Buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
To Past Reviews Index
Back to Last Page
Title/Author

Unrequited

James Bennett

Average Review Rating Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)
Book Details

Publisher : Zumaya Publications

Published : 2007

Copyright : James Bennett 2007

ISBN-10 : PB 1-9341356-4-X
ISBN-13 : PB 978-1-9341356-4-8

Publisher's Write-Up

Aaron Edgeway lives in a ramshackle house in a provincial English town with his sick and abusive father. When he meets Victor, their romance quickly becomes an escape from the dreary prospects of his life. An escape that, unbeknownst to Victor, Aaron will do almost anything to protect.

Aaron has secrets: a scandalous videotape unwittingly recorded at a drug dealer's party, and the unwanted affections of Alex Clay, his unruly best friend. Alex tries to free Aaron from blackmail and harassment, building a pressure-cooker atmosphere of desire and deceit. Trapped by a twist of fate, Aaron goes to lengths he never dreamed possible in order to preserve his romance with Victor.

Unrequited details a descent into heartbreak and loss, and questions the dangers of love, and the things we do in order to heal ourselves. It is a bittersweet fairytale, an erotic and cautionary fable about revenge for anyone who has suffered from a broken heart.

Column Ends

space

Reader Reviews

Why not Submit a Review your own Review for this book?

Review by Molly Martin (310711) Rating (8/10)

Review by Molly Martin
Rating 8/10
James Bennett’s Unrequited opens with an Ending. It ended with a car crash. The narrator notes that autumn sun beamed between the trees, the car was approaching fast, the car rushed past to come to a halt in the midst of the intersection.

The narrative opens with a chance meeting, the narrator, Aaron Edgeway, is attempting, without much success, to drown some sorrows. Jason Farthing seems determined to alleviate the necessity.

Living with a malicious father has left Aaron more than a little cynical, jaded, and despairing. His descent into melancholy actually began over a year ago when Aaron was living in a decrepit house with his sick father. Meeting Victor was a little respite in that bleak life. Romance quickly followed allowing a little escape from the lacklustre facets of his life. Aaron was nearly overwhelmed in his desire to maintain that escape.

A clandestine past, disgrace, unwanted love, blackmail, an invitation, illicit drugs, a film star, an indulged rich kid, and tour of a mansion move the tale along. A shocking video, meeting someone to love, a father’s vindictiveness, and finally death, friendship of long standing and deceit before desire, shock of discovery, and finally impossible regret and revenge and healing of a sort.

James Bennett’s Unrequited is a fast paced work filled with a heavy torrent of suffering, poignancy and consequence of cruel parental bond coupled with fall out resulting from a series of untrustworthy relationships.
Aaron is a likeable, if somewhat naive character. His attachment with his maliciously violent father is not easy to read, his own sense of self worth and lack thereof is as hard to read, in addition the fallout of the brutality and exploitation, trickery deception and desolation he felt fashions a sequence of events that are as understandable as they are not exactly the conventional processes for dealing with either untrustworthy partners, or sadistic parents.

Bennett’s writing is crisp, well paced, characters are well fleshed, some outcomes are predictable to the reader, however, they work well because Aaron cannot see that they are.

The reader is carried along on the spinning spiral as Aaron finds himself ensnared by quirk of unexpected destiny. Aaron is desperate to safeguard what he believes is a viable romance, however that romance is unreciprocated leading into Aaron’s plunge into calamity and feelings of failure. Aaron soon begins to consider the jeopardy of caring as he seeks ways to find solutions to the abuse suffered at the hands of his father and to repair himself against mistreatment of friends whose trust has proven untrustworthy.

Unrequited is a touching narrative providing a passion driven admonitory allegory about heart ache driven reprisal for anyone who has suffered from a broken heart whether at the hands of a cruel parent, or a cruel supposed friend or lover.

Happy to recommend James Bennett’s Unrequited for those who enjoy a well written, moving narrative filled with tragedy, poignancy and more than a little sadness.
Molly Martin (31st July 2011)

Back to Top of Page
Column Ends

space