Arthur Drams works for a secret government security agency, but all he really does is spend his days in a cubical writing reports no one reads. After getting another “lateral promotion” by a supervisor who barely remembers his name, it’s suggested that Arthur try to ‘make friends’ and ‘get noticed’ in order to move up the ladder. It’s like high school all over again: his attempts to be friendly … friendly come across as awkward and creepy, and no one wants to sit at the same table with him at lunch. In a last-ditch attempt to be seen as friendly and outgoing, he decides to make friends with The Alien, aka Agent Martin Grove, known for his strange eating habits, unusual reading choices, and the fact that no one has spoken to him in three years.
Starting with a short, surprisingly interesting conversation on sociology books, Arthur slowly begins to chip away at The Alien’s walls using home-cooked meals to lure the secretive agent out of his abrasive shell. Except Martin just might be something closer to an actual secret agent than paper-pusher Arthur is, and it might be more than hearts at risk when something more than friendship begins to develop.
Please note this book has a Heat Rating of zero.
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This is a book about two closed-off men finding another mind and heart that speaks to their own. Although there is an asexual character (and probably a demisexual one) that aspect is not what drives the narrative. There is so much else that these guys have to do, to unpack their pasts and fears and personal isolations, that the issue of sex is almost a coda, a sideline in the slow dance of coming together. Except that in much of society, especially for men, sexual attraction is a short-cut and a driver for intimacy. Taking that away changes the process.
Arthur works as an analyst for an intelligence Agency, and he’s a man so quiet and unremarkable his own superiors sometimes forget who he is. After another lateral move to a new floor, he’s determined to try to stand out somehow. So he goes about making friends in the cafeteria, in that excruciating process of “Is this seat taken?” It doesn’t go terribly, but it also doesn’t go well. And along the way, he ends up finally sitting with the silent guy in the next cubicle. A guy who eats only apple slices for lunch, despite his thinness. A guy who devours huge, weighty books as fast as he can turn the pages. A guy who seems supremely uninterested in Arthur, except, except…
A lovely, quiet, understated story about complicated people. The end is sweet and warm and yet leaves a lot of mystery. You have the feeling these guys will be discovering each other for decades to come, and yet the most essential parts have been said. After I read this, I turned around and looked up the author’s backlist, and was not disappointed.
Don’t miss the short story “Merlin in the Library” which gives us a little more of these two characters, and answers a few of the questions lingering at the end of the novel.
This is my first time reading a story that features ace MCs. I do hope that I understood this fact correctly. I have looked up definition to get more clarity on it. Anyway, I quite liked Arthur. His weird was good weird that gave off positive vibes to me. He was just a tad peculiar in his habits. The relationship with Martin aka the Alien progressed agonizingly slowly but it allowed me to get the measure of Arthur as a man and a person. He totally rocked in understanding and caring department. I mean he turned out well considering the kind of family he came from. Most would have become bitter and jaded, but Arthur only had a bit of a cynic in him coupled with a healthy dose of pragmatism.
I enjoyed his slow getting to know Martin, what little was disclosed in the book. Their interactions started from monosyllables and a quirk of an eyebrow to something comfortable and sure. Their attraction was more that of mind, heart and soul rather than body. That was a novel experience for me. I only wish that by the time the book was over, which by the way left me with a warm and fuzzy feelings in my chest, I knew more about Martin’s past and what shaped him as a man as well as who he was exactly in the Agency. All the little tidbits and secret innuendo were not enough for me. But for all that I really enjoyed the story and all the characters in it. Told from single POV (Arthur’s) it was steady paced low angst no steam romance.