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Missing the Boat
Morgan and Becca have been friends for years, sharing an online role-playing campaign where the players use dice and words but mostly their minds to build reality and create a story together.
When Morgan and her partner Lynn have the opportunity to attend a conference for computer professionals near Becca's home, it's the perfect excuse for the two of them to meet in realspace.
Becca's carefully-planned visit, spending the day on a scenic tourist island, goes perfectly . . . until the last ferry leaves without her and Becca is stranded on the island.
When Morgan and her partner Lynn have the opportunity to attend a conference for computer professionals near Becca's home, it's the perfect excuse for the two of them to meet in realspace.
Becca's carefully-planned visit, spending the day on a scenic tourist island, goes perfectly . . . until the last ferry leaves without her and Becca is stranded on the island.
280 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2021
2 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Heather W. Adams
1 book4 followersHeather W Adams is a Canadian author of queer, kinky, slice-of-life fiction that is compassionate and character-driven. She is fascinated by issues of consent and communication and the ways different understandings of the world challenge even people who are doing their best to be good to one another.
Heather doesn’t remember a time she wasn’t writing; encouragement on school assignments apparently did permanent damage to her self-image, fostering delusions of adequacy. She may or may not have a tendency to self-deprecation when writing author bios.
Heather doesn’t remember a time she wasn’t writing; encouragement on school assignments apparently did permanent damage to her self-image, fostering delusions of adequacy. She may or may not have a tendency to self-deprecation when writing author bios.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 10, 2021
The book is the story of Becca, a thirty-eight year old woman who has an opportunity to meet Morgan, with whom Becca has been acquainted online for some time, in person. Morgan and her partner Lynn own a nice sailboat and live very free lives in which they travel to whatever place suits them. They support their sailing hobby by doing some kind of high-level IT or programming work by wireless.
The plot is set in motion when, at the end of their day together, Becca misses her ferry, and Morgan offers to “take her home.” Now we come to the parts that are difficult, at least for Becca. There are two problems here that Becca must deal with. The first is that Becca expected that Morgan would “take her home” to the mainland, but for Morgan “home” is the sailboat, and Morgan does not explain this adequately before making the offer. The second is that Morgan’s agenda is romantic, while Becca, at thirty-eight years old, has never been involved in a romance and has not picked up the rather obvious clues that Morgan was flirting with her.
This situation is complicated by the fact that Morgan and Lynn have an open relationship, and that Morgan pursues Becca while Lynn is in the same room. For Becca this just doesn’t compute! She can’t imagine why someone would find her romantically attractive in the first place and the idea of horning in on another person’s relationship isn’t something she imagines herself doing, despite that fact that Lynn makes it clear she’s fine with Morgan having additional lovers.
So Becca, there on the boat with her would-be lover, is now feeling worried and confused, then things get even more complicated when Becca realizes that Morgan and Lynn both enjoy bondage, and maybe things which are even more perverse, and the rest of the book involves great detail about how the three characters deal with all these issues. I’m not going to give away the rest of the story, which is definitely worth reading, but I should note right here that the book does not turn into a fuck-fest.
I liked a number of things about the book. The first is that in a plot which revolves around kink, sailing, computers and Dungeons and Dragons, the author is either experienced or has done very good research, and all those scenes read very realistically and very well. The “blend” between the sailing, the poly/kink, the romance and the D&D is very well done, with the appropriate amounts of each. I should also note that Becca’s introduction to both rope and romance was handled very sensitively and intelligently by someone who understood all the possible obstacles.
Second, Morgan and Lynn are very well-drawn. On one hand they are very much free spirits – Morgan moreso than Lynn, at least within the plot of the book – and very knowledgeable and sane about sex, but also a little clueless about the way they handle themselves where sex or relationships with non-poly people are concerned, and as a result they make Becca needlessly uncomfortable, particularly during the first half of the book. Morgan and Lynn are kind, generous, and very smart, but also not people who can apply any foresight about whether the consequences of their actions in the realm of sex/romance might be counterproductive when dealing with someone who’s not part of the poly/kink community. These misunderstandings drive much of the plot, but they also don’t turn Morgan and Lynn into characters I found likeable, though that’s a very subjective interpretation and your mileage may vary.
Third, the prose is good. Not brilliant or poetic, but matter-of-fact and definitely a step or two above “serviceable.” The one time in the course of the whole book I didn’t understand something it turned out I’d misread a sentence that should have been obvious, and I was easily able to visualize whatever was going on at the moment. Given the material in the book, for the prose to be “poetic” wouldn’t have been a good idea – the book earns this good review in part by being really, really clear about what’s going on and how people (mostly Becca) feel about it.
Fourth, the story was very much driven by misunderstandings, miscommunications and character flaws, many of which grew out of Morgan and Lynn’s weaknesses, and I found this to be delightful. The stories I read and write are almost always driven by the characters applying logic to the situations they find themselves in – this is one of my weaknesses as an author – and reading a plot that revolved around carefully and gently containing mistakes and miscommunications was a lot of fun, even if some of those mistakes seemed weird or creepy from my perspective.
There were three or four big issues with/in the book, some of which evolve out of the nature of the characters, some of which are conscious or unconscious authorial choices. These issues don’t, for me, mean I dislike the book – most books aren’t perfect, and this was definitely a worthwhile read. There were also some very positive aspects to the book, which I’ll also note below.
The first issue is that Becca’s brain weasels frequently tell her that her thoughts and feelings are wrong, in some cases interpreted as meaning “I’m a bad person” and in other cases interpreted as Becca noting that her thoughts and reactions are, in some rational sense, “inaccurate” as compared with the situation she finds herself in. This in itself isn’t a flaw – the character is well-drawn – but Becca’s brain weasels are on stage even after most of the issues upon which they would be expected to comment have been resolved and the brain-weaseling goes on long-enough that it became a little tiresome, and I started to see Becca as a sort of pathetic character, (or at least as someone who was slow to adapt to their new environment.)
Second, Becca seemed to be not just romantically and sexually inexperienced, but also as unaware as anyone of thirty-eight years old could possibly be that someone might have an open relationship or engage in unusual sex practices. She plays Dungeons and Dragons online and clearly has a job which would allow her to go to movies or do what many D&D players have done and purchase fantasy books, and of course she lives much of her life online, which almost certainly means that she’s encountered porn, and her own sense of erotica or sexuality seems like an
absolutely blank page. This is the one major fault of the book.
Third the book takes place almost entirely in the present. We never learn, for example, why Becca, at thirty-eight, has never had a romance. We don’t learn much about how Morgan and Lynn got together or what the history of their relationship might be, or how/why they decided that traveling around on a sailboat was something they wanted to do. 99.9 percent of the book doesn’t go further back than the moment the book begins, and when it does it’s usually via something a character says, so we don’t see deeply into the character’s pasts or into their psychology except through their immediate thoughts, actions, or speech.
This is not necessarily a bad authorial choice – I liked the way the book stayed in the present and focused on the interactions between Morgan and Becca, and the lack of info-dumps and explanations moves the book forward quickly. Not every book needs to be a deep psychological examination of the human condition, and the author is good-enough that I never felt the lack, though I noticed it shortly after I finished the book – why didn’t we ever visit the past? Rather than discuss dimensionality what I’ll say is that the book is a “painting” rather than a “sculpture,” and has the strengths and weakness of that form.
All in all I liked the book, and found it to be a fun, insightful, though (for me at least) a somewhat uncomfortable read for the reasons I've discussed above, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a poly/LGBTQ+ romance with some nerdy elements.
The plot is set in motion when, at the end of their day together, Becca misses her ferry, and Morgan offers to “take her home.” Now we come to the parts that are difficult, at least for Becca. There are two problems here that Becca must deal with. The first is that Becca expected that Morgan would “take her home” to the mainland, but for Morgan “home” is the sailboat, and Morgan does not explain this adequately before making the offer. The second is that Morgan’s agenda is romantic, while Becca, at thirty-eight years old, has never been involved in a romance and has not picked up the rather obvious clues that Morgan was flirting with her.
This situation is complicated by the fact that Morgan and Lynn have an open relationship, and that Morgan pursues Becca while Lynn is in the same room. For Becca this just doesn’t compute! She can’t imagine why someone would find her romantically attractive in the first place and the idea of horning in on another person’s relationship isn’t something she imagines herself doing, despite that fact that Lynn makes it clear she’s fine with Morgan having additional lovers.
So Becca, there on the boat with her would-be lover, is now feeling worried and confused, then things get even more complicated when Becca realizes that Morgan and Lynn both enjoy bondage, and maybe things which are even more perverse, and the rest of the book involves great detail about how the three characters deal with all these issues. I’m not going to give away the rest of the story, which is definitely worth reading, but I should note right here that the book does not turn into a fuck-fest.
I liked a number of things about the book. The first is that in a plot which revolves around kink, sailing, computers and Dungeons and Dragons, the author is either experienced or has done very good research, and all those scenes read very realistically and very well. The “blend” between the sailing, the poly/kink, the romance and the D&D is very well done, with the appropriate amounts of each. I should also note that Becca’s introduction to both rope and romance was handled very sensitively and intelligently by someone who understood all the possible obstacles.
Second, Morgan and Lynn are very well-drawn. On one hand they are very much free spirits – Morgan moreso than Lynn, at least within the plot of the book – and very knowledgeable and sane about sex, but also a little clueless about the way they handle themselves where sex or relationships with non-poly people are concerned, and as a result they make Becca needlessly uncomfortable, particularly during the first half of the book. Morgan and Lynn are kind, generous, and very smart, but also not people who can apply any foresight about whether the consequences of their actions in the realm of sex/romance might be counterproductive when dealing with someone who’s not part of the poly/kink community. These misunderstandings drive much of the plot, but they also don’t turn Morgan and Lynn into characters I found likeable, though that’s a very subjective interpretation and your mileage may vary.
Third, the prose is good. Not brilliant or poetic, but matter-of-fact and definitely a step or two above “serviceable.” The one time in the course of the whole book I didn’t understand something it turned out I’d misread a sentence that should have been obvious, and I was easily able to visualize whatever was going on at the moment. Given the material in the book, for the prose to be “poetic” wouldn’t have been a good idea – the book earns this good review in part by being really, really clear about what’s going on and how people (mostly Becca) feel about it.
Fourth, the story was very much driven by misunderstandings, miscommunications and character flaws, many of which grew out of Morgan and Lynn’s weaknesses, and I found this to be delightful. The stories I read and write are almost always driven by the characters applying logic to the situations they find themselves in – this is one of my weaknesses as an author – and reading a plot that revolved around carefully and gently containing mistakes and miscommunications was a lot of fun, even if some of those mistakes seemed weird or creepy from my perspective.
There were three or four big issues with/in the book, some of which evolve out of the nature of the characters, some of which are conscious or unconscious authorial choices. These issues don’t, for me, mean I dislike the book – most books aren’t perfect, and this was definitely a worthwhile read. There were also some very positive aspects to the book, which I’ll also note below.
The first issue is that Becca’s brain weasels frequently tell her that her thoughts and feelings are wrong, in some cases interpreted as meaning “I’m a bad person” and in other cases interpreted as Becca noting that her thoughts and reactions are, in some rational sense, “inaccurate” as compared with the situation she finds herself in. This in itself isn’t a flaw – the character is well-drawn – but Becca’s brain weasels are on stage even after most of the issues upon which they would be expected to comment have been resolved and the brain-weaseling goes on long-enough that it became a little tiresome, and I started to see Becca as a sort of pathetic character, (or at least as someone who was slow to adapt to their new environment.)
Second, Becca seemed to be not just romantically and sexually inexperienced, but also as unaware as anyone of thirty-eight years old could possibly be that someone might have an open relationship or engage in unusual sex practices. She plays Dungeons and Dragons online and clearly has a job which would allow her to go to movies or do what many D&D players have done and purchase fantasy books, and of course she lives much of her life online, which almost certainly means that she’s encountered porn, and her own sense of erotica or sexuality seems like an
absolutely blank page. This is the one major fault of the book.
Third the book takes place almost entirely in the present. We never learn, for example, why Becca, at thirty-eight, has never had a romance. We don’t learn much about how Morgan and Lynn got together or what the history of their relationship might be, or how/why they decided that traveling around on a sailboat was something they wanted to do. 99.9 percent of the book doesn’t go further back than the moment the book begins, and when it does it’s usually via something a character says, so we don’t see deeply into the character’s pasts or into their psychology except through their immediate thoughts, actions, or speech.
This is not necessarily a bad authorial choice – I liked the way the book stayed in the present and focused on the interactions between Morgan and Becca, and the lack of info-dumps and explanations moves the book forward quickly. Not every book needs to be a deep psychological examination of the human condition, and the author is good-enough that I never felt the lack, though I noticed it shortly after I finished the book – why didn’t we ever visit the past? Rather than discuss dimensionality what I’ll say is that the book is a “painting” rather than a “sculpture,” and has the strengths and weakness of that form.
All in all I liked the book, and found it to be a fun, insightful, though (for me at least) a somewhat uncomfortable read for the reasons I've discussed above, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a poly/LGBTQ+ romance with some nerdy elements.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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May 5, 2021I wrote this book, so my opinion is probably a little biased :-)
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