Review: Ships in the Night

Title: Ships in the Night
Author: Ann T. Ryan
Publisher: Silver Publishing
Publication Date: 28 May 2011
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 21,484 words

Blurb:
Ian Richards moved to LA with dreams of becoming a successful musician. That dream was shelved aside after years of struggling to make it in the music industry. While making ends meet at one of his jobs as a waiter at an event, Ian met with Logan Adams, Hollywood's favourite movie star. The handsome actor left more of an impression on Ian than he cared to admit. Three years later, after the intimate night they shared, memories of Logan still had not faded from Ian's mind. What happens when they meet again for the second chance encounter in their lives?

Rating: 2 out of 5

Review:

Main Characters:
Ian is a young man who moved to LA with a big dream, but who finds himself instead working as a waiter. He has nothing but scorn for the people he serves, as evidenced within the first few paragraphs:

Ian Richards stood in the shadows, appraising the scene in front of him. Rich people turned him off. All of them were snooty, sitting on their high horses, thinking they were better off than the rest of the human species. Wearing their fancy suits and dresses with sparkly jewellery. Even in their own little world, they deemed some of their peers better than the rest. One day, one fine day, Ian thought to himself, he wouldn't have to bow down to these people anymore. One day he would live in his own mansion and be able to charter his own private jet as he travelled the world playing his music. But that thought had led him nowhere six years ago and now here he was, desperately trying to pay his half of the rent, barely surviving on one meal a day. If only he had the opportunity to break into the music industry. If only he had good luck to accompany his more than average skills. Because other than confidence in his ability as a musician, Ian had nothing else. He only had his old guitar and second-hand keyboard to remind him of the dreams he had since he was a child. He wondered sadly at how long it would be before he had to let those dreams go.

"I said I would like one, or did you not hear me?" a snippy voice addressed him.

"I'm sorry, sir." Ian passed a cocktail to the man glaring at him. He breathed in deeply before pasting a fake smile on his face.

"It's so hard to get good help these days," the pompous man said to his lady companion as they walked away.

"Asshole," Ian muttered under his breath.

I have to confess that this soured me on Ian almost immediately. It's hard to have sympathy for him being treated poorly when it was (at least in part) due to his not paying attention to the job he was there to do. For him to make a comment after the fact demonstrates a poor attitude that left me cold. Even understanding that it's a set-up (however brief) to introduce Logan, it sowed the seeds of my perception of Ian as a complete dick.

When he isn't being a dick, Ian is troubled and flawed, but in a way that felt completely gratuitous to me; the revelations of his past were so cliché as to be ridiculous. When Ian confesses to Logan that he was raped by his stepfather, I found myself wondering what the point was. The story of the rape was triggered by Logan's disregarding Ian's lack of consent and forcing himself on him, but the tie-in to the rest of the story was shaky at best. The entire scene and backstory could have been easily left out without affecting anything else.)

Logan is a top actor/director/producer, living the dream. He shares Ian's scorn for his peers, if a bit more circumspectly. He has a devil-may-care disregard for things that don't fall neatly into how he wants them, but at the same time is willing to compromise his own desires to make Ian happy. It's because of the latter that I'm torn on him--there are flashes of him as a nice guy, a genuinely good, likeable person.

And then there's the rape:

Ian opened his eyes and even in the darkness, Logan could see the slight alarm creeping into his eyes. A part of him wanted to reassure Ian, but he wondered whether he would be lying, especially when another part of him wanted to swallow Ian whole. Logan was losing control fast; his hands shook with the intensity of his desire.

[...]

"Shh, baby," Logan whispered to him, and only then did Ian realise that he was whimpering, trying to buck Logan off him. Ian fought to stay in the present, to let himself believe this man would never hurt him.

[...]

When Logan heard Ian's whimpers, the fog of red blurring his senses started to dissipate. His heart clenched at what he had just done. He wanted to take his dick out immediately but that would just cause Ian more pain. He willed his shaft to go limp but it was difficult when the damn thing was gloved in tight heat. So he did something else instead; he lifted Ian's legs and wrapped them around his hips, leaving his hands free to wipe away the silent tears that trailed down Ian's face. He had seen the fear and cursed himself for putting that expression on Ian.

But it's okay in the end, because Ian really did want it.

No.

Without that, I think I might've liked Logan quite a bit. Unfortunately, I can't move past it, and it completely changes my perception of him from the first two-thirds of the story.

Chemistry:
Although we're told often enough that they're attracted to each other, I never really felt that I saw it for myself. Their time together feels distant somehow, almost sterile in its conveyance, and the sex (removed from my issues above) never really had much of a spark. Outside of sex, they're a cute couple--the date at the fair was nice--but the sex is what ultimately ruins their relationship for me.

Secondary Characters:
The secondary cast is brief, limited primarily to Ian's (eventual) bandmates. Unfortunately, I dislike them almost as much as I do Ian, particularly Tristan. He, much like Logan, has his flashes of being an appealing character, until he goes and does something stupid like aggravating Logan's apparent jealous streak. Given that Tristan is apparently such a large part of Ian's life, between the band and his confidences, it would've been nicer to see him as a well-developed character, not a series of plot devices.

Story:
After reading it twice, I'm still not certain what the point of the story is. Is it Logan and Ian's relationship? Is it Ian's career? Is it the resolution of Ian's traumatic past? It seems to be tangled somewhere in all of those, but none are really strong enough to carry the weight of the story. Together, they rather limp along toward the resolution, which is charming, if pat. Unfortunately, the pacing altogether leaves much to be desired. I can understand the three year jump that the blurb alludes to, but the pacing of the rest of their relationship left much to be desired. Once they get back together, there's a burst of activity, and then it's suddenly six months later with nothing to fill in the jump. Things tend to happen with no foreshadowing, too, which makes every event stand out in sharp relief without much to tie it to prior events, leaving everything rather jerky.

Writing:
I'm not sure if my beef with the writing is actually beef with the writing or if it's beef with the story the writing conveyed. I suspect it's more the latter. The writing was technically acceptable, if a bit reminiscent of fanfiction histrionics. (Again, this is probably colored by my perception of the subject matter.) One thing that did bother me, though, is the section breaks. They're usually used to delineate a change in point of view, between Ian and Logan, but they occasionally crop up randomly, leaving a string of asterisks between otherwise-related paragraphs. I wondered more than once what I was missing, for there to be a break there.

Overall:
Ultimately-unappealing characters and melodrama left me cold. I like the concept of where the author started and I like the concept of where the author ended up, but I hated the journey between. Tightening and reconsideration of some points couldn't have hurt. In the end, this is not a story I will go back to.