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Cloudbusting

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"I'm a witch," she said. "I influence the weather."

College student Rusty Stewart planned to spend an idyllic summer break in 1980s Athens, GA, living with his boyfriend, Hutch. But when Hutch ditches him for another guy, Rusty must navigate a broken heart through a maelstrom of outside expectations and embarrassing social spectacles.

Enter Charlotte, an enigmatic, outcast caricature of a wealthy Southern belle who communicates with ghosts and directs the forces of nature from within a fragile psychic shell.

"Charlotte wasn't the only person I'd ever met who claimed she could control the weather, but she was the first to make it rain right in front of me while she talked me through the process."

Intrigued by her esoteric offerings and desperate for distraction, Rusty begins exploring his own latent magic. But is Charlotte merely guiding a kindred spirit, or does she intend to provoke him into joining her own simmering darkness?

As their tempestuous personalities converge like gathering weather fronts, Rusty and Charlotte will either learn to master their emotions and their powers... or rip an unsuspecting town up by its Southern Gothic roots.

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Eric Slade

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Profile Image for Joanna.
9 reviews
April 19, 2023
I’m just a bit too young to have experienced Athens during the time that this book is set, but that hardly matters. This author has a gift for drawing one into a world so completely that it can be disappointing to finish the book and have to return to your actual life. The ambiance of the setting is so encompassing that one wants to linger, even as just an observer. This book poses some intriguing questions. Are Charlotte and Mickey who they appear to be? They seem to evoke an era decades earlier. Is this a case of parallel reality? Does Charlotte’s apartment exist in a fold in time, or out of time altogether? As wispy and woo woo as this may sound, this book read very realistically to me.

I also loved putting a term to something more specific than “weather magic.”
Profile Image for Garth Mailman.
2,498 reviews8 followers
December 27, 2017
A hint of Southern Gothic with an acid trip thrown in. Charlotte is rich, spoiled, entitled, and something extra. Rusty is on the rebound from a gay relationship. The cars the boys drive, the music they enjoy, and the fact that it’s on cassettes and Rusty has a vintage vinyl collection date the setting. Not certain why the author chose this era. The circumstances of Gavin and Rusty’s first hook-up are classic slap stick. Although Rusty does drugs he doesn’t drink, but he does make the rounds of frat parties and keggers.

Well edited I’m not sure what the point of this novella is, it just seems to drag on and on.
596 reviews
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August 25, 2022
enjoyed the setting in that era, added to the slightly mystical, slightly gothic, slightly unstable where's-it-gonna-go feel. Well written. Loved it when he let loose.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

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