Hourglass by Jane Davitt

Hourglass by Jane Davitt
review by A.B. Gayle

Have you ever picked up a book, started reading it and gone WTF? Hourglass did that for me.

I bought it purely because I love Jane Davitt's writing. I didn't read the blurb first and found Ben - the guy whose POV the first chapter is written in - frankly obnoxious. Then Samantha his daughter arrived on the scene....

Now, I'm not one to stop reading because of unlikeable characters and have even rated books higher if the author can sell me a story where the main protagonists are less than perfect (Bad Company), but when I first picked up "Hourglass", it didn't grab me.

Once I got the hang of what was going on though, I enjoyed the structure. The characters and their romance is one level, but the underlying circumstances with the real life parallels to shows like Torchwood and the little digs at the movie industry and the workers in it are worth reading for their own sake.

Ben grew on me as an interrupting narrator and even the presence of the daughter became more than an eye-rolling diversion. In fact, seeing the couple from Ben's POV adds another dimension to the story. The cynical onlooker. Part of the "problem" people have with the book is the amount of "telling" versus "showing" there is, particularly bits from Ben's POV where we gets lines like this:
"The read-through a week earlier had been a disaster. Morden and Simons had sat as far apart as was humanly possible at a round table and said their lines to each other with an icy politeness that robbed them of meaning, or a bored mumble. Sure, no one expected a cold reading to be Oscar-material, but the tension had been palpable. The only time they'd behaved like professionals was when the script called for them to talk to someone else. For those scenes, they'd taken their heads out of their asses and actually given him something resembling a glimmer of hope that this movie would be halfway watchable."

Now, in most m/m romances you would get this scene "shown", but then it would have to be in one of the character's heads, so it would have been uneven as neither would ever admit to themselves they were being pig-headed. So, by telling it from Ben's perspective, we are able to picture the scene ourselves simply because we already know the characters so well. Sure, we're not spoon-fed with it by seeing it in detail, but I could still picture everything that happened.

Perhaps that's why I enjoyed the book so much. There was freedom for me to fill in the gaps.

(There is a longer version of this review on Goodreads)

But to sum up. If you’re reading m/m romances to get a quick sexual titillation, then maybe this isn’t for you. (The sex/romance is there. I can point out the page numbers if you like!) If you’re looking for your standard boy meets boy, they have a bit of conflict but get together in the end, well that’s also there but that’s not all that’s there. If you’re looking for a story about two men in love presented in a way that suits that love, then that’s there in spades.

If you’re sick of the same old, same old and despair of the standard of m/m romances, then give “Hourglass” a burl, but first lose the expectations, lose the preconceptions about how m/m romances should be written. Love the characters for who they are, enjoy watching them connect and discover that there is a relationship beyond the sex. Savor the carefully crafted touches that make this book stand out far above the crowd.

It could have been written as a straight gay romance, but by “wrapping” up a simple love story and presenting it in a box, interleaved with sheets of “tissue paper” Jane has given me, at least, an unforgettable ride of a read.

Or, in this case, in the words of Samantha who by now I liked nearly as much as her Dad: "That was just perfect," she declared.

5.5 stars rounding down to 5.