Something Comes in Threes

Over the past several months, I wrote about the book Something Like Summer and its companion book, Something Like Winter. Each book tells the tale of one part of a gay love triangle, and I found both enjoyable. But of course, as a triangle has three sides, so this story has a third book: Something Like Autumn.

This story revolves around Jace Holden. It opens on him as a teenager in 1990s Missouri... and, more specifically, on his suicide attempt when he decides he can't face coming out of the closet. When he survives, things take a turn for the better, though still with bittersweet moments along the way. The book follows Jace through his first real romance, then continues over a nearly 15-year period to connect with Jace's true love, Ben, from the first book of the series.

This series continued to deliver for me. I found this an interesting installment, despite the fact that the character of Jace came off as the least interesting in the other two books. He was a bit of a cipher with an unrevealed past, and almost too understanding and good to be true. Finding out about that past felt inherently compelling to me after two other books, and learning why he is the way he is -- how he got that way -- proved more engaging than I might have expected.

"Winter" was really woven in and out of the moments set up in the first book, "Summer." This book, "Autumn," more successfully stands alone. The book is almost two-thirds finished before any overlap with either of the previous books occurs, and is stronger for it. This is a new tale, separate and accessible whether you'd read the other books or not. And it's also quite different from those earlier books in how it addresses the issue of suicide. (It's clearly more personal to author Jay Bell, a fact you can sense in the writing even before you reach the afterword, in which he discusses just how suicide has figured in his own life.)

That said, as compelling as I found the bulk of the book, I was less drawn into the final third. Once the story intersects with events detailed in the earlier books, Jace's perspective seems less interesting. There's not a lot here that wasn't already covered previously (sometimes twice), and learning of Jace's background is more than enough to illuminate his behavior without you having to revisit it. The context is already given, and stepping through familiar events one by one isn't as engaging. (Perhaps it would be better to read this installment of the series first? It certainly feels like you could read the three books in any order, and it might be an interesting experiment to see how people react to the characters differently depending on which book they read first.)

Still, I found Something Like Autumn to be an enjoyable book overall. I'd average it out to... "something like" a B+. Together, I'd give the trilogy a similar mark. It's a credible love triangle of the sort that's been put down countless times for straight people, and not so often for gay people.

Though perhaps I need to put "trilogy" in quotes. The "Something Like..." series actually continues for many more books, albeit with different characters. I have enjoyed Jay Bell's writing enough that perhaps I'll check the next one out at some point. Either way, I'm glad to have gone this far.