Conrad Muller's heart is the center of a web of friendships, fights, and love lost and found in a close–knit group of gay men in Orange County, California. Six months ago, Conrad died, and his organs were donated for transplant. A month later, Conrad's lover, Christian, receives a letter from the recipient of Conrad's donated heart.
Christian can't stop thinking about the letter, and he's not the only one affected by loss. Conrad's best friend Eban is also brokenhearted, and he's struggling with his lover Damien, who has always resented living in Conrad's shadow. Though Conrad is gone, his friends and his lover will have to cope with their grief to move on and find new love.
Review
Secondhand Heart by Scarlet Blackwell is definitely a novel of gay love geared for a specific gay audience. It never strays far from the typical romance novel formula. Some readers of gay romance might enjoy it. If nothing else it has a lot of sex and suspense about who will end up with whom. I believe the more discerning readers of romantic fiction will find Secondhand Heart a little wanting however. Though this novel is not totally without heart and humor, too often I felt the extreme emotionality of the characters was based more on the author’s creative whims than on the way actual people might behave within the context of plausible given circumstances. Therefore for me these characters fail to resonate beyond the space they occupy on the page. I kept wanting the characters to stop moaning and groaning so much so that we could get on with the story. Then I realized this is actually a story about overly dramatic characters which moan and groan too much.
Most of the moaning and groaning is about Conrad – partner of Christian – who has tragically died in a car crash. Contrary to Christian’s wishes, Conrad’s parents allow for his heart to be transplanted into the body of an unknown needy heart patient. After all Conrad is classified as an organ donor. Still, emotional Christian doesn’t want his lover carved up. Eban who is Christian’s best friend helps him to accept the transplant. At the same time Eban is just as grieved as Christian over Conrad’s death. Eban you see was first and foremost Conrad’s best friend. However Damien, Eban’s lover believes Eban was actually in love with Conrad. One night Eban who was drunk, confessed to Damien that he had slept with his best friend Conrad when they were teenagers, thus Damien’s suspicion. In his jealousy, Damien threatens to tell Christian of the teenage hookup which happened before Christian was even in the picture. All of Christian and Eban’s close circle of friends are concerned - even Luke the mysterious new man in Christian’s life. Luke has asthma and always wears a shirt. I wonder why. After much talk and surmising about who it was Conrad did or didn’t love when he was alive, one friend named Marcus rebels. He gets totally fed up and shouts, “… Conrad! Conrad! Conrad! Grow up and grow a pair. He’s gone! He’s fucking dead!” Marcus you see is sick of everyone wallowing in the misery caused by Conrad’s death. This is the way I felt throughout the book. The aforementioned quote is said over two thirds of the way through it. It should have been spoken sooner so that the writer might have stayed ahead of the readers. As it stands, the reader is all the time waiting for author Blackwell’s characters to get a freaking clue.
There is a lesson to be learned about the abject desolation to avoid when your lover has died or when your lover has left you because you cheated on him. There is also a nice message about light at the end of the tunnel as a reprieve from the darkness of the grieving process. I just wish that said lesson and message had been arrived at with a lot less histrionics.
