The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Sapphire Spring (Sapphire Cove 2)
C. Travis Rice (Christopher Rice)
Blue Box Press, 2022
Five stars

Christopher Rice uses a pen name to produce this series of romances set in a fictional resort hotel on the Orange County coast in California. Although he (sort of) disguises his name for this “lesser” form of literature, he does not stint in the writing or the storytelling. He puts his heart into this series, and it shows. It’s even better than the first book, “Sapphire Sunset.”

“Sapphire Spring” has all the necessary tropes for a classic m/m romance (closeted jock and shy nerd, enemies-to-lovers plot arc). This book is beautifully written and emotionally powerful. I was surprised to find myself in tears in several places—but also laughing out loud in several other places.

Naser (na-SAIR) Kazemi is the head of accounting for the Sapphire Cove resort hotel, which is run by his best friend, Connor Harcourt. At a party thrown at the hotel by his sister Pari to launch a new fashion line, Naser runs into Mason Worther, the high-school football player who bullied him mercilessly and left deep emotional scars. Mason ends up drunk and falls into the hotel pool, and Naser is assigned to drive him back to his Newport Beach house. There he manages to lock himself in Mason’s laundry room without his phone, after Mason passes out upstairs.

While there are aspects of a screwball comedy here, there are a lot of dark subjects that drive the emotional tone of the story: alcoholism and recovery, bullying and sexual assault, cultural identity and racism. Rice pushes and digs, never hesitating to touch a painful nerve or broach an uncomfortable truth. He loves his characters, even the secondary ones (Naser’s mother, Mason’s father, as just two examples). He also throws in a couple of plot twists that shocked me completely—and made the plot richer and more emotionally layered.

We learn a surprising amount about being Persian in California, focusing on the substantial community of Iranians forced to flee their homeland and make a new life in the USA. There’s also a plotline about the caustic power of toxic masculinity empowered by great wealth. It is not a hearts-and-flowers kind of romance, but it is very much a story about the healing power of love.

C. Travis Rice does his homework, and respects his readers.