Bedswerver

by Camilla Quinn

Frost is used to doing whatever he can to survive. An ex-con turned bartender, he hops from fling to fling. It's not so easy for a guy who doesn't like sex, but it beats sleeping behind a dumpster. At least he knows he can turn up at his favorite diner for a plate of pancakes and a conversation with Max, a quirky young waiter who's managed to worm his way under Frost's skin.

Then Max shows up at Frost's bar on Christmas Eve, drunk and in desperate need of help getting home. Frost sees it as a chance to help a friend and maybe spend the night on Max's couch—but getting Max home proves to be a much greater challenge than anticipated.

70 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 13, 2019

Reviews

[Leaf of Absence · Rating 2 out of 5]

A messy review for a messy story:

Sometimes the dialogue (banter) was hard to follow. Could have been the jetlag, but nevertheless. It was all a bit pieced together from too many fragments of ideas, especially the characters and their cobbled together traits...

As always when I have these thoughts, it is possible that a bartender in a trendy, upscale bar is homeless, but it seems unlikely that this could be sustainable. Also, he'd rather be homeless and fuck people he doesn't wanna fuck than live in a shitty area? Not buying it. Also, pet peeve: if you're going to write about an ex-con who has been disowned by his family for his crime and is riddled with guilt etc, it is super lame when it turns out that his 'crime' really wasn't one, it was just good intentions and bad luck // wrong place, wrong time kind of thing. It doesn't create more pathos or sympathy - it's just... lame. It's ok for these types of characters to have a little 'bad' in them, especially if the character development has some sort of redemption arc. Blergh.

Full disclosure: I skimmed the last 20% so I might have missed something along the way...