All the Way Happy

Coltrane debuts with a particularly slow-burning queer romance. Theo Beaumont and Jack Gardner go from Baltimore boarding school enemies—their lot as wealthy snob and charismatic scholarship student, respectively—to just-graduated lovers on a romp through Ireland. Decades after the disastrous end to their hectic summer fling, the men are reunited when each separately enrolls a son in that same Baltimore boarding school and the boys end up as roommates. The settings of both Baltimore and Cork, Ireland, feel vivid and fully realized, a high point as the simultaneously predictable and unnecessarily convoluted plot unfolds. The dual timeline, alternating between Theo and Jack’s youthful beginnings and their complex adult entanglements, fails to build suspense; readers will be able to guess at most events in both eras long before they occur. Still, the intensity of the soulmate-level bond between the leads is enough to keep readers invested as they wait for the inevitable. It’s a rocky start, but Coltrane clearly has potential. (Jan.)