The Longest Night

[3.5 stars]
A delightful short story!

This is a soft, quite romance between two trans men that have been sharing letters for six years that finally get to meet in person. Of course, it has the additionally unneeded side plot of possible wolves in the forest and one of the two - Richard, the newbie to the country - having nightmares about being watched by it. And a sex scene that happened quite out of the blue and I would have been happier if it had focused more on the actual romance instead of feeling like the couple were just working towards the sex the entire time.

Finally, it desperately needs a copyeditor to take a pass as there are wrong words used, misplaced and missing commas and words added to odd places in sentences.

I read this without reading the reviews so was surprised that both characters in this book are transmen in a post-war 1940s setting. While this is probably exciting to a lot of readers as it's a very unique premise, it gives me a lot of history questions about the realism of the plot. Richard Morton being able to hold a long-term position as the manager of a high class downtown hotel without the staff and owners noticing his differences and without medical transitioning seems a little suspicious. If you get past that point, it is a sweet story of found romance between two people with a common life.
There were a ton of errors in the copy I was reading including weird sentence structure that made it very difficult to get through. Additionally, trans stories are not something I'm interested in or can relate to so if it wasn't so short, I definitely would have tapped out pretty fast.

This is a lovely and atmospheric romance and I'm so glad I read it.

I've had the experience of meeting long-time long-distance friends, and this story captured the hopeful awkwardness of that situation very well. It's also very evocative of the time and place and I liked all the historical details, such as how Richard and Tobias first started writing to each other.

Mainly, though, the cozy cottage really feels like a safe haven for Richard and Tobias, and I loved seeing them find peace together there. It's a very good holiday read.