Title: A Matter of Time (A Matter of Time #2)
Author: Mary Calmes
Publisher: club lighthouse
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Length: Novel
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Summary Review: Will love be enough for Jory and Sam to overcome their personal differences and can Sam keep Jory alive? The answers to these questions are: Yes and no. The soap opera continues with quite a few revelations.
THE BLURB
Jory Keyes is doing his best to get over Detective Sam Kage, who broke his heart. Fearful of coming out of the closet, Sam intended to marry and uphold the status quo. After testifying against the man he saw commit cold-blooded murder, Jory is sure he and the detective will never cross paths again. But fate has other plans. Between Sam’s job and Jory being openly gay and on the run from hired killers, the path to true love has never been rockier. When Jory is kidnapped, the culprit is someone no one ever suspected.
THE REVIEW
The second book in the series picks up just a day after the end of Book I reviewed here. Jory is trying to deal with breaking up with Sam who apparently considered Jory a detour in his life while he was thinking more along the lines of a permanent relationship. Jory realized that the longer he stayed with Sam the worse he would be hurt when they parted, which he thought was inevitable, so he decided to make a clean break. Their major problem was Sam’s fear that having a boyfriend would negatively affect his professional life as a police detective working in such a homophobic environment, so even though he was addicted to Jory and gave him a set of keys to his apartment, he wasn’t about to come out of the closet for him.
However Sam wasn’t done with Jory and kept coming back into his life. He was really conflicted about his strong feelings for Jory, but his fears about the effects on his job of being outed kept getting in the way. In an effort to show him how much he loved him Sam was very protective, but the relationship continued to be rocky.
While he’s trying to figure out what to do about Sam, Jory’s business relationship with Dane undergoes a seismic shift and evolves into a deep and abiding friendship. Dane stepped up and proved what a wonderful person he was by changing Jory’s life in a totally unexpected way. Having Dane as a powerful force supporting him gives Jory the confidence to move on to a new and better job after being Dane’s assistant for 5 years. Eventually he establishes a successful business venture with a partner, but his private life is still hit and miss. Even though Sam is back they have the same issues, leading to continuing friction. Further complicating their relationship are the ongoing threats against Jory’s life because of the murder that he witnessed in Book I, and his refusal to take the simplest safety precautions, which makes Sam angry.
This book follows the pattern of Book I with numerous minor characters moving in and out and quite a lot of (I thought) unnecessary details about them. At times there were so many they made my head spin and I couldn’t figure out most of the roles of the different people who touched Jory’s life very briefly. They weren’t friends, they weren’t lovers, they were just there as fillers. Also, almost every single character in this book was either incredibly good looking or fabulously wealthy, or both – Some of them were so outrageously good looking I wondered how so many beautiful people could coexist in one book. Despite this, the book was really interesting and absorbing and Jory continued to be the main focus of the series. I really liked his vulnerability and relationship with Dane whose role expanded considerably in this book.
What I liked
The three main characters – Jory, Sam and Dane.
>Sam grew on me because it was clear how much he loved and wanted Jory in his life, despite his ongoing conflict about coming out
>Dane became very protective towards Jory and was more open and three dimensional
>Jory was just Jory, driving everyone crazy but they all fell in love with him because he seemed so defenseless
What I didn’t like
>As in Book I, there were too many minor characters; they seem to be sprinkled throughout like condiments on food
>There were quite a few spelling and grammatical errors in this book (as well as in Book I) that a little care could have avoided. Examples: Simple things like “you’re” instead of “your” “dirt dancing” instead of “dirty dancing,” “passed” instead of “past” etc.
>I thought that at times the book meandered quite a bit and was unfocused.
I did like the story so far but thought that there was some unnecessary padding in terms of characters who didn’t really have a role but were only window dressing, especially people that Jory met only once in bars. The editing could have been much tighter by eliminating some of them and the accompanying prose and dialogue.
At the end of Book II the big ‘reveal’ of who was behind all of the attempts on Jory’s life was not a huge surprise since there were clues throughout the book. Those readers who don’t like cliffhangers will hate the way this book ends, but on the plus side the other books are all available so you won’t have to wait to find out what comes next.
I have finished Book III so the review will be posted later this week, with the conclusion of this story to follow shortly after. Despite some of my obvious difficulties with A Matter of Time Book II I recommend this series so far because it has a lot going for it, including quite a few humorous moments. I couldn’t help but become engrossed in the story, and wanted to know how it all ended and what happened to Jory and Sam, the ultimate odd couple.
I recently read all four of these books, and have to agree, I had a big problem with the spelling and grammar mistakes.
I didn’t have too much trouble following the minor characters and such and, while I understood why they were there, many could have been cut. Not for my sake though. I’m weird, and I like it when a story is ‘involved’ like that. I know, however, that it isn’t for everyone.
Something that bothered and confused me was the way the books were separated. I mean, the first three chapters of book two should have been in the first book. I was confused when I got to chapter four and was suddenly meeting Jory’s partner. I was almost sure I had a bad copy that missed a chapter or something!
Then, the first two chapters of the third book really should have been in the second book.
I had other problems with the third book, but I’ll wait for you to review it before saying anything more about it.
Danae
>>Something that bothered and confused me was the way the books were separated. I mean, the first three chapters of book two should have been in the first book. I was confused when I got to chapter four and was suddenly meeting Jory’s partner. I was almost sure I had a bad copy that missed a chapter or something!<< This is what I meant about editing errors. I agree with your comment. IMO some of the chapters seemed to be out of order. I can't say too much because I don't want to give away spoilers and in this book almost anything could be a spoiler because there's so much going on. Re all of the minor characters, I had difficulty understanding the roles of some of them. They just seemed to be standing around saying their few words of dialogue then they would leave, never to be heard from again. Of course some of the minor characters did stick around. e.g Sam's family, but that was rare.
Well, it sounds like the book diverges a bit from the Jake/Adrien formula here at least, so that’s good. I’m still reserving judgment until you review the next two, though.
Alexi
Sam definitely loves Jory and the only similarity between him and Adrien is that they are both detectives who are in the closet, which is understandable given the homophobic environment in which they work.
In Book III my feelings for Jory undergo a major change. I will be posting the review on Wednesday.
*Definitely* reserving judgment (and my cash!) until Wednesday then!
Tis
>>What laughing at? No, no. It was more laughing at my own spotty memory. < < Good recovery but I have the memory of an elephant.
Tis
As I was reviewing this book I wondered if it was just me, because there’s so much wrong including the editing, spelling and grammar. Book III is no improvement and if this wasn’t a series I probably wouldn’t be reading and reviewing Book IV.
I noticed that one site gave Book IV their highest rating – I guess this proves the theory of different strokes. Obviously we’re reading different books because I can’t imagine that the technical errors would have improved, since the entire series was written as one huge book originally.
Go ahead and laugh at me – I recall that I’m reviewing one of your books this week. tee hee.
Urrrgh… this week? *bites lip*
What laughing at? No, no. It was more laughing at my own spotty memory. Shoddy, it is. And much as a steel sieve, doesn’t hold much of anything. 😛
~Tis *is scared… no, really…*
As with the first book in this series, I had a difficult time at first (first ten pages or so, if I recall). I found the lack of punctuation sort of distracting and had to go back and reread sentences that were confusing due to the rather sparse use of commas. (“Let’s eat, Grandpa!” reads entirely differently from “Let’s eat Grandpa!” right?)
Once I got past that and made a conscious decision to ignore spelling errors and such, I did enjoy book 2, though I agree the sheer percentage of beautiful people struck me as a bit unlikely. 😛
I can’t recall whether I liked the third and fourth books. I think I’ll either have to reread them or wait for your reviews to spark my memory, Wave! *hee*
Thanks for reminding me about this series. Might need to go back and at least skim it again sometime soon.
~Tis
Hi LadyM
I didn’t want to give a preview of my review of Book III but I could not believe some of the things that happened in the story. Like you, I was appalled at the grammatical, spelling and editing errors but to detail them all would have meant a much longer review.
I think this could easily have been three instead of four books with a lot of stuff gutted, but that’s just me. Better editing would have helped tremendously. However, when I read some of the other reviews, this series is the best thing to happen to literature.
This book was the end of good things for this series, as far as I am concerned. The first book was good, this one was O.K., the last two… I felt like I was climbing the Mt. Everest of silliness. I remember you’ve said the author wrote the entire story at once, so I was wondering if she simply lost the threads of the story or the editors went on vacation.
Just two details to illustrate (can’t be considered spoilers really): someone is in the hospital bed just after the operation, the room is cold, Jory lifts the cover and is grateful to see that the doctors left the person’s socks. Yes, that happens – the socks the person had on the arrival in the hospital in the operating room and recovery room. Like… not! The second thing – Jory succeeds where the police, FBI and everyone failed, although he behaves like someone too stupid to live. Not to mention that every character we meet likes Jory, want to be his friend, is in love with Jory or wants to sleep with him.
English is not my first language, yet I was appalled by some of the spelling and grammatical errors in the later books. (punctuation – what was that?) It’s a shame really. With much, much, MUCH better editing, this could be a good series. I wish the author stopped here, at the end of the second book.