A Hundred Little Lies
The quiet late 19th-century American Western town of Bodey, Colorado, is the setting for this gay romance. Widower Jack Tulle’s wife visits in a dream, urging him to wake up and shed the lies that rule his present life. For the very proper owner of the town’s general store and doting father of sprightly seven-year-old Abigail, this will take some unravelling.
Jack has been working in political circles to block a local saloon from hosting a grand prize poker tournament, knowing it might bring Tom (his former lover and partner in crime) back into his life. When Jack fails, it does, and sparks between the two are quickly reignited. But some ugly truths about Jack’s past, including a blinding tendency towards violence, are unearthed before the two can find their happy ending in a new family.
By turns homespun and gritty, with some hot and tender love scenes, A Hundred Little Lies has a promising start. But Jack is particularly dense about both his own and others’ secrets and motivations. And by the time the pasts of both Tom and Jack, fellow townspeople and old associates are revealed, the story dissolves under the weight of a hundred little plot points.
