Title: Sky Full of Mysteries
Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Length: 220 Pages
Category: Sci-Fi
At a Glance: Sky Full of Mysteries takes us on one man’s journey as the unthinkable happens, and then a miracle occurs. Rick R. Reed set out to tell us of a love that lasts forever and how, despite turmoil and wrenching loss, in the end it is love that remains. And that should give us all hope.
Reviewed By: Sammy
Blurb: What if your first love was abducted and presumed dead—but returned twenty years later?
That’s the dilemma Cole Weston faces. Now happily married to Tommy D’Amico, he’s suddenly thrown into a surreal world when his first love, Rory Schneidmiller, unexpectedly reappears.
Where has Rory been all this time? What happened to him two decades ago, when a strange mass appeared in the night sky and lifted him into the heavens? Rory has no memory of those years. For him, it’s as though only a day or two has passed.
Rory still loves Cole with the passion unique to young first love. Cole has never forgotten Rory, yet Tommy has been his rock, by his side since Rory disappeared.
Cole is forced to choose between an idealized and passionate first love and the comfort of a long-term marriage. How can he decide? Who faces this kind of quandary, anyway? The answers might lie among the stars….
Review: I have a feeling that reviews for Sky Full of Mysteries by Rick R. Reed are going to be mixed primarily due to the ending. The blurb gives much of this story away except for Cole’s final decision, and that you will need to get by reading this novel and making up your own mind as to whether or not the author chose the right path for his desperately hurting main character. I will say that despite getting much of the core plot handed to me in the blurb, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was swept up into this novel and how it held on to my interest to the very end. Not exactly a science fiction story but most definitely a love story, Sky Full of Mysteries takes us on one man’s journey as the unthinkable happens, and then a miracle occurs, making life simultaneously happy and sad for poor Cole. I do not envy the decision he must ultimately make, but I applaud the author for having the courage in giving his MC a choice.
Cole and Rory are young and in love. Starting their life together, both find that they love the place they have chosen to live and that its proximity to the beach is wonderful. What neither man realizes is that their lives are fundamentally about to change. After hearing that Cole is going to be working overtime, Rory decides to go out for a walk and ends up at a corner café to eat dinner. After a few too many beers, Rory makes for home, only to realize that nature is calling in an insistent way, and darts into a quiet alleyway to relieve his very full bladder. After doing so, Rory sees a blinding light and then feels a strange pull and realizes he is being physically lifted into the air. It will be twenty years before Rory returns to that same alley and the life he once knew. In the meantime, he’d left Cole behind, who has picked up the pieces after the devastating loss of having the man he loves suddenly disappear and never knowing whether he was dead or not.
Cole lived a half-life for several months and then buried his love for Rory behind a wall—one that is breached every year at the site of Rory’s grave. Rory’s parents were forced to declare him legally dead after seven years, but in one small, hidden corner of Cole’s heart, that pronouncement has never taken root. But Cole hides all that from Tommy, dear, sweet Tommy, who happened to be the roommate of the person who last saw Rory in the flesh that fateful night.
I think in the end it is not only Rory who is a blameless victim of a bizarre abduction, but also Tommy. The fact that Cole has never really had closure over Rory’s loss taints the relationship he has with Tommy. Even though neither of them ever speak of the elephant in the room, both Tommy and Cole know that Rory’s ghost haunts their marriage. It’s this fact that makes me really feel more for Tommy than Cole, at times, in the latter pages of this story. Tommy loves Cole unconditionally and understands the need for Cole to keep Rory alive in some respects. It’s this selfless love Tommy has that actually keeps this novel from falling into a maudlin tome that could have rapidly devolved into a lot of Cole being desperately sad and not much more. But Tommy becomes the catalyst for Cole to somehow move forward, not on, for he never really does that, but who can blame him?
Rick R. Reed masterfully plumbs the depths of what it might be like to lose someone we love to a nameless enemy. The idea of never knowing what or who has taken the one we love has been felt by many, and this author grasps what it must be like to have to move on in life, never knowing what has become of the one we loved most fiercely. The ending of this novel is spot-on, in my opinion, but it may not be in yours. I recommend you keep an open mind when you begin this novel; it is sad in many ways, and yet hopeful and complete in others. The author sets out to tell us of a love that lasts forever and how, despite turmoil and wrenching loss, in the end it is love that remains. And that should give us all hope.
You can buy Sky Full of Mysteries here:
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