Life, Over Easy by K.A. Mitchell

Title: Life, Over Easy
Author: K.A. Mitchell
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Length:: Novel
Buy the book: My Bookstore and More

Blurb:

Watch that first step. It could turn your life upside down.

Fragments, Book 1

Until a fall ended his Olympic diving career, John Andrews lived for the seconds he spent in the air. Now he’s adrift on a college campus, grounded by paralyzing vertigo and double vision. Worse, he sees shimmering colors over everyone’s heads.

The last is hardest to ignore, and impossible when it comes to Mason. While sex with the hot, moody computer major gives John a rush as heady as diving, Mason’s the only person John’s ever seen surrounded by two distinct colors.

Mason feels like a stranger in his own life. His lover is dead, and he drowns his guilt in bourbon and sex—until John’s innocence reawakens the man he used to be. After Mason gives the young virgin a proper introduction to sex, he plans to send him on his way. But John sees too much to make things that easy.

For John, their connection is more than just sizzling sex, it’s something worth fighting for. The more he learns about the colors, though, the more he realizes the free-spirited Mason isn’t free at all. John doesn’t take second place to anyone—even the dead.

Review:

KA Mitchell is an autobuy author for me and when I read the extract from this book that she placed on her blog, I was hooked and could barely wait the week or so until release day. There was much to enjoy about the story, but in the end my own scepticism regarding ghosts and messages from the beyond added a false note to what is a cracking good romance.

The story begins when we meet John, a former diving double Olympic gold medallist, whose career came literally crashing down around his ears when he fell from the diving platform onto the poolside. Left with brain damage, John hears the world in colours and has the ability to see colours surrounding the heads of everyone he looks at. These colours change according to the mood of the person and it isn’t long before John realises he can tell what people are thinking by their ‘aura’, something he frankly wished he couldn’t do. For now, John is trying to concentrate on the positives, such as no longer training 12 hours a day and being open about his sexuality. At a party he meets Mason, a man with quite a few problems of his own, mostly as a result of the death of his lover 8 months previously. The two men hit it off, but the road to love isn’t easy for the pair, especially as Mason is still haunted by the ghost of his lover Alex.

KA Mitchell always writes darned good characters and this book was no exception. John was absolutely fascinating, not only in terms of how he sees the world through his brain damaged eyes, but also how he feels about the life now forced on him. The wistfulness he feels over the loss of his diving career, the frustration that he came so close to the next Olympic games, only to have fate cruelly take it away; his self depreciating humour about how he sees the world now, and the fact he needs to use a cane for balance, all combined to make his an incredibly sympathetic character, one that I liked a great deal. I also liked that he’s a pragmatist, and pretty sensible. He’s determined to make the most of his life – starting with getting laid – and copes admirably with being thrust into a life not of his choosing, where all around him are reminders of his old life in the form of other people who recognise him. John could have been the character mired in self-pity, drinking his life away, but instead that honour goes to Mason.

I didn’t like Mason as much as John, I admit. I also think that was supposed to be how I viewed him. Next to the courage of John, Mason is a rather pathetic heap of humanity. He’s surly, bad-tempered, childish and selfish in his grief. I was glad when John, and his friend Lizzie, were able to show him some home-truths and get him to snap out of his self-destructive spiral. I was also glad that this is done reasonably soon after the beginning of the book. The main thrust of the plot surrounding Mason is that of his inability to let Alex rest in peace. It was at this point that the book took a supernatural turn, drawing our heroes back together through Mason’s wish to release Alex so that he can ‘move on’. I have to admit, I’m never really very fond of stories where the grief stricken man is haunted by the ghost of his lover, mainly due to my personal scepticism about such matters, so this part of the book didn’t work too well for me. Those readers who like such plots won’t find this such a problem.

The plot itself moves at a pretty swift pace with a nice balance of some spooky goings on, some humour (I especially liked the scene where John experiments with MSG), some of KA Mitchell’s trademark buring hot sex scenes, and lots of great secondary characters – from the creepy Keith, the hopeful, quiet Drew, the man-slut Tyler who looks like he’s being set up with Simon the moralist for book two, and the members of Mason’s household; all of them were well rounded, interesting and brought the story to life around our main heroes. Marvellous.

If you’re looking for a satisfying romance and don’t mind some ghostly paranormal goings-on, then this will be the perfect book for you. Despite my scepticism of the haunting plot, I still enjoyed Life, Over Easy a great deal and I’m very much looking forward to book two in this new series.