What is The Strange Grey Everything?
Damien Giles hasn’t seen his husband in twelve years. Not since Carlisle left him on their honeymoon. All Damien got was his father-in-law telling him that Carlisle wasn’t coming back. (Twice.) And yet divorce papers never arrived.
Now Carlisle’s back in town for his brother’s wedding and keeps crossing Damien’s path. More baffling to Damien is how little Carlisle’s changed – and how much he still seems to care for Damien. Which, after twelve years of silence, is more than a little ridiculous.
As tensions rise and secrets resurface, Damien begins re-examining their relationship for all the things he missed and soon learns that there is far more to his husband and their history than he knows. But the more he learns about the reasons behind his husband’s disappearance, the more Damien realises that leaving him the first time might just have been the kindest thing Carlisle could have done for him.
Review
THE STRANGE GREY EVERYTHING by Rebecca Crunden is my pick for my LGBTA novel for pride month. That’s not until June but I’m probably going to pick this one anyway so why not announce it today. The premise is it’s a romance novel about a young man named Damien who begins a forbidden romance with a supernatural named Carlisle. I’ve heard this described as a YA novel but while the characters start as teens, they age up by about twelve years and even get married halfway through. That isn’t a spoiler, by the way, since the marriage is actually the fulcrum of the plot’s beginning.
Basically, this is very much a supernatural romance where a poor mundane teen meets a supernatural and they fall in love. We’ve seen hundreds of them before and will see many more in the future but I like the depiction. There’s a lot of mystery happening from the beginning to the end not just from figuring out what sort of supernatural Carlisle is (though the cover gives a pretty big hint) but also what sort of world they’re living in.
The heart of the book is the romance between Damien and Carlisle with the two characters playing well off one another. Carlisle is the educated wealthy aristocrat and Damien is someone who is significantly more down to Earth. The primary conflict emerges when they finally get married, something that would have been impossible in earlier times, but Damien proceeds to find himself abandoned after the honeymoon. Carlisle’s reasons are unclear and Damien’s only informed by his father-in-law that Carlisle is not coming back.
Very Gothic stuff.
This is definitely the kind of book that fits a specific taste. It’s about two people kept apart by society, true love conquering all, and a bunch of allusions to how dangerous as well as forbidden their love is. It’s also very much set up for sequels and what I’d consider somewhat low stakes in terms of action or antagonists. There’s some things I didn’t quite believe like Damien never really tried to move on or that their voices don’t change much over twelve years but this is a minor flaw in the grand scheme of things.
Overall, I enjoyed it and I think that people looking for a cozy supernatural romance would enjoy it as well.
