Jackie North

3.5 stars. The MCs start out like oil and water: they don't mix. Alex is still in the Chicago, everyone-for-themselves mindset. He's broke, jobless, and in pain. He's grumpy as hell. Cory just found out his now ex-boyfriend thinks his career path is a joke, among other things he neglected to tell him. Cory is lonely and not in the best of moods. Alex and Cory only see the worst in each other at first, judging the book by the cover. But they do soon start to see beneath the exterior. I liked the slow progression of their relationship. It's a cute, opposites attract kind of story. They are lovable sort of characters. Made me want to have a cup of hot chocolate and snuggle up by the fire with a book.… (meer)

Heroes for Ghosts by Jackie North
Love Across Time series #1. Dual time-line M-M romance. Time travel.
In present day, near the village of Ornes, France, Devon works on his master’s thesis on WWII. When a soldier trips over Devon in a peaceful meadow, he can’t believe what’s he’s being told. It’s more likely that the man has escaped from some psych ward than he’s traveled across time to help Devon with his thesis. But Stanley insists he is from 1916 where he just died from the mustard gas. The two go back to Devon’s apartment and talk. Stanley is clearly lost to what everything is or does and his hunger has him gazing longingly at an orange. But Stanley is concerned for his buddies back in the trenches and soon disappears from Devon’s world.

Poignant and a bit sad as war always is. It it’s also hopeful as clearly Stanley has a mission and need to save his friends. He has found love in the present though it’s not his time. In this instance, love and soulmates transcend time to be together. Suspend the disbelief. It’s romance.… (meer)

In Heroes for Ghosts, author Jackie North presents an interesting and creative story. Easily read and engaging, the book is pretty good escapist entertainment. It is enjoyable and I did enjoy it.
Even in light entertainment, however, I look for a little more in books which I did not find in this one.
In Heroes for Ghosts, author Jackie North faces some challenges: tell he story of things in WW I which she cannot have experienced personally in such a way as to be believable and to be consistent with facts. North's research on thee issues allowed her to do this fairly well, I believe, since I was not engaged in WW I either. Part of this requires that she also tell what it was like to be a soldier in that conflict which she also does well.
Next, she must present her main premise in such a way as to make it plausible if not believable. In doing this, she must be consistent with her own premise and the lesser premises that must support the primary premise to make it credible.
Some big issues occur here. The plot calls for one of the two main characters, Stanley, to travel 100 years ahead in time. Such a journey would put him in a setting where a great many of the things are entirely outside of his experience. North cannot take time away from the story to deal with all of these, but she must deal with some in order to use them as part of her plot. In this case, the refrigerator, the cell phone and the laptop computer are all needed in the plot. These are all given superficial explanations by the other main character, Devon. In fact, Devon's explanations are so shallow, so vague and so full of other concepts that could carry no meaning to a person 100 years from the past, that they are more baffling after he explains them than they were before. His explanation of "backing up a computer" would mystify many contemporary readers.
Furthermore, North is writing about a romance between two men, which she cannot have personally experienced, and in her story, she also presents some sexual episodes that are outside her experience. Since most novels with gay characters are both written by and read by women, North's challenge is to make her work as good as that of other female writers.
She needed to do the same kind of research for this that she had done about WW I: read some appropriate books, interview some gay men and gay couples, watch some quality films with gay storylines and perhaps watch a few gay porno flicks.
The romance she presents feels pretty authentic even though it moves very slowly and tentatively. The portrayals of gay sex, however, lack credibility. They are one-sided and involve no oral sex at all. Devon makes love and Stanley just takes it, I guess.
Maybe I would not have found much of this bothersome, but her portrayal of the men going to a restaurant in France was just wrong. A French waiter bringing 2 glasses of water to the table when the guests sit down? Really? Pretty unusual in France, to say the least. But this is followed by Devon giving his credit card to the waiter who walks away with it as happens in the US. I want to know the name of the one restaurant in all of France where a waiter could walk away with a credit card and live to tell about it. Moreover, although Stanley wonders about the use of a credit card, he gets no explanation of it.
Well, there is more, but I return to the main point. I really did pretty much enjoy the story and finished reading it which I would not have done if its many flaws seriously distracted me.
… (meer)