Author: Kelly Jensen
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Length: 63 Pages
Category: Contemporary
At a Glance: Another frustrating episode for Marcus and Henry that keeps them off-kilter and needing to work together as a team. I liked this continuing story; we get a clear idea of Marcus’s fantasy about what’s going to happen once he lets the cat out of the bag.
Reviewed By: Sadonna
Blurb: It’s been a week since a Christmas Eve blizzard changed the course of Marcus Winnamore’s life. Plan A is now Plan B, and the first item on his new agenda is taking Henry Auttenberg on a date. They’ve been invited to a New Year’s Eve party, and Marc is counting down the hours until midnight… until he can kiss Henry in front of his colleagues and friends.
Things don’t quite work out to plan. Finding the elevator out of service, Marc and Henry check the stairs, only to choose the wrong door and become locked in the basement. Close quarters once again make for close conversation, and as they explore every avenue of escape, they also explore the deepening attraction between them. For Marc, this isn’t an experiment. Will he still feel that way when he has to admit to someone other than Henry that he’s gay?
Review: Poor Henry and Marcus. Their time together never seems to go to plan. In this story, they are set to attend a colleague’s New Year’s Eve party. Marcus intends this to be his “coming out” moment with his coworkers, and he’s excited to take Henry as his date.
But of course, knowing Henry and Marcus, things will not go smoothly. This time they get locked in the basement of the apartment building of the colleague whose party they are to attend. There is no cell signal, they are locked behind a door that has locked from the other side, and there doesn’t appear to be another way out. There is a laundry room and some other spaces with no other egress, so they decide to wait for a while by the door, but it seems no one will be coming by.
Eventually, Marcus decides to try to climb through the vent shaft in the laundry room to see if he can find a way out, or get someone to realize they are trapped. Unfortunately, this proves to be a difficult proposition at best—dirty, hot, small—you get the picture. When that avenue seems closed, Marcus and Henry basically are left with waiting, and talking, among other things.
In the lull of the evening, Henry begins to question Marcus’s intentions with the date. Henry is still a little leery of the whole Marcus situation since he’s never been with a guy before, but seems in a big rush to make his big gay announcement. Then, when they are finally rescued, he’s even more skeptical that Marcus knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. This evening is definitely in danger of going down in flames, and Marcus and Henry might be over before they even begin.
I liked this continuing story of Marcus and Henry. In this installment, we get a clear idea of Marcus’s fantasy about what’s going to happen once he lets the cat out of the bag, so to speak. The fact that he seems so sure at the beginning in his sort of single-minded focus of coming out at this party is pretty telling. We get quite a bit of inner monologue from Marcus that gives us a clue to how he’s thinking. And then Henry kind of rains on his parade and makes him think twice—or three times—about what his real motivation is in bringing Henry to this party. I liked that even though they struggled a bit, in the end they tried to be honest about what they wanted. I am really looking forward to the final installment in this series and can’t wait to see what happens with Marcus and Henry.
You can buy Counting Down here:
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