Cutting Out by Meredith Shayne

Title: Cutting Out
Author: Meredith Shayne
Purchase at Bottom Drawer Publications
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: Mumson Designs
Genre: contemporary
Length: 222 pages
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf

A twenty-year veteran of the shearing shed, Aussie Shane Cooper loves his job, and the home he’s made for himself in New Zealand. If he’s a little lonely, he’s got good mates to keep his spirits up. When a hot, cocky young shearer named Lachlan Moore catches his eye at a competition, he’s content to look but not touch, knowing the young man is out of his league.

Lachie wouldn’t mind a piece of Shane, but the gorgeous gun shearer from Australia is soon forgotten when the Christchurch earthquake hits, and tragedy strikes Lachie’s family. Lachie deals with it the best he can, cutting himself off from all he knows. A year later and he’s back in the shearing shed, out of practice and lacking confidence. That Shane’s there to watch him flounder doesn’t help his nerves.

As Lachlan struggles to re-acclimatise, Shane can’t resist giving him a hand to get back on his feet. As they move from friends to something more, Shane finds himself wanting to know everything he can about Lachie. But Lachie’s got secrets he desperately wants to keep, and when things come to a head, those secrets might just mean the end of them before they’ve truly begun.

New Zealand’s half a world away, known to most of us as spectacular scenery with hobbits and a vague idea of Maoris and sheep. Meredith Shayne’s added detail and dimension and given life to those ideas.

There’s a very, very slow burn between Lachie, a rising star in the shearing world, and Shane, the acknowledged master. It’s not just competition, these men keep an entire industry moving, they’re an essential link between wooly animals and winter coats. It’s a world Lachie loves, and hates leaving.


The earthquake in Christchurch changes Lachie’s life and family forever, forcing him to step up to being the head of his family and the only one holding things together. He can’t manage this out on the shearing circuit, so he does what he must, and since Shane’s only a broad grin after a competition, any thought of pursuing more goes by the wayside. Once he’s back on the circuit, things can change.

The author seems to have used two real events as her basis, which is great for verisimilitude but may have had an adverse effect on the timeline, because a lot of time passes without much changing. (Christchurch is in a seismic hotbed and if you want to see a really cool demonstration look here: http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/february )(Yeah, I look stuff like this up if the book intrigues me.) The sheep-shearing cycle may also have played into the timeline issues.

Lachie’s Maori, or part Maori, and the culture does come into play. While his mother is understandably devastated, she also retreats, and is allowed to remain in retreat, way past grieving and into self indulgence. I had high hopes for change after Jade and the other women from the marae came to visit, but alas, no. The result is a story that encompasses a lot of time but where plot and relationship advance at a glacial pace.

The writing is smooth enough to take some of the sting out of the pace, and once the guys do get into bed, they’re in bed a lot, but not talking. Not even the barest bones of something as important as “I have family to take care of,” which boots this into Big Misunderstanding territory.

Frankly, I was ready to slap Lachie and his entire family just to get their attention. Ngaire and Kenny, his sister and brother, read much younger than their stated ages and very helpless. While the mother’s depression was understandable, and may be a real course for some people, she lost reader-sympathy fast for essentially abandoning her kids for most of the long timeline. The whole seemed like artificially inflating the reasons for Lachie to avoid a relationship and to feel guilty for even wanting one.

Shane and Lachie do eventually expose their hearts to one another, and then cut to the HEA, which accentuated the timeline issues for me. I can’t help but think events could have been better balanced. Shane’s family issue had little foreshadowing, and came out in a rush. His help and encouragement without favoritism in the shearing shed was lovely, and he seemed like a really nice guy, if not quite as fleshed out as Lachie.

Still, this was an interesting look into an industry we mostly don’t think about, with two guys who catch at the heart in spite of or because of their flaws. More June/November than May/December makes for an experience gap that isn’t hugely wide, wide enough that I believed Shane felt too old to be a choice for a twenty-five year old in his prime, and was really wrong. These guys will be good together. 3.75 marbles

Torquere Charity Sips Review Set #7

Still working my way down the alphabet of authors who contributed to the benefit campaign for Doctors Without Borders.

The Pavilion by Tracy Rowan

Eliot is a doctor who knows he can't save everyone, but that doesn't keep him from letting guilt and grief shut down his life when his lover dies. He leaves everything behind, moves to a new city, and resolves to live a quiet, solitary life. He finds his way back to a medical practice after a few years, but even the satisfaction he gets from his work doesn't help heal his broken heart.

Enter Jamie, a younger man who works at the local diner and has ambitions to become a chef. He chooses Eliot as a guinea pig for his cooking, and as the object of his affection. Eliot's head tells him to send Jamie away with a polite refusal, but his heart is aching to open up to Jamie. Can an impromptu dinner in Eliot's garden be just the right prescription to get Eliot back on his feet?
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This was fun, Jamie knows what he wants, how to get it, using food and humor as bait. But Jamie's not prepared for what passes for a Brit's sense of humor, either. Be sure not to have liquid in your mouth when you get to the negotiations, right about here:

"That's a little cold, but I guess it'll do. Eliot, I like you a lot, but hardly enough to do the whole I-love-you thing, and if I said different, you'd figure I was just lying to get you horizontal."

Cause what comes next will make you snort.

The time/location thing was a little clunky, it's told in flashback/flashforward, but Eliot's backstory matters. Jamie's ethnicity gets played up a lot, (having a part-American Indian cooking curry comes across muddled) but seems to be mostly for a way to have objections to starting a relationship, not because he couldn't be anything else and still be in this story.

These two look like they could manage an HEA.


Borders by Kathryn Scannell

Hooking up with a stranger in a bar is hard for a shy young doctor, but it’s the only option when not staying in the closet might get you killed. So Kevin has taken his first long weekend off from his job in Gaza City, and headed for Tel Aviv to find some action. Things are looking promising when he meets a handsome Israeli who seems just as interested as he is.

But it’s not so simple. David is an Israeli soldier, and Kevin may have noticed too much about a sensitive operation David was part of in Gaza City a few weeks ago. Is David’s interest genuine, or just a trick to get Kevin alone to find out what he knows?
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I found the back away/come together/back away/ come together part of this story very authentic feeling - it isn't a simple situation on either man's part. Kevin has every reason to doubt David's direct approach and sincerity.

A couple things felt rushed; David's making a beeline for Kevin felt like kind of bad craft for a secret ops guy, it triggered the recognition, which seemed a bit premature from across the room even so. One part of the sex went by in a blink, too.

The setting is unique in my reading and feels real and gritty, and the feeling of living in a war zone was clear. I liked this story a lot, but would have liked it more had a couple things come about half a page later than they did.


General question for the universe -- why do authors assume that men who aren't in relationships aren't doing anything by themselves?

Eyes Wide Shut By Meredith Shayne

Adam Taylor liked working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. He didn’t even mind the tiny outback town in Western Australia where he was based. If the downside was doing the regular clinic at the Mount Keith nickel mine where his mining engineer ex-boyfriend Chris Barker worked, well, he’d coped with worse. When a visit from Chris leads to an unexpected encounter, Adam can’t help but hope for things to get back on track.

If Chris couldn’t keep away from Adam, the least he could do was make sure that his redneck workmates never found out. It was better for everyone that way. At least, that’s what he’d thought, until Adam got caught in a mine cave in and Chris thought he was dead. After that, being outed didn’t seem so important anymore. Chris just hoped he’d get a chance to tell Adam that.
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I liked this story enough to find a map and figure out where Meekatharra and Perth are relative to each other. Okay, ignorant American here. Another story with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, but a totally different flavor and focus, so not repetitive.

In the first heady encounter between Chris and Adam that we see, they are all over each other, but nothing about why they broke up has changed so it doesn't seem all that hopeful, and all the fighting that follows doesn't move them along, so frustrating, cause they obviously love each other. I think Chris has some legitimate concerns, too, which I didn't see Adam taking so seriously. Dropping rocks on his head did knock some ideas loose for Chris, I just wish that Adam had budged, too.


Buy one or all of the Healing Hearts Charity Sips, benefitting Doctors Without Borders, here.