CBR16 Bingo: Vintage
Derrick is a screw up, or at least he thinks he is. Laid off from his logging job, he moved back home to his parents’ house, which is also a B&B in the small Pacific Northwest town of Bluewater Bay. Losing his parents in a car accident was devastating, and watching their dreams crumble beneath his incompetent fingers is too much to bear. Derrick barely maintains the B&B and relies heavily on Jim, his ex, for emotional support and occasional dog sitting duties for his deceased mother’s pet terrier, Victoria Beckham.
When Ginsberg, an out-of-work injured stuntman, rents a room at the B&B for a month, Derrick decides that he’s had enough. He wants to let the B&B crumble and wash his hands of it entirely. Unfortunately, Ginsberg wants to help Derrick rehabilitate the inn, and dives headfirst into improvements.
I can’t remember where I got the recommendation for this book. It follows the very standard grumpy/sunshine relationship trope. However, there is more to it than a relentlessly positive love interest and a fearful, cagey hermit.
Derrick is out in his hometown but closeted when he’s out in the forest on a logging job. He remained closeted for all of his adolescence because the teasing he got about being the son of B&B owners scarred him. After being asked if he put on a maids uniform and cleaned the house using a feather duster, he pushed back hard, overcompensating by becoming a super-macho mountain man.
Ginsberg’s job as a stuntman did not provide any sort of financial security. He is trans and is alienated from his family. When an injury on the set of the local soap opera Wolf’s Landing leaves him unable to work, he finds the cheapest accommodation available.
Derrick is immediately attracted to Ginsberg, but is convinced that the “city boy” will leave as soon as he can go back to his own life. Ginsberg likes Derrick, but fears that his macho bullshit will keep him from being open the way Ginsberg needs him to be.
This book really surprised me. While Derrick is infuriating in a predictable way, Ginsberg is lovely. He has boundaries for a reason, and refuses to put up with Derrick’s fear. Once Derrick finally gets a clue, it is not all smooth sailing. They have to work for their relationship.
For this year’s CBR16 Book Bingo Reading Challenge I’m choosing albums from the 1970s that helped raise me. When I think of Vintage, I think of antiques, kitsch, filmy curtains, harvest gold and avocado-colored appliances, and dark wood paneling. For Derrick, who lives alone, isolated, in a crumbling B&B – the outdated shrine to his parents’ dreams – I think of Rainy Days and Mondays, a single off of The Carpenters 1971 album, Carpenters.