Guest Review: Shades of Dreams by T.A. Chase

T.A. Chase
Shades of Dreams
Amber Allure, 2010

Backblurb:
Stephan Colby is on top of the world. He’s the lead singer of one of the hottest new rock bands, and his best friend is in the band to share the success as well. In addition, Stephan’s madly in love. Yet Fate has a cruel way of kicking a man in the teeth, and when Stephan’s world crashes down around him, he turns to his Rock, his bandmate, the one man who has always been there for him.

Rocky Sanicily has always had Stephan’s back, and they’ve been through a lot together. Rocky has also been in love with Stephan for many years, but has never found the courage to admit it. When Stephan suddenly loses the most important thing in his life, however, Rocky must do everything in his power to keep Stephan from giving up. If he succeeds, will he be able to finally tell Stephan how he feels? And if so, will it bring the friends closer together, or tear apart their relationship forever?

Genre & Keywords:
M/M, Paranormal, Unrequited love, Friends to Lovers, Grief

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Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Heat level: 2 out of 3 flames
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*THIS REVIEW MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS*

Guest review by Lis:

Sex, drugs and rock 'n roll and some cuties who charm the pants right of you. The ingredients for a good book. Well except maybe for the drugs *wink*. Shades of Dreams is among the latest of releases by celebrated author T.A. Chase. It started life as a blog story, but after a couple of weeks the story was pulled in favor of a complete story. I for one, was very glad with this!

However, the story did not quite turn out the way I thought it would or expected from this author. The story starts with a bang, right in the thick of things when Stephan hears his lover died in a car crash. Rocky is almost literally his rock in this hard time. At this point I really felt for Stephan. To lose someone you love so dearly and so unexpectedly? But Stephan's grief is not the main focus in this story. It is ever present for a long while in the story, but the focus is more on Rocky and his hidden love for Stephan. Still rivers run deep after all. Stephan is very oblivious to this... though he is the only one.

While I like stories with a little drama and unrequited love, there were several things that did not quite work for me. The switch between Stephan and Rocky from friends to lovers is rather sudden. While they were childhood friends and Rocky's been in love with Stephan for some time, they became lovers while Stephan was still in his grieving process.
Of course the transformation was nudged by a helpful ghost and that made the process easier to accept, but from Stephan's perspective it was rather sudden.

My other problem with Shades of Dreams has much more to do with the development in the oeuvre of this author. T.A. Chase is fast becoming a one-woman-book-factory. Her stories now lack the quality of her earlier books. She seems to be caught up in circular narrative: the way she writes her stories and her characters are fast becoming almost similar to her other stories. Her characters are quite often not unique, like they used to be and the sex is almost always the same as in previous books. An erotic scene from Shades of Dreams is very similar to say Bastet. While her writing is not bad, in fact it is better than some other authors, it lacks appeal.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading Shades of Dreams, but it lacked the usual Chase-oomph! It is a story about how love finds a way and does not always have to be hopeless.

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Linking:
T.A. Chase’s website | weblog | on Goodreads
Buy Shades of Dreams here

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