Like a Bird
by Laurie Varga
From debut author Varga comes a dark romance novel about a reclusive investor and the two women who command his attention.
Gareth Renaut is the type of recluse wealthy enough to pursue his interests no matter the circumstances. It’s not that Gareth doesn’t interact with people—he’s aided by a dedicated assistant as well as a pet wolf named Wisdom—it’s that even those closest to him remain at a distance. As his longtime friend Louis says, “Nobody knows you, Gare.” When Louis drops by via helicopter to persuade Gareth to join him for a night on the town, Gareth is reluctant though ultimately compliant. Such compliance nets him not only a quickie with a voluptuous woman named Kitty—“She pushed harder into his groin, and he grabbed her thigh with one hand and her ass with the other”—but also an encounter with a one-armed girl of 19 whom Gareth decides to keep in a cage, at least for a little while. It is a lifestyle with which Gareth is familiar, though he apparently has not engaged in it for some time. “He hadn’t planned on jumping back into this game again. At least, not so soon,” readers are told. The girl, who calls herself Sky, may like “books and dogs,” but her motivation in life remains mysterious, particularly as she views her current situation with a large degree of nonchalance. As the perceptive reader might suspect, a love triangle of sorts develops among Gareth, Sky, and Kitty, but where exactly will it end? With his home gym—Gareth is, after all, “a glossy, muscular machine”—well-stocked library, and opaque past, Gareth is certainly a familiar, by now even dull, archetype. What keeps the book moving is the lingering question of his ultimate plans for these two women. When troubled histories are uncovered, there is certainly a lot to discuss between semiviolent sexual encounters. As Kitty explains to her roommate, “Sometimes he scares me in a fun way and then sometimes he’s just…too intense.”
Frequently sexual if not always sensual; those entranced by such a libertine setup will be eager to see how it all plays out.