Book Review: Love Beyond Age

Title: Love Beyond Age 

Author: Stephanie Tyo

Date: 2022

Publisher: Stephanie Tyo

Quote: "Quinn and Jasper stepped forward into their future together, ready to face the unknown and forge a new path, hand in hand."

That's the way several sections of this book end, whichever of her two men Quinn is facing the unknown with. Quinn is a psychology major from the small town of Cornwall, Ontario, where we're told her author lives with two teenaged daughters and no mention of a husband. When she goes to university in Kingston, she moves into an apartment with James, a somewhat older man she met in Cornwall. She's "in love" with James but, having shacked up with him without a commitment, and knowing nothing about his background or past except that he seems well to do, she's also attracted to her classmate Jasper. All of them are psychology majors at the same school. When James reveals the secret of his background, Quinn leaves him and takes up with Jasper. James is initially angry, but not too angry to stay around, and Quinn eventually goes back to him.

Well, why not? This novel is sheer fantasy. James's big secret is that he's achieved immortality, and a council of his fellow immortals have banned all "relationships," not only marriage, between immortals and mortals. They promise James and Quinn difficulties. Quinn develops cancer. James petitions "the gods" in Egypt to grant Quinn immortality, and this time, because of the couple's "love," they do. 

Must every novel be Christian? Not necessarily; not every reader is. But Tyo's literary sins are not limited to adopting a minority religion for her literary world. They include the wordiness, with lavish use of cliches, that tell readers that ChatGPT or some similar plagiarism software was involved in the creation of this book. Tyo's plot is not conventional and may have been the product of original thought, with ChatGPT used just enough to yield Amazon's recommmended word count for a stand-alone novel. Still, the book reads like ChatGPT

By posting a review of this book I suppose I'm boosting its signal a bit, but when a book is a romance, whose value consists of its author's ability to show how human beings resolve their differences and remain "in love," and its conversations have that chatbot feeling (James and Quinn have a conversation about books that sounds like a series of quotes from the "literature" textbook), that book is not really recommended to anybody. I received a free review copy. If I'd paid for this book, even on a dime-a-dozen clearance sale, I'd feel cheated.