Love Starved

March 9, 2015
Micah Geller, a 20-something Minneapolis entrepreneur, goes looking for the illusion of love with an escort calling himself Angel in this debut from Fierro, who's making the leap from an apparently prolific fan-fiction career. Her roots are clear: the situation is slight and improbable, with the focus firmly on taking the reader spelunking in Micah's angst. The first quarter of the book encompasses the arrangement, experience, and postmortem of a single encounterâa chaste, one-time arrangement for dinner and a walk. The two are spotted on their "date," word gets back to Micah's family, and his romance-obsessed sister and mother demand to meet the dream man. Micah feels powerless to resist their hectoring and wonders how to sustain the charade with a man he barely knows. This is not for fans of alpha males and breathless adventure; it's a low-key bit of mood music with two sweet and vulnerable men who have much to learn about prioritizing love over lies.