Discussion for original M/M works, both professionally published and free online.
Sweetwater by Lisa Henry
On Author's Website
On GoodReads
Blurb:
Wyoming Territory, 1870.
Elijah Carter is afflicted. Most of the townsfolk of South Pass City treat him as a simpleton because he’s deaf, but that’s not his only problem. Something in Elijah runs contrary to nature and to God. Something that Elijah desperately tries to keep hidden.
Harlan Crane, owner of the Empire saloon, knows Elijah for what he is—and for all the ungodly things he wants. But Crane isn’t the only one. Grady Mullins desires Elijah too, but unlike Crane, he refuses to push the kid.
When violence shatters Elijah’s world, he is caught between two very different men and two devastating urges: revenge, and despair. In a boomtown teetering on the edge of a bust, Elijah must face what it means to be a man in control of his own destiny, and choose a course that might end his life . . . or truly begin it for the very first time.
Content notes: homophobia, ableism, dub-con, D/s




Oh god, this is one of my absolute favorites! I'm not a huge mega-angst person, but I love historicals--and I Lisa Henry is a big exception to my 'low angst' tendencies, because she's amazing. My feels. All my feels.
Hah, I tend to devour anything by Lisa Henry because she seems to have interests similar to mine. She's one of my go-to "dark" writers.
I'm just about to start DARKER SPACE so... I feel you. (Dark Space was epic!)
I knew I had books that weren't set in England! So have a historical cowboy novel for this week's theme.
Fair warning: this story is pretty dark before it gets better. But rest assured that it does get better in the end, with a relatively happy ending. Or something that resembles one.
I did enjoy this work, but I like my stuff dark and fucked up, which this one has in spades. Elijah is pretty "closeted," as it were, and happy to bend to Harlan if it means he'll get fucked in return. He doesn't know that there are better ways for a relationship to be conducted, especially since he's lived all his life with the guilt of being a "bad son" to his adoptive father.
There's a certain level of hurt comfort in the novel, where the entire time you're hoping for Elijah to finally wake up and see that he has alternatives, that he doesn't need to keep going back to Harlan.
My main criticism, iirc, was that the ending seemed to happen a bit quickly. I probably wanted more time reading about Grady and Elijah to be happy together, after all the horrible stuff they had to get through to get there!