing he is able to make some pretty heavy statements on the state of the world around him.
On the surface it’s hot man on man action, but hiding beneath that hot sex is a decent story, well rounded characters, interesting secondary character, eg Lydia the Worthington Admissions Counsellor who tries to help Matt cope with his ambitious mother.
None of these things get in the way of the plot. Flashbacks can often be annoying, but in this case, the introduction of this backstory AFTER the gun has been placed on the wall, turns it from a Colt 45 into a double barrel shotgun.
I had a few little niggles, minor formatting problems. Two people called Lydia. And the author himself expressed dissatisfaction in his blog, claiming he rushed it and it could be better. Any book can. However, it still stands head and shoulders alongside a lot of mediocre efforts I'm reading these days.
Definitely worth a read, and if you enjoyed this, then check out “A Little Too Broken” which is even better!
As for the Banned Book? Luke’s Brutal Abduction was all about a porn star who had a side business kidnapping people at their own request. It is also well written, the characters are eventually likable and believable and the kink being more inventive and therefore real.
Brad self publishes and his stories cover a wide scope of the genre. I suspect he’s trying to work out what sells best. At least that’s the impression I got reading through his blog bradvanceerotica.wordpress
I found a podcast with him here: http://youtu.be/
and when he does manage to get a word in edgewise, his intelligence shines through (as it does in his books). Plus he has a real sexy voice!
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