Review: Witness

Title: Witness
Author: L.A. Gilbert
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Publication Date: 30 April 2010
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 219 pages

Rating: 4 out of 5

Review: Reece is a photographer working as a bike messenger while he waits for his big break. Ben is a beat cop, rattling around alone in the big house he inherited from his father. They meet on a call, but don't get to know each other until Ben accidentally runs over Reece's bike. It's not long until they can't imagine life without each other, but will Reece's baggage be enough to pull them apart?

Reece is a fun character with a great attitude and a big heart, the kind of friend you'd like to have. His issues make sense and he handles them in a manner that keeps his angst from being gratuitous.

Ben is a charmer, too, like a big puppy dog whose ears you just want to ruffle over and over. He's open and generous, and so accepting that it's hard to think of him as a real person, even as you wish that he was.

The supporting cast is surprisingly fun, if fairly small. My only quibble is that they're universally accepting; there's no conflict. What little conflict there was showed up in the form of an ex trying to hook up with Ben again, but that didn't last, petering out into a non-issue. I would like to have seen that developed a little more. I would also like to see Darren get his own story.

The chemistry between Reece and Ben is great, hot without crossing the line into unbelievability. The sex is frequent without being overly so, and walks that fine line between too much and too little detail. (I'm all for allusions to sex without a blow-by-blow account, but the details can admittedly be hot. Just... not in quantity.)

My main complaint is that there are frequent point of view changes. In the first chapter, they're mostly broken up by section--it's Ben's POV, then it's Reece's, with breaks in between. When Ben and Reece start sharing scenes, though, it turns into omniscient POV, switching back and forth by paragraph sometimes. It quickly gets hard to follow, confusing just whose POV is being conveyed.

In truth, the prose in general is not overly strong, being fairly choppy where it's not confused by the aforementioned POV changes. What really shines, though, is the dialogue. It sounds natural, even the sex talk, which tends to be ridiculous in the genre. I actually lost the thread of the story when I realized that I liked it, as this is such a rare occurrence.

There are some editing issues that should have been caught--pedal vs. peddle, you're vs. your--but they're not overwhelming, just the occasional distraction. There were also a couple of British idioms that slipped through--again, not overwhelming, just the occasional distraction.

I have to confess to one thing, though: I'm stumped as to the source of the title. I kept waiting for a mystery or some such to develop, or, you know, something that one could witness, and it just never happened.

Well, okay, two things: I'm also stumped as to how Ben could keep buying the gifts for Reece that he did, especially the final birthday gift. He comes flat out and says that he doesn't earn much as a cop, so where does that throwing-around money come from? It just wasn't ever really explained adequately, though the gestures were lovely.

Really, I'm scoring this a bit high, but I'd much rather have likable characters and good dialogue than perfect prose. A bit more polishing could help this really shine, but it's a solid start, and one that I certainly enjoyed.