Date of Publication: June 20, 2016
Genre and Themes: LGBTQI, Romance, Fantasy, Folklore
Format: 159 pages, ebook
Publisher: FoxTales Publications
Cover Artist: Harper Fox
ISBN: 9781910224557
Characters: Priddy, Merou
Blurb: What doesn’t kill you sometimes makes you wish it had…
Priddy’s a lost soul in a part of Cornwall the tourists don’t get to see. He’s young, sweet-natured and gorgeous, but that’s not enough to achieve escape velocity from his deadbeat village and rotten family life.
He’s a drifter and a dreamer, and self-preservation isn’t his strong suit. An accidental overdose of a nightclub high leaves him fractured, hallucinating, too many vital circuits fried to function in a tough world. When a friend offers him winter work in a lighthouse – nothing to do but press the occasional button and keep the windows clean – he gratefully accepts.
His plans to live quietly and stay out of trouble don’t last very long. A ferocious Atlantic storm washes a stranger to Priddy’s lonely shore. For a shipwrecked sailor, the new arrival seems very composed. He’s also handsome as hell, debonair, and completely unconcerned by Priddy’s dreadful past.
Priddy has almost given up on the prospect of any kind of friendship, and a new boyfriend – let alone a six-foot beauty with eerily good swimming skills – out of the question entirely. But Merou seems to see undreamed-of promise in Priddy, and when they hit the water together, Priddy has to adapt to Merou’s potentials too, and fast. His lover from the sea might be a mere mortal from the waist up, but south of that line…
Far-flung west Cornwall has a hundred mermaid tales. Priddy’s loved the stories all his life. Now he has to face up to a wildly impossible truth. Merou’s life depends upon his courage and strength, and if Priddy can only find his way in the extraordinary world opening up all around him, all the ocean and a human lifetime needn’t be enough to contain the love between merman and mortal.
***
Let me say right off the bat that this one is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Do I even need to write more after that? Hah! Okay, let’s do it but tis’ really going to be a short one. Okay, so at first I wasn’t sure about the blurb because it obviously involves a “creature of the sea” – a merman no less! I was thinking – oh no, this is going to be corny as hell! But let me tell you why I always say Harper Fox is a genius storyteller. Reading ‘Priddy’s Tale,’ she made me believe everything about Priddy – his struggles from his abusive father, his ‘drugging’ incident, his lonesomeness and finally meeting his one true love – Merou! She made me believe it all. Ugh. I’m getting choked. Oookay… Harper Fox if you must know is a whimsical storyteller so this story is basically no different from most of her stories in terms of her skills in world and character building. Her apt description of the rolling sea surrounding the lonesomeness of Priddy is so crisp I could almost taste salt in my tongue. Hah! I know right? This is how good a writer Harper Fox is. So if you’re hesitant to read this just like me in the beginning, you really shouldn’t be. It’s really good and I know that I will be rereading this one very soon! I cannot recommend this highly enough!
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
About The Author
Harper Fox is an M/M author with a mission. She’s produced six critically acclaimed novels in a year and is trying to dispel rumours that she has a clone/twin sister locked away in a study in her basement. In fact she simply continues working on what she loves best– creating worlds and stories for the huge cast of lovely gay men queuing up inside her head. She lives in rural Northumberland in northern England and does most of her writing at a pensioned-off kitchen table in her back garden, often with blanket and hot water bottle.
She lives with her SO Jane, who has somehow put up with her for a quarter of a century now, and three enigmatic cats, chief among whom is Lucy, who knows the secret of the universe but isn’t letting on. When not writing, she either despairs or makes bread, specialities foccacia and her amazing seven-strand challah. If she has any other skills, she’s yet to discover them.
PADDYLAST INC. 