Without a Net

When I start reading a Lyn Gala novel I don't actually know what I'm going to get. So far I read three novels by the same author and all of them were wildly different, to the point that if I would have read them without knowing the author beforehand I would have not guessed they are all written by Lyn Gala. Because of that chameleon-like writing skill, Lyn Gala is on my favourite authors list.

I instantly felt for Ollie, he was in a very unpleasant situation from the start and I was already anxious about what was coming next for him. I really, really hoped Milan wasn't the one for him. It's not that I didn't like Milan, although ‘like' is a strong word in his case, but it was obvious he didn't have any kind of romantic feelings for Ollie. I did appreciate him having Ollie's best interests in mind... Sort of. What I did like most about the whole ordeal was how in control Ollie was, how aware of his reactions and feelings he was.

At first I was equally as confused as Ollie was about what was happening, I needed to know who was to blame, and I was so happy when it all got cleared up. There was still a way to go, but, darn, that felt good. Somehow I really connected with Ollie. I wouldn't say I relate to him, but I did feel him very close to me. I have no idea how that happened, but I welcomed it.

I also liked the plot a lot. I found the shade clubs concept really interesting and I did look it up after reading the novel to find out if it's a real thing, but all I could find were sunglasses shops, and that's obviously not it. I would not be surprised if shade clubs were an actual thing and although I couldn't find anything claiming they are I'm still not convinced they are not real. I'll put that on Lyn Gala's masterful writing and the way she constructed the plot.

Another thing I really, really liked was the setting, or more precisely the way it was dealt with. At some point it becomes obvious that the plot happens sometime in the future, no clue what year, but there's more advanced technology available, as well as Mars expeditions happening. What I liked about it was how casually it was revealed. There was no list of news headlines of the last 10 major advancements or more than a couple mentions of the Mars thing. It was very natural, it was described exactly like any regular person today would think about what happens around us and if that would be a more common thing in novels I might actually get to read SciFi more often.

I really liked the women in this novel too, good and bad. It's quite rare to have a female character in an MM novel who's not there only for offering support or messing things up for the main characters so it was refreshing to have all these women around who actually did stuff. It goes without saying that Sewell was my favourite, but I liked them (almost) all.

I liked following Ollie's journey to discovering himself and him fighting for what's right. I must also mention Travis and I have to say I liked him a lot too. He was such an honest guy. A bit on the dumb side here and there, but a really good guy. Better than most good guys, actually. He hit a lot of good points.

I pretty much enjoyed everything about this novel. I was not expecting to like it this much when I started reading it, but here we are. I'm really glad about that, though. I would have loved reading more about Ollie and Travis, and for that reason I'll keep the novel somewhere close, just in case.