I'm not sure what this particular board's policy is on slash, but I'm a fan myself, and I've gathered that this particular story is a "classic" of the Hanson/Moffatts sub-genre (or the Taylor/Scott genre, to be more specific), so I went ahead and checked it out. Boy, am I glad I did!

First off, let me say that I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the Moffatts. Seriously. (It took me all of 5 chapters to figure out there were four of them.) So I can't say whether those character depictions were accurate or not. Still, all the characters in the story were fairly well-drawn, although not the best I've seen.

The best thing about the story as a whole is the way the love story is done. I've read a good chunk of slashy stories in my day, but a lot of the time (sadly) they either deteriorate into smut, or have a decent plotline but fudge the more intimate scenes by turning them into some sort of grotesque anatomy lesson. (Too many gorey details, in other words.) Neither of those things happens here. It's plenty graphic, but tastefully done, which is what sets it apart as an actual love story, and not something else.

There's also a wonderfully creepy sideplot involving some photographs and semi-threatening messages that come to both Taylor and Scott through the mail. I won't give anything away, but I will say it makes for a rather intriguing mystery that's just a little bit spookier than your average "What if somebody finds out?" plotline.

There were a couple things that irked me quite a bit. First: shifting perspectives. I'll allow that there's nothing wrong with showing the same story from more than one POV - plenty of highly respected, published authors do it all the time - but what I'm talking about here is the tendency to switch POVs in the middle of scene, sometimes in the middle of love scene even, and marking the shift with nothing but a name in italics above the next paragraph to tell you who "I" is. This seems to happen a lot in fanfic, particularly in short stories, but I have never liked it. I can read through it most of time, because it just happens so often, but the effect is just plain jarring. It interrupts the flow of the narrative, and I think it chips away at the quality of the story.

The other thing that bugged me, slightly less than the perspective shifts, was the Zac/Dave story. It was okay, but it felt tacked-on somehow, like there was just too much going on in the same story. This goes along with the perspective shifts, I think - the author's trying to be in too many places at once, and it just gets exhausting after awhile.

That said, it's still a great story (if you're into slash at all - if not, just stay away, because it's not subtle in the slightest). It is unfinished, which is horribly disappointing when you finally reach chapter 40, but a great read nonetheless. Oh, and here's the link, since I forgot about including one last time: http://www.hansonfiction.com/aspen