REVIEW: 'Twice The Hands To Hold' by Louis Stevens
5 Heart Read
Title: Twice The Hands To Hold
Series: Twice The Hands To Hold #1
Author: Louis Stevens
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Release Date: April 19, 2015
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Erotic Romance
Length: 280 Pages
Tags: M/M; Gay; Coming of Age; Coming Out
BLURB:
Twin brothers Brian and Matt Walker went to live with their mother’s brother after the death of their parents at an early age. Brian is still wracked with the guilt he carries around from a young age and sees the world through a distorted lens of self-loathing. When he meets a sexy and interested college-aged guy at the beginning of his senior year of high school, he may have finally found someone who can help him escape his mundane existence.
Matt has his life all planned out -- he longs for a solid career in journalism after graduating college. But his tenuous hold on family life threatens his dreams of independence, as does the attentions of a closeted new transfer to their school.
Can Matt pull away enough from his family to come into his own? And will Brian finally get to grips with his past and allow his twin to chase his own happiness?
REVIEW: I have to say that what I thoroughly enjoyed about Louis Stevens’ Twice The Hands To Hold is that even though there was a feeling of newness to the writing there was an intense passion. The subject matter was addressed with great depth and warmth, almost as if Stevens was drawing from his own experiences.
Stevens creates characters so compelling you are immediately absorbed into their very being and can’t help but care what happens to them. Throughout the book you share their highs, cry for their lows and are hopeful when at times it seems they are not.
Twice The Hands To Hold is a heartwarming coming of age story. It chronicles the relationship of twins Brian and Matt and the challenges they face as they enter their senior year of high school and prepare to enter adulthood. (You remember: love, family and self awareness.)
Matt is scholastic, openly gay, confident in himself, and coming into his own. Brian the jock, is openly bi-sexual, rebellious and struggling to become the man he wants to be.
Since the tragic loss of their parents at the age of six their uncle Jake has created a loving, supportive home for them. The three of them have been the constant, driving, stable force in one another’s lives.
But as Brian struggles to understand his interest in a new teammate he grapples with the fact that his brother and uncle seem to be moving forward without him. Already conflicted with feelings that leaving for college will ruin his closeness with his brother and uncle, Brian sinks deeper into himself and the guilt he buried along with his parents.
As a result he begins to make choices that will test not only the familial bonds but risk his own safety.
The crest to the end is intense. Steven’s switches from one character to the next and back again building up the tension like a storm brewing on the horizon, with the wind whipping and thunder promising torrents of rain. When the floodgates finally open you are sucker punched.
But as much as what happens to Brian is absolutely excruciating the author addresses it with sensitivity and realism and you see the core of this family. Their true love and strength.
Stevens takes you on an emotional journey that really isn’t angst but this driving desire, this need, to see Brian, Matt and Jake survive, to pick up the fallen pieces of one and remain as a whole.
Twice The Hands To Hold is a story that illustrates that we don’t always see ourselves for who we really are; but to see our true reflection we only need look to the love and support of those who surround us. It reminds us that sometimes we don’t see the good until we are almost lost to the bad. But it is overall a story of change, of hope, of love - of acceptance.
NOTE: For those who go for their hot and sexy in M/M reads, you are not going to find that here. Louis gives you a very human story of a family finding themselves and their bond with one another. Additionally, if you have an objection to forced interactions there is an altercation in here that, although not described in detail, the aftermath is discussed.
I was given a copy of Twice The Hands To Hold by the author, at no charge, in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.
Do you like your sexy TABOO?
If you do, and have read Twice The Hands To Hold, then Louis has a treat for you!
Click here for a review of Louis Stevens’ alternate Taboo ending to
Twice The Hands to Hold.
LOUIS is a gay romance author born and raised in South Africa. He was a shy outcast who had few friends in school; generally feeling excluded and on the fringe of society. However, when he discovered gay romance and erotica in 2007, at the age of seventeen, his mind and world opened up. He wrote his first story, A Better Life, longhand in a 197 page spiral notebook, on his bed every night with a pillow curled under his chin. Although the book wouldn’t be published until 2011, with the now defunct Silver Publishing, he found the experience entirely liberating. He's considered himself a writer ever since.
