Review: No River Wide Enough by Mel Bossa

Title: No River Wide Enough

Author: Mel Bossa

Length: 213 Pages

Category: Contemporary

At a Glance: I finished the book with a smile on my face—it really did leave me with a good feeling—but, it was sort of a messy journey. I liked the premise and a lot of the parts, but the execution wasn’t perfect.

Reviewed By: Jules

Blurb: Two years ago, Chris and his boyfriend escaped the turmoil of the big city to settle in a small town at the US-Canada border. Eager to settle into forever, Chris bought the Frontier Café and Bakery. A year later, his boyfriend dumps him, leaving Chris the only gay man in town and resigned to a life of romantic solitude and baked goods.

Hank is a loner who’s spent the last ten years travelling through the country for his job as a water plant engineer. Deeply closeted, he’s extremely careful about the men he meets. Like the rivers he studies during his travels, he flows fast through the land, never slowing down enough to be caught.

In town only for a few weeks on a water treatment facility project, he’s intent on getting the job done and returning home out west to take care of his father. But when he sets eyes on the local ginger baker standing behind a table full of decadent desserts, the temptation is too much to resist.

Review: Ok, guys… Seriously mixed bag review ahead. I fear this write-up will be as all over the place as this book felt at times, but I’ll try to keep it reigned in. First, let me say that I ended up liking No River Wide Enough a fair amount. The last quarter of the story was very strong, but it was a struggle at times getting there. Also, in the beginning of the story, the emotion simply wasn’t there. We were told how Chris felt about things, and about how he was learning things about Hank, but there was a lot of on-page relationship development missing. We got there in time, I was rooting super hard for the MCs by the halfway point…but, it took until almost the halfway point before I was really feeling it.

There were a couple of other minor story niggles I had, but the main issue I had with this book was the editing. Or, I should say, glaring lack of editing. Usually I’m completely forgiving of errors, especially considering we often receive ARCs or copies that specifically state they are uncorrected proofs. But, in this case, the review copies were sent two days prior to release, so it should have gone through final edits by that point. And nowhere did it state that it was an uncorrected proof, so I’m left to believe that the book was put out into the world like this. Which is so unfortunate because, along with a few MASSIVE mistakes, there were a ton of typos, wrong words, missing words, and extra words. These problems took me out of the story time and time again.

Like I said, though, mixed bag… So, along with my complaints there are also lots of nice things to be said about No River Wide Enough. I truly enjoyed the characters, the setting was lovely, and the time period was interesting and allowed the author the ability to discuss conflicts that aren’t as prevalent today as they were in 1992. Ultimately, this book was a story of hope and possibility, and left me feeling positive and uplifted.

Most of that positivity came from the characters themselves. Both Chris and Hank are so, so charming. I loved them both. Chris’s boyfriend left him a year ago, deciding small-town life wasn’t for him, but Chris stayed and built a very nice life for himself in St-Clovis. He owns and runs a local bakery and café with his partner, Drika, who he adores, and lives next door to his best friend and her young son. He has mostly given up on the idea of having someone to spend his life with again, though, until Hank Clift comes to town. Hank is intelligent, well-read, kind, and very, very lonely. Having suffered a tough, humiliating, ugly breakup a couple of years ago, he had also all but given up on finding someone, until seeing Chris. These guys were beautiful together. They had so many gorgeous, swoony moments. I loved this, for example:

“Yes…I was that river. Trickling, when I should have been gushing down mountains and pouring through valleys. They split me up. All of them. My father. The military academy. People. And I lost my strength. My dignity. But somehow, in spite of all that, I flowed down to you. And now going back home without you, feels like flowing backwards against my own stream.”

I’ll sum up by saying, I finished the book with a smile on my face—it really did leave me with a good feeling—but, it was sort of a messy journey. I liked the premise and a lot of the parts, but the execution wasn’t perfect. I kept getting glimmers of what made Craving’s Creek (the only other book I’ve read by this author) so magical—there was some stunning dialogue and beautiful imagery that went along with the water theme—but at other times I wondered if this was the same Mel Bossa. And, that editing was so hard to get past. Sorry I don’t have a more definitive yay or nay for you guys. I’m sure some people are going to love it and be more able to overlook the things I couldn’t. But, for me, it was a bumpy read.

You can buy No River Wide Enough here:
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