by Shortcake Cunningham (link)
Genre romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OFC
Length: 2 parts and epilogue
Status Completed
This is easily the shortest story I’ll ever review here. Something about the intense disclaimer, marking it as a story written by an older fan, intrigued me. The fact that young fans evidently still took to it, in spite of that, really intrigued me.
As it turns out, that “older fan” — or at least the character she’s created presumably in her own image — is the same age I am now. That puts things into a strange sort of perspective. The chapters, also, are quite long, so three parts total is fairly deceiving.
The first part is deceptively simple, the first few bits of it centered around Ellen, the older woman, struggling to send Taylor an email and fantasizing while listening to Speechless. The fantasy is minimal, almost restrained in description, but it works. The theme of red candy is brought up over and over, with the chapter ending as Ellen is finally able to feed Taylor a piece of the treat. While it works with the author’s style, I wouldn’t have minded seeing a little bit more of Taylor and Ellen’s relationship developing and less of Ellen and her friend Caff’s now outdated indie cred splashed across the screen.
The second part skips even farther ahead, only glossing over the scandal that causes Ellen, Taylor and Caff to run off to France. Not surprisingly, given the title The Grapes of Caff, it focuses much more on her than on Taylor or Ellen. One of Caff’s favorite musicians, Alex James of Blur, even makes an appearance.
In the epilogue, presented as a news article, we learn the future of Hanson — one that’s possibly farther from the truth than any other one I’ve seen presented in an old hanfic. Taylor’s far too cynical for my liking, and the author’s obvious Britishness comes across in his speech more here than anywhere else in the story. While the first part had great potential, something got lost later on. Throughout, Shortcake seems far too caught up in how much older and more mature than her subject she is, and to someone that exact age now, it’s pretty laughable. There’s a good story here, but it got a bit lost in the author’s pretentiousness.
Review by Bethany (website)