5 out of 5 stars
Ebook. 136 pages. Published July 25th 2013 by Dreamspinner Press
Blurb:
It’s
not easy for a young gay artist like Jordan Carson to grow up in Jefferson,
Wisconsin, where all anyone seems to care about in middle school and high
school are the sports teams. But Jordan was lucky. He met Owen Nelson in the
second grade, and they’ve been BFFs ever since. Owen is a big, beautiful blond
and their school’s champion wrestler. No one messes with Owen, or with anyone
close to him, and he bucks popular opinion by keeping Jordan as his wingman
even after Jordan comes out at school.
Their friendship survives, but Jordan’s worst enemy may be himself: he can’t
seem to help the fact that he is head-over-heels in love with a hopeless
case—his straight friend, Owen. Owen won’t let anything take Jordan’s
friendship away, but he never counted on Jordan running off to find a life of
his own. Owen will have to face the nature of their relationship if he’s to win
Jordan back.
Likes:
- The friends to lovers romance.
- The slow burn.
- Heart wrenching but in a good way because you know it’s all going to work out.
- Happy ending and great epilogue.
- Great characters.
- Kept me invested until the very end.
Dislikes:
- There is a moment when the guys do sexy stuff and they aren’t legal adults. That weirded me out a bit. As did the whole ‘still being in high school’ thing.
- I do feel bad for how much pining Jordan went through while Owen had practically none.
This was a reread for me. I read it years ago and knew I’d liked it, but didn’t remember the story at all. Obviously I still like it, which makes it strange that I’ve only ever read one other book by Easton. I’m definitely going to have to check out her other things.
I’m a sucker for ‘friends to lovers’ stories, and this one takes the cake. Jordan and Owen are true BFFs and in a way that makes it harder for them to transition to the lovers side of things. It doesn’t happen until
which means the Jordan has lots of time to pine over how Owen will never like him that way. It definitely tugged at my heartstrings, though not enough to make me cry.
I have few complaints about this book. I will say, it made me a little uncomfortable reading about the occasional sexual moment when I knew that the characters were underage. There was no penetration, and that does make it a little better, I guess. I mean, I got over my discomfort because I was invested in the characters, so at the end of the day it wasn’t a big deal.
I was surprised that the book was written in first person POV and still flipped from Owen to Jordan’s POV. I’m not used to seeing that in books, but it worked well. The first person POV really helped get into their heads and immerse the reader into their world.
For a book that is less than 150 pages, Superhero really packs a punch. The characters are well developed and well written, the dialogue is witty, the nerd and jock lingo is on point, all with the added color of how coming out can affect different people differently. The little bit of angst as Jordan tries to get over Owen again and again makes this story more dark chocolate than milk chocolate in terms of sweetness, but I liked it.
Love is Love Reviews 