Ash is an alien from another world, but he manages to pass as a rather quirky yet handsome human. He has come to a rural area of Vermont in search of his sister, who crash-landed there with valuable information that can help his planet achieve justice. Ash isn’t the only one with his quirks in town. There’s also Angi, a run-away rich girl who escaped her stifling home in Florida only to fall in with the leader of a gang.
Conn and Faye are private investigators sent by Angi’s family to get the girl to come home. When the closeted Conn meets Ash there’s an instant connection that both men try to resist, but can’t. Conn is already considering coming out, and his increasing fascination with Ash confirms that idea, even though there’s a lot of things pulling the two apart.
“Starfall” is a ‘soft’ science fiction story, where the science mostly takes a back seat to a strong drama. The characters - and there are rather a lot of them - are well drawn, including, somewhat unusually in a gay story, the women. Conn and Ash are surrounded by an extended group of friends, which is something you don’t see much of in most romances these days. The story does have a strong element of the rather cliché “made for each other” theme, but this is mitigated to some degree with a sci-fi explanation, so it’s not quite as sappy as it usually reads.
The well-crafted plot has a number of twists and turns, with the core drama coming from a situation where it appears our two lovers can’t be together. This kind of dynamic usually does quite well at drawing me into a story, but while “Starfall” reads well, it didn’t quite hit the mark, for me. Still, it’s a much better story than average, so I’ve given it four stars.
“Starfall” is available from Amazon
