Grade: A

The first thing I have to say about this delightful little ebook is “Wow!” The second is “Hawt!” Seriously, I haven’t read anything this original and this erotic in months years. First of all, the story is set in 1946. How many romance novels have you read lately that’s set in that time period? Secondly, it’s about a war widow who falls in love with a tattooed carnival freak. It speaks volumes for this book that I set aside studying for my finals, squeezed this book in front of all of the books on my queue as well as the reviews that I still haven’t written, and immediately began working on this review only minutes after I finished reading the book. I had meant to read this e-book later–after I finished writing my 10,000,000 word paper on the works of Homer–and had only planned on scanning the first fifteen pages of it, but I realized I was in trouble the second I read the first paragraph and kept on reading… until it was over. Just check out this first paragraph and tell me it doesn’t suck you in:

Discordant carnival music and the smell of burnt sugar, popcorn and axle grease drifted through the crisp fall air. In the dusk, the colored lights of the rusty rides shone in broken lines where bulbs were missing. Faded canvas tents housed games of chance, a fortune-teller, a fun house and freaks. Sarah walked the trash-strewn paths between booths and rides and wondered why she had come. She hated carnivals.

The prose is clean, not too fancy, but it immediately set up the scene in my head and I couldn’t help but continue reading. A war widow who falls in love with a tattooed carnival freak in 1946… come on, kids, what’s not to love?

Our heroine, Sarah Cassidy, lost her husband John in World War II. John has been dead for a year, but Sarah still deeply grieves for him, which is why she refuses to move back to Chicago where she is originally from, thinking that John would have wanted her to stay on the farm. For the past year, she has been tending the farm and the animals by herself and has also become somewhat of a recluse. She has a best friend, Grace, who wants to set her up with her husband’s friend, but Sarah doesn’t feel that she is emotionally ready to date. One night, Grace cajoles Sarah into going to the carnival with her and some friends and Sarah reluctantly agrees. Sarah goes into the freakshow tent and sees a beautiful, beautiful man with tattoos on every visible inch of his skin sitting in the dark in a cage right next to the bearded lady. Sarah is instantly entranced by him, unable to look away. When the stranger stares back at her, Sarah feels a connection with him and feels strangely aroused even as she is horrified by the tattoos on his body. Sarah leaves the carnival feeling discomfited and dreams that night of the hot tattooed guy. A few nights later, Sarah hears a noise in the barn, goes to check it out, and finds the guy hiding in the stacks of hay. With only the slightest hesitation, Sarah takes him in, feeds him, gives him a bath, and extends an offer to him to stay as her handyman, even as she struggles with sexual feelings the likes of which she has never experienced. Braving the censure of the townsfolk and the risk of becoming a pariah, Sarah indulges her feelings for Tom, the tattooed hottie, and fights tooth and nail to keep the two of them together against all odds.

Sarah Cassidy is not your usual wide-eyed, airheaded, sexually ignorant widow. Though she and her husband John had only been married for four months before John shipped out, that was plenty enough time for her to get sexually acquainted with his body as well as her own. She is practical, intelligent, fierce, and protective of everything and everyone she holds dear. What I particularly liked about Sarah is how mature she was. She’s not a helpless little idiot who’d start and shriek at every shadow she sees and can pretty much hold her own in any battle. In fact, it is she who saves Tom in the end, and is the more knowledgeable, more experienced one in her relationship. I also liked that Sarah is the type of person to go after what she wants once she has set her mind on it. She is kind-hearted, but clever; strong, but not domineering. At first it seemed that all she needs from Tom is a little sexual healing; she would get him out of her system then let him go. As the story progresses, however, Sarah also becomes Tom’s tutor, mother, protector, and counselor. Although that may sound creepy, it really isn’t. Sarah and Tom become so enraptured with each other that if one of them were to die, the other one would follow soon after. Tom becomes Sarah’s reason for living and yet through it all, Sarah retains her own identity and manages to become a stronger person for the experience.

Tom, on the other hand, well… Tom is damaged. His mother was a fortune-teller at a carnival and after she dies, the owner of the carnival, Art Reed, keeps Tom for himself and sticks him in a cage for people to gawk at. When Tom was 8 years old, the man began to tattoo him, adding one tattoo after the other, until every inch of Tom’s skin was covered with it. Tom becomes a part of the freakshow, paraded before the eyes of thousands for a coin or two, and retreats so deep into himself that once he escapes the carnival, he doesn’t quite know who he is. He seeks out Sarah because he sees her in a dream–Tom is a psychic–and believes that she can offer him sanctuary. There is a heartbreaking scene where Sarah gives Tom food and Tom scarfs it down within seconds because Reed often starved him in the carnival. Because of his imprisonment, Tom can barely read, can’t write, can’t really function in a society, and is literally, a very simple man. But Tom is not stupid. He is very naïve, very ignorant of how the world works, but he is also perceptive and has the ability to read people. Thankfully, Tom is also not very child-like. Though he is very innocent and simple, he is anything but a child. In his own way, he takes care of Sarah, protects her, and loves her the only way he knows how. The character of Tom worked for me ’cause it is his vulnerability that endeared him to me. There is something about this man that just cried out, practically begging to be taken care of. If he’d been a “secret” alpha male hiding underneath his “wounded man” bit, I think it would have totally ruined it for me.

By the way, the first time that the two of them have sex? A fucking beautiful thing, man. Dee could have exploited the whole “wild man” thing, but she doesn’t. It is truly one of the most sensitive, most evocative, most sensual love scenes I have ever read in my entire romance reading career.

There is a sub-plot in this story involving a little girl who goes missing and the townsfolk immediately suspect Tom because he is different. Tom “sees” flashes of the girl and what happened to her and is able to tell the people where she is, but there is a long way to go before they accept him. In fact, they may never accept him. This is the crux of the story. In a way, it reads like an interracial romance about a white widow in a small town who falls in love with a stranger whose skin is a different color. Literally. People sneer at them and verbally abuse them when they go into town together, they are turned away at the grocery store, and a group of miscreants even throw a brick through the window of Sarah’s house with the note “FREAK’S HOAR” [sic] attached to it. There is a very funny scene where Tom is insisting to see the note, but Sarah tells him that it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t even spelled right. I mean, my heart just totally broke for these two people. They’re in love and should be together, but the world won’t let them. People are assholes.

Anyway, my only problem with this book is that it ends too… neatly, if that makes sense. At the end of the book, a major tragedy strikes Tom and Sarah and everybody pitches in, like they’re all good Christians or something. All of a sudden, everyone is being nice to Tom like they never tried to ostracize him for being different. These are the same assholes who tried to beat him up just for walking down the street. Maybe I’ve become cynical in my old age, but I just couldn’t buy it. If the change of heart happened little by little, maybe. I can totally buy it if the townsfolk started being nice to Tom in microscopic increments each time, but to invite him to a barbecue and treat him as though he’s suddenly one of them? I mean, sure, the people who invited him are the parents of the little girl he saved, but… I don’t know. The courtship of Tom and Sarah is this beautiful, yet unconventional thing and I just hate the idea of them living the rest of their lives in this cookie-cutter world where they get invited to church socials and bake sales and shit.

This ebook is a little short–115 pages, but none of it was wasted. It is well-written, evocative, and definitely special. If you’re looking for something different, do me a favor and check this one out. Sarah is such a wonderful character and Tom… he’s just so amazing. It’s a delightful love story and I guarantee that you won’t be sorry for reading it.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: A, Romance: Historical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.