Cliffhanger LGBT Fiction/Multicultural Romance
JMS Books LLC
December 30, 2020
209
Two young men, a mysterious silver bowl, and a shuttered Victorian mansion steeped in the sadness of a family curse ...
Alex White and Xander Browne are newly-hired curators in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The rediscovery of a long-forgotten silver bowl covered in Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions sends the pair on a hunt for clues as to why it was made and by whom. Their search begins to unravel the secrets of the bowl’s origins as well as its connection to the Bencliffe family, whose centuries-old history is darkened by a legacy of madness and suicide.
What begins as a professional friendship for Alex and Xander quickly turns personal as the two find their lives increasingly intertwined in unanticipated ways. Far beyond a mere curatorial research project, the story of the Bencliffe bowl takes on the aura of destiny as Alex and Xander make discoveries together that turn their world upside down.
From neglected archives in New York and Boston to the shadowed corners of Cliffhanger, the turreted Bencliffe mansion looming over the Hudson River, the truth emerges, forcing Alex and Xander to wonder if, perhaps, their meeting might not have been a coincidence after all.
Reviewed by Gloria Lakrtiz
Sr. Reviewer and Chair of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Ulysses Dietz gifted me with this book, and I must admit Cliffhanger is what I would expect from this young man: meticulous, straightforward and intriguing. The story is set in New York City, a place familiar to me as well. As the story unfolds, I ‘see it’ rather than read it with the author’s bold descriptions.
Two young men, a mysterious silver bowl, and a shuttered Victorian mansion steeped in the sadness of a family curse …
The reader is immersed into the mystery as two young men meet, each beginning new jobs as curators in different sections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Alex White from a very wealthy NY family, and Alexander Browne who also shares an upper class heritage meet and are soon trying to unravel the secret of a forgotten inscribed bowl Xander finds in his department’s possession.
While friendship grows and their relationship changes and deepens to more, we follow with them finding information about the bowl going back centuries with Alex’s family and then ironically twists through Xanders. Mr. Dietz takes the reader thru a legacy of family madness and suicide as the young men find their lives are intertwined before birth, and the bowl is part of their destiny.
So many secrets are ferreted out; new families are discovered just moments away. Homes of the present and past are described vividly along with the new Mansion Cliffhanger, its opulence and grandeur. All through the story, Alex and Xander grow and realize the possibility that possibly their meeting was always meant to be, not just a coincidence.
The story of the bowl and its secrets of the dark unhappiness it brought was a magical tale, told by a wonderful storyteller…..Thank you Ulysses, for letting us see these two have a long and happy life…….a great read…..and a what happens now ending……