Ricky

loved the writing. so beautiful.

Visiting a friend in Hawaii and I felt like reading a gay themed book set here. This book is pretty bad and must have even felt dated in 2005. Will probably check out the next book in the series but this is really bad. Somehow both tedious and offensive. The character voices in the audiobook are very uncomfortable. I'm really happy we don't have white people doing voices like this anymore. It's not just the voices though, the main character has a lot of internalized homophobia which is never really questioned or improved. It kind of feels like the author is onboard with it even.

Mostly enjoyed this. I always appreciate it when the characters in a gay romance novel are actually gay. These characters have both had gay relationships before. And seemingly the book is also written by a gay man. A few annoying tropes though. As usual in these books, most of the conflict feels contrived and implausible. But I don't know, a lot of teenage drama feels contrived and implausible so what do I know. there are some tropes here that I usually associate with female authors of gay romance though. In particular the kind of delayed intimacy trope. These guys have both been in a relationship before, I don't think they would be so precious about sex. It would make sense for Aiden to hold back because he's still carrying a lot of emotions for his former relationship, but I guess I just never buy it when you have two gay teenage boys being like I want a first time to be special. I don't know, I guess some boys must feel that way but it certainly wasn't my experience. On the one hand I appreciate the way that this author avoids providing any explicit details about the sexual encounters, but I almost found it too oblique. Like I just read The Only Light Left Burning, and there's this thing where they read romance novels in front of children and so they kind of coyly describe some of the sex scenes in the book. That's how this book feels. It doesn't feel very natural. Like I honestly like when these books are delicate about intimacy, but I primarily found those sections confusing in this book. Instead of coming across as delicate, it came across as prim and uncomfortable. Like I felt like the novelist was someone's grandmother or something who was afraid to talk about sex. I was just thinking about it because I recently read crash test about the Formula 1 drivers or whatever and I actually liked that the intimate scenes were so restrained in those books. Those scenes are usually so silly so I appreciate one an author shows restraint. anyway I found myself kind of wondering if the approach to sex in this book seemed so tentative because this book might be sort of YA flavored or something but the characters are both adults and it is not totally like a YA book so I wasn't really sure.

I also don't feel like the characters always seemed to adequately appreciate the importance of the mission or the world they were trying to call into being by completing it. I wanted the characters to really rise to the occasion regarding the importance of their mission and the obligatory third act breakup was really just annoying. Whenever that happens in a book it really undoes a lot of the good will that a book has built up which is an unfortunate place to leave the reader.

But at the end of the day, it is a fun world full of gay MacGyvers with a likable couple at the center. People talk sometimes in reviews about not believing love stories because they just kind of fall for each other or something like that. I don't know, that's always been my experience. I don't think I've ever been in love with somebody that didn't start with a feeling of love at first sight. Like that looking at someone's eyes and thinking like almost instantly, oh this is somebody that I could fall in love with. It's just this magnet or something that takes you over.

I also really enjoyed the narration by Talia Carver.

frequently annoying and contrived but also engaging. was hoping for a story about our boys working together to survive the apocalypse but instead it's a lot of annoying genre tropes. still enjoyed it somewhat. i like the characters.

Pleasant enough story. A little tropey and they really edge you with the love story. Too many instances of characters not communicating. I liked the characters though and generally enjoy this type of story.

This is pretty bad but I also found it readable. Formulaic and tropey but somehow engaging. This is definitely one of those MM romance novels that reads like it's more about straight people than actual gay people. somehow I always feel like I understand straight people more one reading these books that superimpose heterosexual culture onto queer situations.

Here it makes sense that Cannon might think like a straight guy because despite ultimately identifying is bisexual, he has lived as a straight man. Meanwhile, Easton, the gay one, is written like a woman with a personality disorder. someone could make the argument that he's just a demon twink, but to me it feels like you had another of these books written by women where one of the men is the strong silent type who is nearly perfect but is the one who always has to apologize for everything and then the other one acts like a complete and utter psychopath and somehow never takes any accountability for their actions and as always being coddled and taken care of. Like it's kind of weird that this book doesn't really seem understand the interiority of Cannon. He's been through a lot and his only reaction to it is to feel like he needs to take care of Easton. I think as a society we might be aware more often of the fact that straight men don't seem to understand that women are actually just human beings, but all of these tropes about relationships that I see in these romance novels really make me feel that women don't understand that men are actually human beings as well. and I had the thought when I was reading this one that I think it's too bad that what heterosexual people don't seem to understand about queer relationships is the fact that the roles are much more fluid. A lot of these MM romance novels you see people in these really defined roles of which one is the man and which one is the woman, I think in most queer relationships, you seem more of a real partnership. Honestly, whenever I read one of these novels where it's ostensibly a gay story, but ultimately one of the characters is just a woman in the costume of a hot surfer or something, it really just makes me feel so grateful that I wasn't born heterosexual. Heterosexual culture honestly feels so claustrophobic to me. There are all of these distorted beliefs about each other in heterosexual relationships that I think really keep people from truly knowing and understanding each other. Instead of truly being in love with the human being, you have two people who are in love with the mask the other person is forced to wear. And I'm sure this could be true of all relationships, but in my own relationships I guess I have always tried to get past those masks so that we could really know each other.

Anyway, this book is not exactly well written in terms of its prose or many aspects of how it flows or how it is morally reasoned, but I do like the general concept. I very rarely ever think the sex scenes in these books are very good or engaging, and this was also true here. Also I really don't like the audiobook narrator who does the voice of Easton. He always does this whiny voice in everything I've ever heard him read. The guy who did Cannon is okay though.

Ultimately I just get really annoyed of books where people don't communicate for dumb reasons. Like the amount of times Cannon wants to say something but the sociopathic younger brother is running his mouth about something stupid is really annoying. Also, I'm sorry, but if anybody kept trying to call somebody who didn't reply, at a certain point you would send them a text message or an email or a letter. I just don't feel like there would have been no contact for all of that time. I just don't believe that this character would have been so rigid in not being in contact with his family. I also don't believe that he would have been kicked out in this way. What the dad does at the beginning of this movie is absolutely sociopathic. Especially given that it is all over an underage drinking ticket. Like I got that the strong silent type character has to be unrealistically perfect, but having the break from the family being over something so trivial just made the book feel silly to me.

One thing I liked is that of the maybe like three or so books that have dealt with stepbrothers, this is the only one I've ever read that really dealt very seriously with how the people around them might not have a super accepting attitude about two brothers being in a romantic relationship. Which is interesting because I feel like the 7-year separation kind of makes it a little bit less uncomfortable. But one thing that's weird is white is neither of these boys has any friends at all? Like the older one, it kind of makes sense because he's been really involved in college and work, and so maybe he didn't really have time for close friends? I'm not really sure I believe it, but that would be an explanation. and then maybe Easton doesn't have any friends because he's a total psychopath? It seems like the old people in the town like Easton though so maybe it's just because like he says about the reason he doesn't date anybody is because there's no gay people around there because it's a small town by the beach or something. Which of course then makes you wonder how much business this beach store can actually do, but maybe it's for vacation people.

I just feel like if I were going away to college, before I dropped my plan to become a doctor, I would probably accept my dad's call and tell him, hey bitch, I need money for medical school.

This book has a similar structure to Cleanness, which I slightly preferred, but it is as effective here as it is there. In parts 1 and 3, we have a story of the narrator's relationship with a hustler in Bulgaria where the narrator is teaching English at some kind of prestigious school. Part 2 is a flashback to his childhood and adolescence in Kentucky. I was having trouble connecting to the narrator in part 1. Honestly I tend to get a little impatient with stories about sex workers, but the core wounds we experience in the flashback section illuminated the dynamics found in the other parts of this book as well as Cleanness, possibly. On that note, I was initially worried that I had made a mistake by reading Cleanness first, but ultimately, I'm glad I did. I appreciate the extra context I had for these relationships. It was helpful to know about the relationship with R. here and it filled in the gaps of Cleanness. It seems like probably a good idea to read both of them back to back, no matter in which order.

The story in the middle is probably the part I'll most remember. We experience how he gradually finds himself rejected by his friends and members of his family as they and he gradually realize that there is something different about him. This is such a common experience for queer people and among the reasons that the queer experience is inherently traumatic in many cases. This culminates in particular experience with a friend strikes such a chord because it is such a familiar dynamic. Like, I never experienced this exact situation, but had many similar experiences throughout my childhood and adolescence. Again and again boys drawn to me, disquieted by this, rebelled against this. And all of this compounded by the loss of love, safety, or belonging in your own family and a dawning realization that your life would always be somehow outside of the brightness of the world. And here these two themes collide as this situation clarifies for the father how he sees his son.

As far as the story of his relationship with Mitko, the hustler, I'm not sure what I might take from it. I suppose the obvious thing is I assume what the title points to, the ways in which we try to mark people as somehow belonging to us. I was never really sure why the narrator was so fixated on Mitko, but also that's something that fiction lies to us. That there's ever a good reason. I guess sometimes it just that something hijacks you. Maybe for 20 stupid reasons that are so trite you'd cringe at naming them. Maybe it's enough that Mitko is charming and self-assured. I don't know, I'm an idealist. I've always demanded relationships that at least grant the illusion that they are not transactional. Maybe what resonates most about these books is they remind me of the vibe of my youth when the shadow around my identity was so heavy and inescapable.

The other thing I was thinking about this morning when I was walking to work is that it makes sense that the author is also a poet. I have always had a thing for novels written by poets. Here, the structure, the flow, and the logic all seemed consistent with how a poet might think.

Over the past decade, whenever USA has been particularly in the death grip of fascism I tend toward these gay romance novels, presumably in search of a simpler world and happy endings. I wasn't sure about this when it first started. Overall the book is decent, but some of the practical details are a little fishy. I'm actually taking a break from the book right now to write this only about halfway through because I thought it was so funny how wrong the author is about the vibe of downtown Los Angeles. I mean, there probably are places downtown that don't feel like a hellscape, but I just don't know how many people would describe downtown Los Angeles as clean or safe. It's kind of one of the sketchiest parts of the city. It certainly has its charms though. Anyway, I'm more engaged in the book than I expected to be so I guess I'll get back to it now, lol.

You know one of the best things about Heated Rivalry is it doesn't hit you over the head with the hockey. The trouble with some of these other romance novels is they get too mired down in fake politics and stuff like that. that was also a big problem in Red, White, and Royal Blue. This whole thing with the credit card fees in the bill, I get it, but I really kind of check out whenever she starts going on about that.

Honestly by the end, I did really enjoy the characters and overall I enjoyed reading the book. The only thing is that some of the practical details were kind of silly. I just kept thinking that this author can't have spent very much time in Los Angeles. That was the vibe that I got. and all of the political plot line stuff was kind of dull and unengaging. It didn't really strike me as real. but I enjoyed the story of the characters and I felt like she did a good job of gradually showing the evolution of the relationship.

I was so enchanted by Crash Test that I immediately bought this sequel on ebook since there was a 3 month wait through the library. Honestly, it's not a thrilling story, which I mostly liked honestly. It was just nice to continue to spend time with these characters and their world and as far as this genre goes, I enjoyed the prose. I didn't realize how much until I went back to the library this evening to try to find some more fun reads like Crash Test, but every queer/MM romance I picked up I would read the first page and cringe at the awful prose. So I guess these must be fairly well-written.

The one thing I was a bit sour on in this one was the "I'm unworthy" trope. l get it, but it's laid on too thick here, as it always is in these books. Can't say exactly why I enjoy these characters so much, but maybe it has to do with the structure of the first book where we get invested in them each individually as we come to understand them as a couple. There's such a change in Jacob's character here from where we met him in the first book. Sometimes it felt a bit jarring but at the end of the day he went through a lot and is still figuring out who he is following all of these changes.