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Down the River: River City Book 2
IT'S NINE YEARS LATER, AND EVERYONE HAS A NEW SECRET. BUT SECRETS NEVER STAY BURIED FOR LONG
Nine years have passed since a group of strangers first met at a magical little restaurant in East Sacramento called Ragazzi. They have all been touched by its subtle magic, and have become a family.
With the tragic death of one of them, ripples spread through the entire group, exposing secrets and revealing truths that many of them would rather not face.
Dave and Marcos are each battling their own demons. Matteo is hunting an embezzler at Ragazzi, while Diego struggles to hold on to his son, Gio. Carmelina fears Daniele won’t take no for an answer. And both Ben and Sam are dealing with tragic losses that have turned their lives upside down. Into the mix come a few new characters—Ainsley, a Sac State student studying to be a doctor; a mysterious stranger who is stalking someone in the group; and a few new love interests who may have their own skeletons in the closet.
The cast of River City is back, along with some great new Italian recipes for you to try at home! What secrets will be revealed before the last page turns?
Nine years have passed since a group of strangers first met at a magical little restaurant in East Sacramento called Ragazzi. They have all been touched by its subtle magic, and have become a family.
With the tragic death of one of them, ripples spread through the entire group, exposing secrets and revealing truths that many of them would rather not face.
Dave and Marcos are each battling their own demons. Matteo is hunting an embezzler at Ragazzi, while Diego struggles to hold on to his son, Gio. Carmelina fears Daniele won’t take no for an answer. And both Ben and Sam are dealing with tragic losses that have turned their lives upside down. Into the mix come a few new characters—Ainsley, a Sac State student studying to be a doctor; a mysterious stranger who is stalking someone in the group; and a few new love interests who may have their own skeletons in the closet.
The cast of River City is back, along with some great new Italian recipes for you to try at home! What secrets will be revealed before the last page turns?
380 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 30, 2025
2 people are currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
J. Scott Coatsworth
90 books188 followersScott lives with his husband in a leafy Sacramento, California suburb, in a cute yellow house with a pair of pink flamingoes in the front yard.
He has always been in the place between the here and now and the what could be. He started reading science fiction and fantasy at the tender age of nine, encouraged by his mother. But as he read the golden age classics and more modern works too, he started to wonder where all the queer people were.
When Scott came out at 23, he decided he wanted to create the kinds of stories he couldn't find at the bookstore. If there weren't gay characters in his favorite genres, he would reimagine them, filling them with a diverse universe of characters. He'd remake them to his own ends, and if he was lucky enough, someone would even want to read them.
Scott's brain works a little differently from most folks - he sees connections where others don't. Born an introvert, he learned how to reach outside himself and connect with other queer folks.
Scott's fiction defies expectations, transforming traditional science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something fresh and surprising. He also created both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, and is an associate member of the Science Fiction Writer's Association (SFWA).
His writing, both romance and genre fiction, brings a queer energy to his work, infusing them with love, beauty and strength and making them fly. He imagines how the world could be, and maybe changes the world that is, just a little.
Scott was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and his debut novel "Skythane" received two awards and an honorable mention.
He has always been in the place between the here and now and the what could be. He started reading science fiction and fantasy at the tender age of nine, encouraged by his mother. But as he read the golden age classics and more modern works too, he started to wonder where all the queer people were.
When Scott came out at 23, he decided he wanted to create the kinds of stories he couldn't find at the bookstore. If there weren't gay characters in his favorite genres, he would reimagine them, filling them with a diverse universe of characters. He'd remake them to his own ends, and if he was lucky enough, someone would even want to read them.
Scott's brain works a little differently from most folks - he sees connections where others don't. Born an introvert, he learned how to reach outside himself and connect with other queer folks.
Scott's fiction defies expectations, transforming traditional science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something fresh and surprising. He also created both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, and is an associate member of the Science Fiction Writer's Association (SFWA).
His writing, both romance and genre fiction, brings a queer energy to his work, infusing them with love, beauty and strength and making them fly. He imagines how the world could be, and maybe changes the world that is, just a little.
Scott was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and his debut novel "Skythane" received two awards and an honorable mention.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 4, 2025
Rating: 5 stars
Review By Ulysses Dietz, Member of the Other Worlds Ink Review Team
Name of Book: Down the River
Series: River City, book 2
Author: J. Scott Coatsworth
Publisher: Other Worlds Ink
Release date: 2025
Page Count: 365
Genre: Romance and more
Anyone who ever read Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City will appreciate this book. An episodic story of a motley group of friends in Sacramento (River City—a nickname I never knew), Down the River doesn’t have a plot so much as a gentle, insightful narrative of these people’s lives, both individual and shared, over the course of a fairly short timespan.
The people are old and young, of various ethnicities, orientations and genders. They mostly know each other, and their lives intersect in all sorts of ways, big and small. There is a tragedy that comes to unify everyone, while it also sparks a little thread of magic that works its way through the entire story. If there’s a common theme that crosses the book, it’s food—the love of cooking and the power of food to comfort and bring people together. The centerpiece of the mise en scène is a popular Sacramento restaurant called Ragazzi, run by a middle-aged Italian-born gay couple.
I don’t want to name any one character, because there are a lot of them and they all matter. Scott Coatsworth has kindly placed a list of everyone at the front, and I found myself referring to it frequently until I’d gotten familiar with everyone.
There’s no big action here; it is a story of life unrolling, of community supporting its members; of love and loss and healing and the discovery of unexpected joy.
Maybe it’s my fond memories of Maupin’s series; maybe it’s just my time of life and the nostalgia that arises inevitably as I look back over my seventy years. Whatever the reason, I was moved to tears more than once by the folks in this book, because everything seemed to spark a memory, or a familiar resonance, with my own lived experience.
I don’t remember feeling that way as I read the various books in the Tales of the City series. Then again, I hadn’t lived very much of my life yet when I read those books.
November 26, 2025
A group of strangers' lives were changed forever when they met at an Italian restaurant in Sacramento nine years ago. Now, their lives entwine once more in the wake of new struggles, tragedies, loves, and secrets.
I ended up reading the first book, The River City Chronicles, in tandem with Down The River. Having River City Chronicles under my belt definitely enhanced my experience of Down The River, but the book can be read just as well without prior knowledge.
The ensemble cast was large enough to make my head swim, but fortunately there is a handy cast guide at the start of the book, which I made liberal use of until I became familiar with the cast. The characters, all bound together by circumstance and the subtle magic of the city, are written with such incredible detail to their every day lives and emotions and so much love and care that I nearly believed them to all be real people. There is one particular scene where Marcos, a web designer, grimly scrolls through the AI slop of online job postings with increasing dejection. Too real!
Down the River is a love letter from the author to the city of Sacramento, a place I have never been to but now I feel I know it intimately. It is a love letter to family, to friends, to queer joy, to the beauty of diversity, and to the connections that people make and the secrets they carry.
But the best part? (Well, all of it is the best part, but you know what I mean.) The best part had to be the descriptions of food had me salivating as I read the book on the train to and from work. I am absolutely going to try to make the Torta Tenerina.
I am truly in awe of Coatsworth's prolific writing, which never comes at the cost of quality. Down the River is a beautiful and gentle story with high emotions and lyrical prose. It is real and magical, touching and deeply personal. Perhaps we'll be treated to another River City tale in another nine years' time!
I ended up reading the first book, The River City Chronicles, in tandem with Down The River. Having River City Chronicles under my belt definitely enhanced my experience of Down The River, but the book can be read just as well without prior knowledge.
The ensemble cast was large enough to make my head swim, but fortunately there is a handy cast guide at the start of the book, which I made liberal use of until I became familiar with the cast. The characters, all bound together by circumstance and the subtle magic of the city, are written with such incredible detail to their every day lives and emotions and so much love and care that I nearly believed them to all be real people. There is one particular scene where Marcos, a web designer, grimly scrolls through the AI slop of online job postings with increasing dejection. Too real!
Down the River is a love letter from the author to the city of Sacramento, a place I have never been to but now I feel I know it intimately. It is a love letter to family, to friends, to queer joy, to the beauty of diversity, and to the connections that people make and the secrets they carry.
But the best part? (Well, all of it is the best part, but you know what I mean.) The best part had to be the descriptions of food had me salivating as I read the book on the train to and from work. I am absolutely going to try to make the Torta Tenerina.
I am truly in awe of Coatsworth's prolific writing, which never comes at the cost of quality. Down the River is a beautiful and gentle story with high emotions and lyrical prose. It is real and magical, touching and deeply personal. Perhaps we'll be treated to another River City tale in another nine years' time!
November 29, 2025
Down the River is the sequel to The River City Chronicles, which introduced many of the characters in this second book in the series. If you haven't read the first one, you can still dive in, as the author makes sure new readers are gently brought up to speed on situations and relationships they need to know about. But I'm sure you'll also enjoy the first book and I recommend you take the time to read it.
The chapters in Down the River are short; there's 63 of them plus a bonus bit that puts a pretty button on the story. It's easy to nibble a few chapters here and there throughout a day, they are like literary potato chips. I kept the book close by, and whenever I had a moment I'd scurry on back to Sac. :)
The story deals with various tragic events, but they are presented in balance with plenty of love - much of it well-aged, but there's fresh relationships too. It's all tempered with a needful laugh here and there, and many genuinely warm moments are shared within this large and diverse found family.
There's another love affair going on that's really obvious but never mentioned. Author J. Scott Coatsworth is clearly smitten with Sacramento. He's given East Sacramento (but call it "East Sac") a trendy restaurant called Ragazzi, which serves as the main stage for his characters to interact. But we also spend time at local art galleries, trendy local businesses, at the river's edge, and to my delight, we are whisked off to Italy!
It would be absurd for such a food-centric book to not include some recipes, and the author does not disappoint. A collection of Italian recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts is included at the end of the book.
The chapters in Down the River are short; there's 63 of them plus a bonus bit that puts a pretty button on the story. It's easy to nibble a few chapters here and there throughout a day, they are like literary potato chips. I kept the book close by, and whenever I had a moment I'd scurry on back to Sac. :)
The story deals with various tragic events, but they are presented in balance with plenty of love - much of it well-aged, but there's fresh relationships too. It's all tempered with a needful laugh here and there, and many genuinely warm moments are shared within this large and diverse found family.
There's another love affair going on that's really obvious but never mentioned. Author J. Scott Coatsworth is clearly smitten with Sacramento. He's given East Sacramento (but call it "East Sac") a trendy restaurant called Ragazzi, which serves as the main stage for his characters to interact. But we also spend time at local art galleries, trendy local businesses, at the river's edge, and to my delight, we are whisked off to Italy!
It would be absurd for such a food-centric book to not include some recipes, and the author does not disappoint. A collection of Italian recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts is included at the end of the book.
December 3, 2025
There's a nice gentle pace to this book that takes us through the evolving lives of a group of friends, all with drama and changes in their lives. I don't read a lot of contemporary fiction, but the writing and turns of events kept my attention. Coatsworth has a huge catalog and lots of great titles, and this is a welcome addition. Plus, there are some excellent descriptions of Italian food, and recipes at the back! I hadn't read the first book, but it's no problem to start with the second one. Many of the events in the first book are referenced, plenty to catch up to the story.
If you want a nice story of people coming together through trials and tribulations, this is a good choice.
I got this book as an ARC and am voluntarily leaving a review.
If you want a nice story of people coming together through trials and tribulations, this is a good choice.
I got this book as an ARC and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews