Fiction Monday: Bleeding Hearts – A Gay Teen Mystery with a bit of Romance

Aside from reading LGBT related books, one of my favorite reads is mystery fiction. I’ve read pretty much everything that’s out there by all the big names – past and present – in the genre. Now, since my coming out, I’ve developed a bit of an affinity for out gay and lesbian mystery authors and, especially, for out authors that portray LGBT characters in their stories or straight authors that portray them if they do it well. I’m seeing more and more mainstream mystery fiction that involves LGBT characters and it’s pretty exciting.

One area of fiction that has always focused on a diversity of characters is fiction written about teenagers or geared for the teenage reader. Mystery/thriller fiction written for teens has come a long, long way from my youth when I had to be content with the likes of the nerdy Encyclopedia Brown and his band of less intelligent friends or the homogenized Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew! I think now that Nancy’s friend “George” batted for team lesbian but, I digress… Anyway, now we get really meaty stories with well developed characters of diverse backgrounds and plots that draw you in.

I admit, I read mystery fiction meant for teenagers from time to time. I do have one living in my house after all and he does read. He leans more toward horror/thriller than mystery/thriller but he’s a good excuse to buy all sorts of books I’d otherwise look silly buying! He’s not a fan of combining horror/thriller fiction with gay fiction so I buy that for me and play it like it’s for him…That’s one of the benefits of being a parent.

The nice thing about books written for the 15-18 set is that they tend to be quick reads. Though “book length” they’re shorter with shorter chapters and faster pacing than more adult novels. A teenagers attention span is only so long and there are far too many other things vying for their attention. Getting my son to stop texting long enough to read a few pages of a book is a feat sometimes and he likes to read! Typically, he’ll text and read and watch television.

A book I picked up recently that I really enjoyed was Bleeding Hearts a Killian Kendall Mystery by author Josh Aterovis. This is a coming of age/coming out story for a young man, Killian Kendall that finds him falling for Seth, the new boy in school. It does not last though as Seth is killed in what the police are pegging as a mugging gone wrong. Killian knows better and he sets out to prove it and puts himself in danger in the process. During the course of the book we witness Killian coming out to himself and coming out to his family and the consequences of that. Killian does find some romance as the story progresses and he does solve the mystery but you’ll just have to read the book to see how it all turns out!