Review: Her Two Dads

Title: Her Two Dads
Author: Ariel Tachna
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Publication Date: 21 June 2010
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 193 pages

Rating: 3 out of 5

Review: Srikkanth is shocked by the news that his friend Jill has died in childbirth, delivering the baby for which he donated sperm. Unable to give the baby up for adoption, he brings her home to the bachelor's apartment he shares with two other gay men. Along the way, he has to deal with ignorance, a complaining roommate, and Child Services, just for a start. Will discovering love amidst the chaos make everything worth it, or is he in over his head?

Srikkanth is a likeable enough protagonist, if a bit of a woman. (Seriously. His reactions to a lot of things remind me of my mother, which is an... interesting association to have.) He's also a bit bland; I never got a good impression of him as a person.

Jaime is more of the same--likeable but still rather bland. I grasped him even less than I did Srikkanth, as he never left a strong impression beyond being a necessary half for a romance.

The supporting cast was fairly generic, seeming to exist more to provide quantity than quality. None of them left a particularly strong impression, but none of them were overly annoying, either. Likeable but bland.

The chemistry between Srikkanth and Jaime was sweet rather than hot. It also wasn't overwhelming in the acting upon of said chemistry; what sex there was was well-done and not particularly frequent, which is a bonus for me.

The story itself was surprisingly without conflict. The stress of Jaime's and Srikkanth's coming out was dealt with long before the book began, so it was residual "Oh, my parents don't approve!" throughout much of the book, and even that was fairly low-key. The difficulty with the roommate, with Child Services, with the other issues that arose was fleeting and resolved quickly and easily, with the effects of it usually lingering a chapter at most.

The writing overall was good, though not what I expected after Once in a Lifetime. It was a bit of a shock to find my hated third-person omniscient point-of-view, although it was at least limited to the two leads. I think it was this disappointment more than anything that soured me a bit on the book, which I recognize is rather unfair but which I can't shake.

There was a bit too much information in dialogue sometimes. The early portion of the book read like a discourse on taking care of babies, which got to be a bit annoying in the midst of the information dump. Too much telling, not enough showing.

I have to confess being a bit startled by some of the terminology used, too; I've never before read of testicles being referred to as nodules, for starters. Referring to the anus as the guardian muscle also threw me; I kept envisioning it bristling with spikes or some such, which made the whole thing rather silly.

Overall, it wasn't a bad book. It was an easy, almost soothing read, a decent way to pass an afternoon--likeable but bland.