Vine (Island Love, #3), Fearne Hill

Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Self-Published

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Emotional, Humour, Series, Hurt/Comfort. *TW: Self-Harm, Mental Health, Bullying

Length: 266 Paes

Reviewer: Kazza

Blurb:

Caspian Pumkin-Watts is at the end of his rope. Facing a career crossroads, when he’s offered a chance to spend nine months filming a reality TV show on a French holiday island, he grabs it with both hands.

There are only two problems. His co-star is his ex-husband, and the producer is Caspian’s replacement in his ex-husband’s bed.

Max La Forge of La Forge Oyster Farms knows he’s peculiar. He has a penchant for blue rubber, for instance, and only drinks from a blue mug. He loves driftwood and seashells and hates being touched without his permission. Living alone in his little hexagonal house suits him perfectly, until his dog discovers a young Englishman unconscious on his driveway. Inexplicably drawn to the lonely, complicated stranger, Max garners courage to set out on his first ever romantic exploration.

Author’s note: as always, I write with a light touch, but please heed the trigger warnings for anxiety disorder and deliberate self-harm (on page).

Review:

I love Fearne Hill’s writing. It’s evocative, there’s always a depth to her characters in one way or another. A beauty to their backdrop, there’s always a sense of place. Her writing is also compassionate. Sadly, I didn’t read Oyster, book #2. It’s still a hard limit for me, the death of someone to cancer. Someday I’ll come back and read it because Eti was an MC in that book and is a secondary character in Vine. She was a mix of kind and pragmatic so I want to know her more, and I like reading books that have QUILTBAG representation, which Oyster does.

Caspian is part of a TV reality series, My Big Gay Adventure, with his ex husband, Leigh, and the producer, also Leigh’s current partner, Jonas. I’ll get my primary thoughts about Leigh and Jonas out of the way first – they’re complete and utter cuntwaffles, the pair of them.

Each series of My Big Gay Adventure, and this is season 6, explores different topics – learning to cook in a Parisian restaurant, to drive a formula 3 race car, to tap dance in a theatre production, this season is a vineyard restoration. Jonas thrives on the drama behind it, especially given that for the last couple of seasons Caspian and Leigh have been divorced and Leigh has slotted nicely into Jonas… well, he started that before they broke up. However, no one knows that Caspian and Leigh, who front the series, are divorced because they want to make it look like, ‘hey, see what a golden gay couple we are’. The show has done well for them but the ratings need a bit of a boost so Jonas wants more drama, and he knows exactly how to do that, using the dirty details of the breakdown of a relationship that leaves Jonas out, and he’s the dirtiest detail of them all. The sinister exploitation of someone’s mental health. Unfortunately, this means belting poor Caspian around emotionally.

Caspian is already on an emotional precipice because his professional and personal life are so enmeshed with Leigh. He’s living in the same small gatehouse while filming at the vineyard they’re going to fix up, he hears them fucking, is on the end of their escalating barbs, and the filming is for nine months. Leigh being in bed with Jonas, who doesn’t care about anyone but himself, gives carte blanche for Jonas to step on Caspian along the entire way for dollar signs, because Leigh is not just a poor excuse for a human being, he’s also a spineless opportunist.

I found Caspian a tad frustrating in the beginning because he moaned a little too much. He didn’t put that energy into any exit strategy that didn’t involve his ex husband. He was still so entwined with Leigh two years post their divorce, which means he tolerates a lot of rubbish in Leigh and Jonas’ combined toxic shadow. He’s looking at a new job opportunity with Leigh post this series. This lends itself to Caspian self-harming more. He has depression and anxiety, which he’s medicated for, but he’s given up on therapy. I understand the circularity of his mental health dynamic – can’t be with Leigh, can’t get a job without Leigh. What if, what if, what if?! I also get the contractual obligations that loom large over him – no pay and sued if he doesn’t complete the job, but the job may just burn him out entirely. Not great choices. It all equals capitulation. His flat in Chelsea won’t pay for itself. Feelings of being trapped are real. However, one saving grace for Caspian is they’ve hired a viniculturist, Emma, to help them with the vineyard restoration. She and Caspian strike up a friendship and Emma becomes an ally which makes the filming more bearable for him.

Emma patted my knee. She was a thoughtful, considerate person, all round. By contrast, I’d been a dreadful travelling companion. My failed marriage trailed me everywhere. The sense of betrayal and hurt had lost immediacy but become a steady diet.
Which is another way of saying I’d whined and bitched about spending nine months with Leigh and Jonas since we left London.

It’s amazing how it helps when you know your worth and your options, and speaking of, Max La Forge is an oyster farmer who works alongside his brother, Nico – book #2, Oyster – like their father before them. He lives in a gatehouse which is a twin of the other gatehouse where the ‘TV people’ are staying. Max is proud of his heritage, of the Île de Ré community, of his good teeth, of his blue waders, blue tractor, blue cups and walls, etc. He’s neurodivergent, on the Spectrum in this case, which usually has a few other diagnoses along with it but Max isn’t keen on talking about those because, as he sees it, he has his life together. And I’m not going to argue with that – a job, property, a three-legged dog, Noir, a snake – not a euphemism – nice teeth, seriously, for Max it’s a thing, a family, and people who he can count on if needed, especially Eti, his sister-in-law.

No two ways about it, Max is the beating heart of this story. He’s a big man, a strong man, with a keen interest in various and sundry. Caspian notices him at L’Escale, the local watering hole, before he actually meets him later.

The guy wasn’t ripped; there were no V-cuts or cheese-grater abs. Just pure, solid man muscle. The fabulously honest old-fashioned sort, my absolute favourite type, honed from a lifetime of meat-and-gravy dinners after a hard day’s graft. The sort with safe harbour tattooed across them.

How right Caspian’s first impression was: Safe harbour.

Max also has obsessions or hyper-fixations but he concentrates and works on not being too intense.

I’m not obsessing. Pale cheeks. I’m not obsessing. Pale cheeks. I sorted through the day’s haul of empty oyster shells, searching for the nicest, telling myself it was good distraction, even though I was choosing a shell to paint for him. Which was okay because I was only painting one. Not five or ten or twenty or 100.

He can have frustrated moments when he can’t process emotions in connection with words. You don’t need to be on the Spectrum to have that occur, just for the record. He would like someone to look after and love and he sees this in Caspian after a rather inauspicious meeting where Caspian is out for the count after seeing Kaa, Max’s snake – and, again, not a euphemism. Max picks Caspian up, takes him in, gives him a warm blanket and a hot chocolate, the latter being the answer to more than a few of life’s problems as far as Max is concerned. Max, you’ll get no argument from me about hot chocolate.

As they get to know one another, Max notices that Caspian cuts his skin, fresh cuts alongside old scars. There are reasonably quick but vivid descriptions of Caspian cutting with a razor on page. If that is problematic for you, avoid it. There is no judgement from Max, bless him, bless him, bless him, but Max doesn’t want Caspian to do that to himself anymore. Caspian can’t give any guarantees. However, Max’s voice, while it can be a big man’s voice, also brings a certainty and is definite. That reassures and calms the often-anxious Caspian. Max also talks about things he hopes will interest and then distract Caspian, it’s a pretty cluey plan. Max loves Caspian’s pale cheeks and his earlobes, also a thing, and simply knows that Caspian needs someone to be there for him, through good and bad times. Max knows he can be that person. He wants to make Caspian see how much he can help him and enjoy doing it. See how that will look. Caspian finds it comforting, mesmerising, and he isn’t quite as quick to self-harm when he allows the wonderful Max La Forge into his life.

There are nine months for the men to get to know one another. It’s a slowish burn. I was here for Max’s plan to make Caspian aware of Max’s boyfriend benefits. Caspian needed to learn that he has worth without celebrity or enmeshment or supposed to’s attached. Just lean into a kind bear of man who has great teeth (just give in to it) and who walks you safely to your door, all twenty-two metres away from his door. There is no magic dick. No love cures all for a single thing in this book, that’s good. However, there is a couple who fall in ‘maybe-love’ and that is beautiful. Max absolutely deserved his person to look after. To care about. To share life with. Caspian deserved connection outside his little bubble of shame and to allow someone to be in his corner.

“You are fighting a war in secret, la mer Caspienne,” I began. “And I know how hard that is because I’ve done it all my life. I used to try not to be peculiar. I used to try to fit in, to fight the thing in my head that made me weird. But I messed up all the time. I blurted things out from Colette’s list of hidden social curriculum violations. Or became so stressed I couldn’t say anything at all. Not speaking for months, years. Which was even worse.”

The writing of Vine is emotive – sometimes sad, sometimes anger-inducing, sometimes sexy, and sometimes there is humour or pure joy. It’s never condescending or depreciative. The characters give you so much to cheer for. A tone of hopelessness from Caspian changes to hopeful. Max is a constant. He knows what and who he wants. Yes, he has some unique ways about him, but, seriously, who the hell doesn’t? His big heart, uncomplicated care and attention are stabilising and delightful, both for Caspian and the reader.

For a long time, I just held him, squeezing out the sadness, imagining how happy I’d be if I could do this every day.

I know some readers felt there was no comeuppance for Leigh and Jonas, and I understand that, but I thought the way Caspian handled things was right. You do not have to have blazing retribution or a good dressing down to make a point. Caspian took ownership back and made his point in a collected up-yours, bye, Felicia way. It signalled an uptick in his life. Snaps for that.

Salt, series #1, is a fabulous book but Vine also gets 5 stars because I inhaled it and I love this world that Hill has created. These men and their family and friends. This series is about mental health meets back to basics kindness and love in an idyllic, calming part of the world called Île de Ré. 5 Stars!

My after note: I’d like to add two things I know. Because I can’t not say this-
1) cutting or self-harm is not solely the domain of teenagers.
2) there is help for people who use cutting/self-harm for ‘quick relief’ of emotional pain or as a form of self-punishment. It’s often known as a flight protector – like alcohol or substance overuse, eating disorders, gambling, etc. Often associated with trauma, present or past. If you self-harm, talk to someone, a therapist, who knows how to help you. That Max had felt quite resigned to cutting for the entirety of his life does not need to be the case.