Into This River I Drown

TJ Klune
Completed 10/20/2025, Reviewed 10/21/2025
5 stars

This book drudged up a lot of daddy issues for me.  It features a young man whose father dies in a suspicious car accident and retreats into rage and self-pity for five years.  My relationship with my father wasn’t like the main character’s, but it was a trigger for many feelings I had many years ago.  The intensity translated into a powerful and emotional experience, much more so than I would have expected.  The first hundred pages or so were a little rough, but then the gay romance kicks into high gear and the book becomes an action-packed mystery.  This book won Klune his 2013 Lammy for Gay Romance, but it was so much more than just a rural gay romantasy.  It was an emotional powerhouse and murder mystery with a guardian angel thrown in.  It was awesome.

Benji is a twenty-one-year-old living in the small town of Roseland in south central Oregon.  He runs the convenience store and gas station that was left to him by his late father, Big Eddie.  Their relationship was incredibly close.  Benji came out to Big Eddie when he was fifteen and his father loved and supported him in it.  Since Big Eddie’s suspicious accident, Benji has been bitter and angry, keeping everyone at a distance, including his mother and three aunts.  One day, while picking at his emotional scabs at the river where his father’s car went off the road, an angel falls from the sky.  Calliel is the guardian angel of Roseland but became corporeal because of Benji’s prayers for help.  Cal loves Benji unconditionally and fiercely guards him.  Eventually, Benji falls for Cal, though Benji can’t admit it.  In the meantime, it becomes clear that there is a conspiracy to obfuscate the circumstances of Big Eddie’s death.  Benji starts putting the pieces together, threatening his life and that of his family as well as his relationship with Cal.  In addition, there are consequences when an angel takes on human form that may punch another hole in Benji’s soul.

One of the things that always gets me about Kune’s books is that his characters are so believable.  Benji is relatable in his bitterness at his father’s death, especially after feeling total love and acceptance by him.  It strains his relationship with everyone, including his mother.  His only friend is an old man who comes into the store everyday to shoot the breeze.  When Cal appears and explains his love and purpose, it brings Benji into a state of complete cognitive dissonance.  Benji is angry Cal didn’t save his dad, he wants revenge on his father’s killers, and swears he’ll be alone the rest of his life.  However, he begins to fall for Cal and can’t quite handle it, never admitting he loves the angel.  However, Cal becomes the hit of the town.  Everyone falls for Cal’s sweet nature, not knowing he’s an angel, and roots for Benji and Cal to become boyfriends.  Cal is a little unbelievable but he is an angel after all.  So I had no problem suspending disbelief of his actions.  

One of the star characters is Benji’s Aunt Nina, a woman with a variation of Down Syndrome.  She’s somewhat simple but at the same time, sees more than the average human.  She doesn’t know Cal is an angel exactly but has a deep insight into and love for him.  She and the old man from the store are the only characters that can knock some sense into Benji.  Nonetheless, Benji fights against all the love and advice Nina and the old man, and everyone else in town has for him.  

The suspect characters are pretty well drawn.  They’re a little standard issue but do come across as realistic.  Since the story is told in first person present, we’re always in Benji’s head.  We only see the sheriff and his cronies through Benji.  We also know that Cal growls around the sheriff, which is a good indicator of what Benji already suspects.  

The book is a little long with a lot of time being spent on Benji’s internal struggle.  There were times I thought, “Enough already.”  But to be honest, when presented with that level of cognitive dissonance, it does take a lot of time to let go of preconceived and self-destructive notions.  We are there first hand to watch the slow, normal transformation.  This is a theme in many of Klune’s novels, especially the earlier ones, like The Bones Beneath My Skin and Wolfsong.  The main characters have to suspend disbelief and then overcome their own prejudices and behaviors.  The other big theme in his books is allowing oneself to be loved.  Most of us think we’re not worthy of being loved.  It takes a lot of work to overcome this and allow people to enter our lives and care for us.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  Despite a rocky beginning where Benji was not very likable, it quickly morphed into an emotional rollercoaster.  I read it each night until my eyes hurt and didn’t want to leave the characters in the end.  I thought it funny that this won for Gay Romance Novel.  It’s so much more than a simple romantasy.  It’s a powerhouse of dealing with self-acceptance, parental issues, and letting love into one’s life.  I think this could easily have been nominated for Gay Novel or LGBTQ+ Spec Fiction.  It certainly makes me want to continue reading Klune’s back catalogue.