Renewing Forever by Kelly Jensen

Narrated by Austin Jay

Renewing Forever is the second book in Kelly Jensen’s This Time Forever series. It stands alone quite well – although there are some mild spoilers for book one in it, the story itself is quite self-contained.

Franklin Tern grew up in small town Pennsylvania. His Uncle Robert and Aunt Madge owned and operated a resort, Bossen Hill, in the Poconos. Frank spent a lot of time there as a kid and met his best friend, Tom Benjamin, while playing in the woods when they were both pre-teens. Frankie and Tommy stayed close all through those years, until high school graduation when Frankie kissed Tommy. In response, Tommy punched Frankie in the nose and then they had nothing to do with one another for the next 30 years.

Now, Frankie has returned to Bossen Hill, a place he hasn’t been for all this time, to discuss the distribution of his recently deceased Uncle Robert’s estate. He is surprised to find that Tommy is there – though he prefers to be called Tom now – having acted as a manager for the past ten or so years at the resort and as caretaker of sorts for the widowed Robert.

Renewing Forever is mostly told in present day but there are a series of flashbacks to significant times in the boys’ childhood, commencing from the day they met to the day they parted. The punch in the nose is not about what I thought it would be about; both boys knew they were queer and had come out to one another years before then. Tom is bisexual and Frank is gay and there was never any homophobia or biphobia between them, thankfully. (You’ll have to listen to the story to find out exactly why Tom broke Frank’s nose.)

As Frank decides what to do with the resort and contemplates renovating it, he and Tom get close again. Both men never stopped loving one another; the heart part was never their problem. It takes quite a while to actually get to what was their problem though and Tom kept some of his secrets from Frank a little too long, I reckon.

The story itself, while steamy enough in parts, is fairly sweet actually, with little drama. It’s a quiet domestic-type romance about two men making their way back to each other after a 30-year separation.

There is a small side plot about an evil property developer who wants to buy the resort, knock it down and build ugly houses on it but it kind of fizzled out and it was never the focus of the story anyway.

The narrator, Austin Jay, is new to me. He gave Frank a lighter more upbeat voice, just very slightly camp, in keeping with his personality. Tom was far more serious and his tones were pitched lower. Most of the time. There were times however, particularly when there was an argument/tense discussion between the two men, that their voices were indistinguishable and it became very challenging to identify who was who. It wasn’t helped when a character was misnamed – in context it had clearly been Frank saying the thing not Tom but it took a while for me to work out. Fortunately, that latter only happened once or twice.

There were a couple of little mistakes as well where the wrong word was used or a word was mispronounced but for the most part the performance was smooth and technically well done. I certainly understood the emotion between the two men.

My favourite parts were actually the ones where the main characters were boys. Mr. Jay’s narration really shined then. The characters were easier to differentiate and more consistently voiced and he did a great job of injecting their youth into his performance.

Renewing Forever is a quieter romance. Don’t expect an action-packed story with high-octane drama. Think lazy rivers and hikes through the woods. Both of those things sound pretty good to me actually. I’ve had a little too much drama this year!

Kaetrin

---

Buy Renewing Forever by Kelly Jensen on Amazon