Vespertine is a romantic themed gay novel by Leta Blake and Indra Vaughn that was released in 2015. This is the second book I have read written by Leta Blake. The previous story was Mr. Frosty Pants: A Christmas Romance (unrelated to Vespertine). Vespertine revolves around the characters of Nicky and Jazz. The two grew up together as best friends through high school. As they grew older, they developed feelings towards each other.
In their teenage years, they secretly dated having fallen in love with each other. When outside influences pushed them apart, they both began to believe that the other never really loved them. Which lead them both to heartbreak which neither ever recovered from.
Now in the present, Nicky is known as Nico Blue a member of the famous band, Vespertine. Two of his bandmates and he are addicted to drugs and it has been getting worse. Their record producers make the situation worse by enabling their habit by providing them dealers to keep them high, so they can continue to work the nonstop performance schedule. That is until the three of them collapse during a concert.
Now Nicky has returned home to stay with his parents while he recovers and tries to stay sober and rediscover who he is without the influence of drugs.
Jazz, known to the town as Father Jasper, became a Catholic priest. Nicky is no longer part of his life and he has devoted himself to his faith and the nonprofit home for LGBTQ foster kids. He is at constant odds with the church leaders who find the exclusiveness of the foster home to be bad for the church’s image. They are constantly on Jasper to change whom it serves and to start including straight kids. Jasper refuses knowing that doing so would make the LGBTQ kids feel unsafe.
The moment Nicky and Jazz see each other all the old emotions return. Their breakup left many unanswered questions and caused them both to make decisions they may not have if they still had the love of each other.
Nicky struggles with how Jazz hurt him emotionally, and his anger and sadness come back to the surface. This response adds strain to his already difficult attempt to remain sober. While Jazz begins to question his commitment to the church, he does not want to quit being a priest and worries that if he did it would leave his foster kids in a dangerous situation.
This story was beautiful and an amazing read. One of the things I loved about it was they didn’t immediately run into each other’s arms. There was time spent with them rediscovering each other and getting to know each other again. Neither had spoken to the other in years and they realized they no longer knew the person that was standing in front of them.
There is a moment of tragedy in the story and even though I assumed it to be a red herring, the emotion that was experienced by the characters was still felt hard. I found myself in tears for the last few chapters. This is a great book if you want a missed romance getting a second chance. The story is a stand-alone and I assume we won’t see a sequel to it. But it would be lovely if there was, so we would be able to see their life post this story.
Vespertine on Amazon
Mr. Frosty Pants on Amazon
Leta Blake on Twitter
Indra Vaughn on Twitter
Esteban Q Mathieus 